01:050:101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: American Exceptionalism, Individualism, Acculturation
Document Summary
America with a unique role to play in world history - maybe even a national destiny: stronger than nationalism. Turner (1861-1932), historian who taught at wisconsin and harvard. One of several historians from the same period who became known as progressive. What story does turner tell here? (in, at times, hyper-speci c detail) The turner thesis: american culture and institutions have been created by a process of repeated settlement along the ever moving frontier, at the frontier, people lost their european customs and ways, and were eventually reborn as. Americans: due to these historical circumstances, those americans were rugged, self-reliant, individualists who ignored their distant, incompetent federal government, the 1890 census declared that the frontier was no more. Americans were entering a new chapter in the life of their country, its institutions, and its people. Turner engaged in exceptionalism primarily as a mode of inquiry.