The Frontier Thesis: Yea or Nay?

I don't recall how much it was, that seems improbable an amount though, and JQA did take several loans out. John Adams was however, very thrifty in his spending (thanks mainly to Abigail) in his spending. It wasn't until after the Presidency that big changes occurred to the family homestead over time, and never anything on the scale of Washington or Jefferson's estate building in either size of property or in scale of house building. Adams did have three farms, which were used to subdivide to his children and heirs. Adams never made a lot of money as a lawyer, and it wasn't as a lawyer that he became nationally well-known; even his defense of the British Massacre did him more economic harm than it helped his reputation. It was perseverance in caring about the American Revolution and writing profusely that earned him a reputation among the elites. It's important to remember he was well-known among the elites, not so much the common person; at that point in American history elections were more about the electors appointed by the state government and not so much the popularity contest of today (Federalists losing a state legislature like NY's in control to the Democrat-Republicans was considered the reason Aaron Burr and Jefferson carried that state in 1800).

You're right. It was 13,000 in cash reserves, not land. Though JQA did buy some properties from his father to cover that loss to about the same tune.

EDIT: 13,000 dollars then is 270,000 dollars now! Holy cow!
 
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But the Comanches never burned Washington, while the Mongols did a number on Kiev. :p

I don't think they'd need to, though. Just make the frontier dangerous enough, and land there isn't really "free for the taking", because any individual who tries to just occupy land will be killed in a raid.
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
This bit bothers me. A lot. The idea that bullying, swindling, and murdering, your way to posession of a continent is in any way conducive to democracy and liberalism?

It leaves a sour taste.

Well, sorry about that. History is a dirty topic.

Just because you don't like something doesn't make it untrue.
 
Well, sorry about that. History is a dirty topic.

Just because you don't like something doesn't make it untrue.

Resisting the urge to respond in kind, I'll instead clarify.

The theory is a post hoc justification for what was a successful attempt at Lebensraum. And it falls down on comparison to any other frontier country.

According to the thesis "the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs." The failure for this to be replicated in other circumstances make it likely that frontiers themselves don't do this and the theorist in question was suffering from a nasty case of American exceptionalism.

EDIT: And not to put too fine a point on it, but American history hasn't been especially liberal for non-whites. I'd expect such an oversight from a nineteenth century historian but this is not the nineteenth century.
 
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I'm skeptical of the Frontier Thesis for the U.S. U.S democracy I'd say came of a last resort when the crown and parliament wouldn't allow it, that being it did have roots in how the colonies had governed themselves for a time. I'd say it's too much to argue that democracy came from the frontier's alone because it had to come from somewhere prior.

However I would disagree with the idea of "empty land" I've been reading The Sulking Way of War. As it turned out when it came to firearms the Native American's could adopt everything about firearms even blacksmithing and repairs, their the only stumbling block was having a supply of reliable gunpowder. Didn't the U.S Army regularly have Indian fighters for a very long time, so I wouldn't write off the land as empty.

As for Russia the frontier thesis holds no weight at all. The only time the Mongols where a threat the intial invasion and anytime they had a good leader with no infighting. Any other time there was some kind of infighting going on, that even the Russian princes took sides on. When Russia actually began expanding the Khanates weren't even a threat, baring the Crimean Khanate which had Ottoman support. The only reason why Moscow was sacked is that Russia has in a long conflict called the Livonian War, and the Oprichnina system around that time saw lots of people killed in Russia. The next year the Russian's had driven the Crimean Tatars back even after that sack.
 
When you write 'much more alike Europe's democracies' do you mean more alike back then or nowadays?

Both. I meant it would evolve in a way more alike the way european countries took. You would probably have had some strong socialist party.
 
Note that I didn't mention where the free land came from. That's the hiccup in the plan, you're either distributing capital to the commoners by taking from people who can't fight back effectively (aboriginal Americans, Australians, Africans, whoever), or you're taking it from people who already own everything (the evil landed classes!). The platonic ideal of the empty frontier existed at some point, no aboriginals, no natives, but no modern state has ever developed any of it (unless you count whaling or guano-mining stations now abandoned... or the Falklands).

