Shaping the American National Identity: Reality and Myth of the Western Frontier

The territorial expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century caused major political, social and cultural changes within the American nation. In 1893, American historian Frederick Jackson Turner put forward the idea that the American frontier gave rise to the establishment of the most salient features of American national identity - individualism, exceptionalism, self-reliance, and the emergence of American democratic order. But despite its enormous impact on the following generations of historians, Turner's thesis overlooked a number of historical facts and impacts of the Frontier that could potentially undermine his statement, namely the indigenous genocide and devastation of the natural environment. His essay thus formulated the myth of the West, as it largely represented the American's imagination of the frontier and its experiences. This thesis examines the relation between the history of the United States' territorial expansion and its mythologic representation, focusing on the political and cultural dynamics of the nineteenth- century America. It presents a close analysis of the frontier mythology and the Manifest Destiny ideology, and their impact on the formation of American national identity. The thesis is divided into three chapters composed of further subchapters. The first..