Historiography Persuasion

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Let me begin by agreeing with AJ’s comments about reading through Eli’s post.  Bringing in the Belk parking spot certainly made me laugh and made Turner’s article seem even more far-fetched, stereotyped, and prejudice.  While I shared many of the same initial thoughts that Eli describes, Conon’s historiography almost justified Turner’s paper into making “THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY” seem accurate and almost skillfully neglectful.  Maybe I have fallen into Cronon’s trap, yet after reading the historiography Turner’s general thesis seems much more accurate, so long as you avoid the problems about democracy, national character, theological problems, and his stereotyping of frontier “types”.  (171)

During my initial reading of Turner, I had many of the same feelings that Eli referenced and noted many of the critiques that Cronon brought up.  I thought Turner lacked detail, failed to acknowledge many of the underlying factors of western expansion, and his “analytical shortcomings.” (170)  Nevertheless, I was slowly persuaded to acknowledge Turner’s entire thesis after I finished Cronon.  Regardless by how much historians reject the structure and thesis of Turner’s work, we are still reliant on the work today.  As noted throughout Cronon, we acknowledge the article predominantly for the academic ingenuity to understand history through narrative.  If one consider Turner’s article as more of a narrative for history as a whole, using the broad theme of the American frontier, than maybe his piece has merit.  Regardless of whether Turner though of this piece as a story or strict scholarly writing is insignificant.   If Turner was trying to explain why he believed the course of American history was going to take a drastic turn in the years after 1893, than his paper narrates a plausible story behind his reasoning.

As I re-read the last portions of Turner’s article (after reading Cronon who caused me to ignore some of the obvious flaws) the general ideas seemed to make sense.  If we ignore some of details, the American frontier has a unique and possibly accurate parallel with the Mediterranean. Maybe, in 1893 when Turner wrote the article, the idea of expansion had been lost.  Without the idea of free land and the frontier, maybe Americans felt forced to modernize.  Without the possibility of horizontal expansion, was the vertical expansion (urbanization and industrialization) the next logical chapter in American history?  Certainly, I do not agree with everything that Turner is saying, but his thesis, at the most basic level, is hard to ignore.  As Cronon points out, a logical story is hard to ignore.  If we compare the expansion of American history to various country histories and the interaction with American landscape, maybe Turner was right.

My biggest take away from these two reading’s lies in my drastic openness to Turner’s argument.  Can a good historiography like Cronon’s change your mind on even the most farfetched ideas?  Certainly this will not be true for every article, but I was struck by how logical Cronon’s approach was to an article I had nearly dismissed.