As other posters have mentioned, the calculation is somewhat different when there are people who can fight back (as Russia with her frontier, and possibly New Zealand's frontier), or when the landed classes make sure they have it all to themselves (as Argentina with her appointment of lands, and arguably as the southern United States did).
 
Resisting the urge to respond in kind, I'll instead clarify.

The theory is a post hoc justification for what was a successful attempt at Lebensraum. And it falls down on comparison to any other frontier country.

According to the thesis "the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs." The failure for this to be replicated in other circumstances make it likely that frontiers themselves don't do this and the theorist in question was suffering from a nasty case of American exceptionalism.

EDIT: And not to put too fine a point on it, but American history hasn't been especially liberal for non-whites. I'd expect such an oversight from a nineteenth century historian but this is not the nineteenth century.

You act as if this is unique to American (or White European) history! Bantus in Africa, around the same time as European globe-spanning conquests were migrating, conquering, and displacing other peoples. The reason the Khoisans are in the worst parts of southern Africa is not the work of the White man, but of the Bantus. Which the Bantus entered what is now South Africa at the same time as the White man as well, they were just as bad to the native Africans there as the Whites were. The Haudenosaunee pretty much depopulated what would later be the Northwest Territories under the US. The Aztecs, Incas, many more were just as homicidal against neighbors. Ever hear of the Mongols? The ultimate cause of Afghanistan's problems today are the results of what the Mongols did, not what the British or Russians or Americans or Taliban have done. Humans are human and this idea that non-Whites are "closer to nature" or less war-like or have never gone after lebensraum is the biggest evil of historical "beliefs"; it is a stereotype that makes non-whites seem as if they are nothing more than animals swept along history which is not of their own making and have no free will. Lebensraum is a common human core, in our genetics; we never would have left east Africa to end up spanning the world if it wasn't. The wide-ranging geography of major language groups wouldn't exist if it wasn't in our deepest most common of our culture and genes. Our extermination/subjugation of other hominins like Neandertals and such was probably the first time our human species decided "those who are different, must either die or become us". And that belief is found throughout history across all cultures.
 
You act as if this is unique to American (or White European) history! Bantus in Africa, around the same time as European globe-spanning conquests were migrating, conquering, and displacing other peoples. The reason the Khoisans are in the worst parts of southern Africa is not the work of the White man, but of the Bantus. Which the Bantus entered what is now South Africa at the same time as the White man as well, they were just as bad to the native Africans there as the Whites were. The Haudenosaunee pretty much depopulated what would later be the Northwest Territories under the US. The Aztecs, Incas, many more were just as homicidal against neighbors. Ever hear of the Mongols? The ultimate cause of Afghanistan's problems today are the results of what the Mongols did, not what the British or Russians or Americans or Taliban have done. Humans are human and this idea that non-Whites are "closer to nature" or less war-like or have never gone after lebensraum is the biggest evil of historical "beliefs"; it is a stereotype that makes non-whites seem as if they are nothing more than animals swept along history which is not of their own making and have no free will. Lebensraum is a common human core, in our genetics; we never would have left east Africa to end up spanning the world if it wasn't. The wide-ranging geography of major language groups wouldn't exist if it wasn't in our deepest most common of our culture and genes. Our extermination/subjugation of other hominins like Neandertals and such was probably the first time our human species decided "those who are different, must either die or become us". And that belief is found throughout history across all cultures.

I agree with you that this wasn't unique, although this is also a strike against the frontier thesis: if lots of groups have expanded into new land without becoming liberal, this pretty strongly suggests that having land to expand into isn't a cause of liberalism.
 
To be fair to the Bantu, they had pushed the Khoi-San (who are more closely related to Eurasians than other Africans, apparently, so think on that racial-essentialists*) to the places that the Bantu agricultural package couldn't exploit (and it's remarkably plastic, they went 'the wrong way' in their expansion by Jaredian theory). The Dutch pushed them off the places that their Mediterranean agricultural package could exploit. I believe this is source of the myth that the places inhabited by white people in Southern Africa were actually completely uninhabited prior to this, they so quickly displaced the Khoi-San, who were already under pressure, that there was no great cultural memory of a vicious fight against the natives, as in the USA. And the aftermath seemed to prove this theory, as the settlers were in the best land for their package, with no evidence of cultivation before them, the Bantu were in decent land for their package, and the Khoi-San were on the marginal land in between.

