Manifest Destiny & Frederick Jackson Turners frontier thesis - Essay Example

Manifest Destiny & Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis Manifest Destiny is a term coined in the 1840s to symbolize the attitude that was prevalent in the 19th Century that emphasized that the United States was capable and destined to stretch from coast to coast. This attitude played an integral role in fueling western settlement, war with Mexico, as well as the removal of Native American (Foner and Garraty). It was a notion, and not a specific policy that expressed the conviction that Anglo-Saxon Americans’ had a mission of expanding their institutions and civilization throughout the continent.

The expansion would incorporate individual economic opportunity and liberty, in addition to the territorial aggrandizement. On the other hand, the Frontier Thesis as released by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 asserted that American development was explicated by the existence of a free land, its constant recession, as well as westward advancement of the American settlement (Turner 56). This concept was said to depend on Darwinism concept of survival for the fittest, where primitive political and economic conditions of the frontier shad to evolve into complex city life.

Frederick Turner’s American identity epitomizes Manifest Destiny from the perspective of Anglo-Americans. This is attributed to the fact that Turner describes Americans as strong in individualism and selfishness, with nervous energy, coarseness and strength, and inherent expansive power. In his research, Turner established that the selfish and individual qualities characteristic of Anglo-Americans forced them to push westward; thus, claiming land and expanding democracy. The terms are extremely important in the US history.

This is attributed to the fact that they give historians apparatuses that facilitate the using of social history as the basis for all economic, social and economic developments in the American history. Additionally, they give guidelines on the path American democracy has followed in its creation and preservation.Works CitedFoner, Eric, and John A. Garraty. “Manifest Destiny.” History. 1991. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.Turner, Frederick J. The Frontier in American History. Berlin, Germany: Outlook Verlag, 2011. Print.