The American frontier was significant because it let America become less like Europe and let settlers have individual ideas on how to build a nation. When settlers came from Europe they had to forge a whole new nation and a whole new idea. As the people would expand they would just reach more ad more primitive societies, as new American people had to work to expand to these societies and make them industrialized. “American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier.”(Frederick Jackson Turner) Other countries already have more civilized societies to expand to, we however do not, it is harder for us to expand and therefore takes longer. The longer it takes us to expand the more settlers realized that they needed their own ideas and ways to do things.
Europe was already heavily settled when they went to expand, the wilderness is too strong for man so he must conform or perish, he eventually starts to bring more modern ideals and the whole area will become more advanced but in an American way, it will no longer be Europenized/ Germanized. “In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails. Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is not the old Europe, not simply the development of Germanic germs, anymore than the first phenomenon was a case of reversion to the Germanic mark. The fact is, that here is a new product that is American. At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American.” (Frederick Jackson Turner) Europe's frontier was the Atlantic coast, they brought their ideals and heavily moved in with them, as it expands the ideas travel slower and slower until it becomes conform or die. The American frontier helped America become Americanized.
Like with the glaciers as we expand and change the nation some of what was there stays, making regions differ from each other. As they expanded they used easy paths like rivers and valley lines, these areas became heavily settled. As they expand even more the settlers reached aboriginal people and then take over their land and their routes to expand out farther, because they expanded like this everyone stayed connected to one main line and caused the country to stay together and not split into multiple smaller countries.
The frontier was also significant because it taught the settlers how to build and create their own governments. People with similar ideas and ranges of wealth would spread and settle together keeping the same ideas in distinct areas. This also caused a lot of faults in the creation of government because people spread out far from main government and started creating their own ideas.
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