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Posted: August 12th, 2022
The American Frontier-Reality versus Myth
Writing Assignment 1B
WRITING ASSIGNMENT 1B: The American Frontier-Reality versus Myth.
The history of the American frontier has celebrated the opportunities that the West offered to everyone. Some early historians glorified the American frontier and the role it played in developing the American character. Others have argued that what has been presented is a myth. How much was the truth, and what was a myth?
INSTRUCTIONS:
To prepare you must complete the following readings:
Review all sections of Chapter 18. Consider the following questions for your essay. The questions in each section will Help you in understanding the content and to prepare for the essay.
The questions can and should be addressed in the essay, but they should not constitute the only discussion in the essay.
How did this period of westward expansion differ from earlier ones?
How did industry and the late 19th-century American economy influence the transformation of the West?
What role did the federal government play?
Read the linked essay titled DEBATING THE PAST: THE FRONTIER AND THE WEST.Download DEBATING THE PAST: THE FRONTIER AND THE WEST.
The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the
American People, 5/e
Alan Brinkley, Columbia University
Debating the Past
Chapter Sixteen: The Conquest of the Far West
Where Historians Disagree – The “Frontier” and the West
The emergence of the history of the American West as an important
field of scholarship can be traced to the paper Frederick Jackson
Turner delivered at a meeting of the American Historical Association in
1893: “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Turner
stated his thesis simply. The settlement of the West by white
Americans–“the existence of an area of free land, its continuous
recession, and the advance of American settlement westward”–was
the central story of the nation’s history. The process of westward
expansion had transformed a desolate and savage land into modern
civilization. It had also continually renewed American ideas of
democracy and individualism.
In the first half of the twentieth century, virtually everyone who wrote
about the West echoed at least part of Turner’s argument. Ray Allen
Billington’s Westward Expansion (1949) was almost wholly consistent
with the Turnerian model. In The Great Plains (1931) and The Great
Frontier (1952), Walter Prescott Webb similarly emphasized the
bravery and ingenuity of white settlers in the Southwest.
Serious efforts to displace the Turner thesis as the explanation of
western American history began after World War II. In Virgin Land
(1950), Henry Nash Smith examined many of the same heroic images
of the West that Turner and his disciples had presented; but he treated
those images less as descriptions of reality than as myths. Earl
Pomeroy challenged Turner’s notion of the West as a place of
individualism, innovation, and democratic renewal. “Conservatism,
inheritance, and continuity bulked at least as large,” he claimed.
Howard Lamar, in Dakota Territory, 1861-1889 (1956) and The Far
Southwest (1966), emphasized the highly diverse characters of
different areas of the West.
The western historians who began to emerge in the late 1970s
launched an even more emphatic attack on the Turner thesis and the
idea of the “frontier.” “New” western historians such as Richard White,
Patricia Nelson Limerick, William Cronon, Donald Worster, Peggy
Pascoe, and many others challenged the Turnerians on a number of
points.
Turner saw the nineteenth-century West as “free land” awaiting the
expansion of Anglo-American settlement and American democracy.
The “new western historians” have rejected the concept of an empty
“frontier,” emphasizing instead the elaborate and highly developed
civilizations that already existed in the region. White, English-speaking
Americans, they have argued, did not so much settle the West as
conquer it. And they continue to share the region not only with the
Indians and Hispanics who preceded them there, but also with African
Americans, Asians, Latin Americans, and others who flowed into the
West at the same time they did.
The Turnerian West was a place of heroism, triumph, and above all
progress, dominated by the feats of brave white men. The West the
new historians describe is a less triumphant (and less masculine) place
in which bravery and success coexist with oppression, greed, and
failure; in which decaying ghost towns, bleak Indian reservations,
impoverished barrios, and ecologically devastated landscapes are as
characteristic of western development as great ranches, rich farms,
and prosperous cities.
To Turner and his disciples, the nineteenth-century West was a place
where rugged individualism flourished and replenished American
democracy. The new scholars point out that the region was
inextricably tied to a national and international capitalist economy.
Westerners depended on government-subsidized railroads for access
to markets, federal troops for protection from Indians, and (later)
government-funded dams and canals for irrigating their fields and
sustaining their towns.
And while Turner defined the West as a process–a process of
settlement that came to an end with the “closing of the frontier” in the
late nineteenth century–the new historians see the West as a region.
Its distinctive history did not end in 1890, but continues into our own
time.
Consider the following questions for your essay. These questions can and should be addressed in the essay, but it should not constitute the only discussion in the essay.
What is Frederick Turner’s “frontier thesis,” and what are the criticisms of it? The link will direct you to Turner’s Thesis, The Frontier in American HistoryLinks to an external site..
Examine the information provided on these links, which address “new views on the history of the American West.” They are not full articles but do provide additional sources that you can review.
A Different View of the American West: https://artsci.washington.edu/news/1999-10/different-view-american-west
Rethinking History: American West: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/rethinking-history-american-west
History American West – Get much-needed rewrite: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-american-west-gets-much-needed-rewrite-180960149/
Developing the American West: https://youtu.be/wmuMbOcL-mo
Burden Western History: http://prospect.org/article/burden-western-history
Project MUSE: The American West Reprised, Revised, and Revived – http://muse.jhu.edu/article/29166
Are you a movie buff? Consider renting an old Western, pay close attention to how “Cowboys and Indians” are portrayed, and compare it to a more recent movie that portrays the frontier. If you use one of these programs, make sure you identify it in your in-text citations and your references. Review the Writing Resources Tab for guides.
Utilize at least one of the linked sources to support your discussion.
Identify and incorporate at least one additional outside source to support your discussion. In addition to the textbook, you may use any material outside of the textbook that is recommended in the Additional Reading section at the end of each chapter. You are also encouraged to do your own research and identify relevant sources. Please keep in mind that WIKIPEDIA is not an acceptable reference.
PREPARE AND SUBMIT:
Write a well-organized essay, a minimum of 700 words (but not limited to), including supporting details from the documents/textbook/other sources in which you analyze and discuss the material that has been assigned by addressing the following question:
Discuss the reality and myths that have been presented when relating the history of the American Frontier and its development.
Reminders
Use Microsoft WORD to write the essays. The acceptable submission file types are .doc, .docx, and .rtf.
Prepare the assignment as a Word Document, double-spaced, and using a standard font of 12 points.
Paragraphs in an essay are not numbered. Any questions that are associated with an assigned reading are there to serve as a guide for your discussion.
Your discussion should incorporate all of the information from the documents and or textbook, and outside sources as one essay.
Students are required to research and incorporate into their discussions additional sources that relate to the content. Recommendations can be found at the end of the textbook chapter in Additional Reading.
All statements must be supported, and all sources must be identified and cited, and included in your reference list. This also applies to the textbook. Failure to do so constitutes Plagiarism, and the college has strict policies and penalties for failure to comply. Under the Resources, you will find links to sites that review how to format a paper or essay. I recommend that students use APA or Chicago Style to format their essays. Students should ask their instructor which format style they prefer you to use.
Proofread your work. Make sure that you have looked for all of the spelling and grammatical errors and corrected them, and that you have organized your work into coherent paragraphs.
Submit it in the “First Required Writing Assignment (Submit Here) ” link as an ATTACHMENT. Any work that is submitted directly into the box will be graded as a 0.
Point Value: 100
Grading Criteria:
Analysis and discussion (60%)
Support for discussion (30%)
Organization (10%)
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