Maldonado, Jackeline

Nazar
CAT 1
10/1/16
Frontier: Make or Break America
Notes

American History = Westward Expansion (with it brought the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)

 To rise, America constantly had to face the unknowns. WE meant always starting from

scratch.

 Interestingly enough, the “frontier” was just a concept because the west was technically

free land there were no hard set boundaries or borders just yet

 This new American society is paradoxical because it is evolving yet primitive

 Americans sought freedom from the social agitation, control, and scarce resources

offered in the mother country but on the frontier these things were also prevalent

o When too many people lived near each other that sense of freedom was gone

because inevitably some kind of control had to be imposed on the small town or

village this in turn pushed for more WE or decisions about how to be ruled so it

wouldn’t be like the East or mother country all over again (the frontier had an

effect on political systems)

o The frontier also had its setbacks because not every comfort of living could be

offered by the raw materials of the land for growing number of settlers; trading

was essential but taxes and misrepresentation in the English government strayed

Americans away and meant more WE

o Pushing the frontier + WE = less handle over Americans and more economic

corruption bc of no regulations
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o Economy depends on ppl so it cannot thrive if there are no consumers or not

enough consumers to feed off

 The Eastern colonies wanted to stay on top so they wanted to limit expansion to keep

and fortify their dominance in the New World

 The East attempts to limit the WE by appealing to religion but…

The Frontier : America(ns) as

The Mediterranean Sea : Greeks.

The frontier had the power to make or break America during its manifest destiny because it

created Americans out of settlers with different wants and needs. This diverse group pushed

on westward and with it pushed for a need of central authority although it was what they

came a long way from.

Personal Reflection

The frontier started it all for the Americans. The word “American” itself could not have

been a term without the preexisting idea of a “frontier”. The frontier served like a math

function in goes an ‘x’ (European settler) and out comes a ‘y’ (American). The frontier was

indeed the catalyst to America as we know it.

It’s quite interesting that this idea of a frontier existed in a new world, a new land, with

literally no borders or boundaries, an endless frontier. This idea of a frontier on free land and

pushing its boundaries westward made me realize that this notion has not yet been left

behind; it made think of the America today. It’s 2016 and Trump is making his appeal on

foreign relations to an audience that has been urging for something to be done about illegal
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Nazar
CAT 1
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residents and other foreigners (middle east). Americans forget that we are a nation of people

of diverse backgrounds and the term is not so white and black, or white-or-black. Turner

makes a persistent call to nationalism and the pioneering struggle that united an expanding

nation, in modern terms that would be the “American dream” except now you can’t just

walk into the U.S. and be dubbed an “American.”

Another important concept that I noted was the presence of a balance. Like Newton’s law

for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, there was a balance of actions and

reactions between American settlers and expansion. The expansion had an impact (reaction)

on the incoming Europeans because it changed their philosophies for their new life on a new

land (political view, economic view, etc.) and it changed them from European settlers to

Americans. The Americans acted on the new land by imposing their systems, culture, and

technology. Most importantly the settlers appropriated over this new land, claiming it their

country, the land of the free (which ironically wasn’t so free once they asserted their

dominance over it.) Another aspect where this balance idea resurfaces is in the development

of the Americans themselves, the stubborn persistence in a democracy without a

consideration for another kind of party, perhaps because of the injustice suffered back in the

mother country. That’s like America now when people with tunnel vision say “fuck the

police” but they don’t know that they mean fuck the injustice, that’s where the problem is.

The settlers had become “antisocial” because they opposed the unknown or better yet, the far

too well known failure. The hands of a nation could not be held under the reigns of free

lance politicians or extreme liberals, America wasn’t going to run on teen-like spirit.