The imperialist spirit of the United States was inherited from England after the U.S. broke away from its mother country in 1775. The young country wanted to spread its ways of living across its landscape, creating defined boarders on both sides that separated it from its English predecessors. Thus America’s New Frontier was born. America built up its imperialistic nature throughout the 19th century and on into the 20th century, flexing its muscles and establishing itself as a new world superpower. The modern United States no longer finds land to claim, but instead is involved with a Cultural Imperialism, which has affected how other countries around the world feel about the United States. Americas need to find a new frontier has long been a part of the American identity. Finding the new was important to a growing country in the early 1800’s. St. Jean de Crèvecoeur described the American as “a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions” (Crèvecoeur 3). Manifest Destiny, a term popularized by John O’Sullivan, describes the social push by the United States to span its boarders from east coast to west coast. This would indoctrinate people all across the U.S. in the “American Way”, which was held by Americans as the right and just way to live. Fredrick Jackson Turner describes in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” the way that the frontier takes a modern man and acutely regresses him into a savage, and then as the settlement moves forth, the now-savage man is slowly and steadily progressed back into a modern American; and thus the frontier moves on. Turner writes, “As successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations, so each fronti... ... middle of paper ... ...r, Hector St. Jean. Letters from an American Farmer. New York: Davies and Davis, 1782. Print. “Opinion of the United States.” Pew Research Global Attitudes Project. Pew Research Center, July 2013. Web. 30 March 2014. Roosevelt, Theodore. An Autobiography. New York: Macmillan, 1913. Print. Turner, Fredrick Jackson. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Thesis. N.p, 1893. Print. Varma, Rahul. “State of Denial: Cultural Diversity as a Resource for Alternative Globalization.” Canadian Theatre Review, Vol. 157. January 2014. Web. “World Factbook: Government Type.” Central Intelligence Agency. Central Intelligence Agency, n.d. Web. 2 April 2014.
Verner W. Crane, “A Lost Utopia of the First American Frontier,” The Sewanee Review 27, no. 1 (January 1919): 48-61
There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .
This historical document, The Frontier as a Place of Conquest and Conflict, focuses on the 19th Century in which a large portion of society faced discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Its author, Patricia N. Limerick, describes the differences seen between the group of Anglo Americans and the minority groups of Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics Americans and African Americans. It is noted that through this document, Limerick exposes us to the laws and restrictions imposed in addition to the men and women who endured and fought against the oppression in many different ways. Overall, the author, Limerick, exposes the readers to the effects that the growth and over flow of people from the Eastern on to the Western states
Throughout the course of history, nations have invested time and manpower into the colonizing and modernizing of more rural governments. Imperialism has spread across the globe, from the British East India Company to France’s occupation of Northern Africa. After their founding in 1776, the United States of America largely stayed out of this trend until The Spanish-American War of 1898. Following the war, the annexation and colonization of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines ultimately set a precedent for a foreign policy of U.S. imperialism.
"Chapter 2 Western Settlement and the Frontier." Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays. Ed. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, and Jon Gjerde. 3rd ed. Vol. II: Since 1865. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 37-68. Print.
When looking at the vast lands of Texas after the Civil War, many different people came to the lands in search for new opportunities and new wealth. Many were lured by the large area that Texas occupied for they wanted to become ranchers and cattle herders, of which there was great need for due to the large population of cows and horses. In this essay there are three different people with three different goals in the adventures on the frontier lands of Texas in its earliest days. Here we have a woman's story as she travels from Austin to Fort Davis as we see the first impressions of West Texas. Secondly, there is a very young African American who is trying his hand at being a horse rancher, which he learned from his father. Lastly we have a Mexican cowboy who tries to fight his way at being a ranch hand of a large ranching outfit.
Lauter, Paul, vol. 1, 3rd ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Pub: by Houghton Mifflin, 19
Popper DE, Popper FJ. "The Reemergence of the American Frontier" Studies in History and Contemporary Culture. Forthcoming: 11 pages.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance Of The Frontier In American History.” In The Frontier in American History. New York: Henry Holt and Company Incorporated, 1948: 1-18.
Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” first debuted at Chicago’s World Fair in 1893 which was presented in front of a meeting of historians. This paper was in response to
After the civil war, United States took a turn that led them to solidify as the world power. From the late 1800s, as the US began to collect power through Cuba, Hawaii, and the Philippines, debate arose among historians about American imperialism and its behavior. Historians such as William A. Williams, Arthur Schlesinger, and Stephen Kinzer provides their own vision and how America ought to be through ideas centered around economics, power, and racial superiority.
"The World Factbook" Central Intelligence Agency. 01 2013. The Work of a Nation. 11 2013 .
Frederick Jackson Turner, an American Historian in early 20th century, described frontier as a confluence of civilization and savagery or the sparsely populated area beyond which wilderness exists. Turner segregated the American frontier from the European frontier by highlighting a striking contrast between the two. The American frontier was dynamic, unlike the static European frontier which was set by fix boundaries dividing specific populated areas (or different countries). Furthermore, he elaborates the American frontier by stressing on the driving forces behind the expansion of the frontier. These driving forces can mainly be categorized into two groups: firstly, an attempt to free Americans from the European culture and to reverse the savagery and Americanize the new land and; secondly, to exploit the new opportunities and resources presented by the land in the West. Thus, Turner’s definition of frontier only marginally abides by the dictionary definition as he presents not only some geographical barriers like salt supplies, farm lands, and fall lines but also the primary barrier of eradicating the native American culture.
Frontier and empire: two of the most defining cultural and historical topics of the early twentieth century. In relation to the United States from the years 1880 to 1920, both of these areas were deeply interconnected. In fact, they challenged the very definitions of democracy and self-determination. The combined lure of the unknown frontier and the opportunity to create an empire carved out and shaped a country from what was once unsettled and unadulterated wilderness. Not without consequences to the land and the people, the desires to explore the frontier and to create an empire affected each other. For the United States, the ultimate goal was to expand and influence the outside world beyond its traditional borders.
American culture has been portrayed throughout the world as Americans being fat lazy people who sit around all day to eat McDonald’s. Our way of viewing people isn’t any better. Such as when we tend to view anybody from the Middle East, we used to think of them as exotic sexual beings. But since 9/11 everything has changed, and now since the attack we claim everyone is a terrorist and have hidden bombs on them. It’s something planted in our heads that people don’t seem to get rid of. Since it’s such a huge deal, should countries adopt policies that limit cultural imperialism in order to preserve cultures?