ESPM 50AC Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Critical Thinking, Public Property, Community Property
1 Dec 2016
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The frontier formed the characteristics of america (independence, practicality, always moving/active, creating new inventions, not concerned with art), but the frontier has closed (all the land has been settled into) Americans have anxiety over what their identity is (search for identity) Wilderness masters the colonists (wilderness has control over europeans) Colonists transform wilderness (american identity inscribed on wilderness, mastering wilderness) Driving europeans westward to establish virtue and morality across the continent. Territorial ambition (getting mexican land, gold in california) Commercial interest (asian markets, etc. , competing for asian trade with britain) Safety valve (tension btwn north and south released through westward expansion) American romanticism (creating property out of natural resources --> individualism) Moment of crisis: anxiety over american identity (turner"s thesis) (1893) Replace frontier process with dynamics of place and process. Focus on local people and settling, different races and their histories, nature and history. Studying how expansion affected others, not just europeans. Concentration of power and role of power elite.
