The New and (Somewhat) Improved Frontier Thesis

Abstract

For more than a century, Frederick Jackson Turner and his frontier thesis have loomed over the study of the American West, much like the sword-wielding giant that hovers over England on the cover of Thomas Hobbes's The Leviathan, the work that inspires both the title and thesis of Patrick Griffin's new book. In recent decades, historians have sought to expunge Turner's dominant presence from the interpretive landscape. They have condemned the frontier thesis for its Euro-centric and racist assumptions, carving up Turner for his depiction of enlightened whites and savage natives and for discounting Indian agency. Historians studying the American Revolution have assailed Turner's argument that the frontier created America character and ideology by revealing how Americans drew upon European antecedents and their own experiences in urban or rural settings that did not involve fights with Indians or land speculators. New studies of backcountry political and economic life revealed that the frontier was neither especially democratic nor equal. Now, in the wake of this onslaught, comes Patrick Griffin, who, in American Leviathan, attempts to resurrect the frontier thesis, albeit in a new version ostensibly stripped of its racism, Euro-centrism, and mythic notions of white democracy and egalitarianism. Like Turner, Griffin sees the frontier experience at the root of both American character and the emergence of democratic ideals during the Revolutionary period. Unlike Turner, who was oblivious to white racism or attempted to justify it, Griffin makes white supremacy and Indian hating key components of this new democratic American character. Indeed, Griffin goes so far as to argue that experiences on the Revolutionary frontier actually created American racism from the bottom-up. Thus, what Griffin offers is a less comforting version of the Turner thesis that includes a more pessimistic assessment of Revolutionary-era democracy, primarily by highlighting its underlying racism. Griffin also puts a new spin on frontier determinism by adding a dark Hobbesian twist. As Griffin sees it, the frontier's transformative power came