The myth that North America was uninhabited before Europeans is far less common, and there is no equivalent for South or Latin America, but the myth that South Africa was uninhabited, and that the currently populous parts of Australia were uninhabited, well, I encounter these almost every time I delve into the ch0ns for a history discussion.


Having land to expand into is not a cause of or for liberalism (the only land available for this experiment is hard to colonize, so we can't really know); but the side-effect of this massive redistribution of wealth, if the policies around it are just right, is that the distribution of capital more widely among the population, having the overall effect of making society more liberal. So you have the contradiction where societies founded on what modern people would call the worst kinds of ethnic cleansing exhibit the most humanitarian ideologies and policies; they can now afford it.

It's not the state expanding into previously stateless or annexed land that makes the difference, it's who gets to exploit this 'new' land. If it's the same people who own the land in the old country, the settlement is a conservative influence; if it's a cross-section of the people in the old country, the settlement is a liberal influence.

Any time I hear the old chestnut 'on the shoulders of giants' I mentally replace 'shoulders' with 'corpses'.


*Someone tell me the better term for this; the idea that there is some essential element of 'whiteness' or 'blackness' that preserves through the generations, and which is indicated by, but is not identical to, the genetics of the individuals under question. If I say 'blood purity' it makes me sound too much like a bad guy from an Indiana Jones movie.
 
You act as if this is unique to American (or White European) history! Bantus in Africa, around the same time as European globe-spanning conquests were migrating, conquering, and displacing other peoples. The reason the Khoisans are in the worst parts of southern Africa is not the work of the White man, but of the Bantus. Which the Bantus entered what is now South Africa at the same time as the White man as well, they were just as bad to the native Africans there as the Whites were. The Haudenosaunee pretty much depopulated what would later be the Northwest Territories under the US. The Aztecs, Incas, many more were just as homicidal against neighbors. Ever hear of the Mongols? The ultimate cause of Afghanistan's problems today are the results of what the Mongols did, not what the British or Russians or Americans or Taliban have done. Humans are human and this idea that non-Whites are "closer to nature" or less war-like or have never gone after lebensraum is the biggest evil of historical "beliefs"; it is a stereotype that makes non-whites seem as if they are nothing more than animals swept along history which is not of their own making and have no free will. Lebensraum is a common human core, in our genetics; we never would have left east Africa to end up spanning the world if it wasn't. The wide-ranging geography of major language groups wouldn't exist if it wasn't in our deepest most common of our culture and genes. Our extermination/subjugation of other hominins like Neandertals and such was probably the first time our human species decided "those who are different, must either die or become us". And that belief is found throughout history across all cultures.

How many of those other cultures and peoples you mentioned claimed to be the "city on a hill"? Or claimed to be exceptional to the point that they posess a superior morality that entitles them to intervene in any other country at will? I mean we're discussing a theory about why America is so awesome, ffs!

So I'm sorry, but no, America is not equal to those countries for the simple reason that it claims to be so much better. When we're not discussing the roots of American epicness, maybe we can have that strawman conversation of yours.

Having land to expand into is not a cause of or for liberalism (the only land available for this experiment is hard to colonize, so we can't really know); but the side-effect of this massive redistribution of wealth, if the policies around it are just right, is that the distribution of capital more widely among the population, having the overall effect of making society more liberal. So you have the contradiction where societies founded on what modern people would call the worst kinds of ethnic cleansing exhibit the most humanitarian ideologies and policies; they can now afford it.

It's not the state expanding into previously stateless or annexed land that makes the difference, it's who gets to exploit this 'new' land. If it's the same people who own the land in the old country, the settlement is a conservative influence; if it's a cross-section of the people in the old country, the settlement is a liberal influence.

Any time I hear the old chestnut 'on the shoulders of giants' I mentally replace 'shoulders' with 'corpses'.

What he said
 
From my recent reading on the convict settlement of Australia I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss to social aspects of a Frontier Settler society. Convicts were quite clever in using the system as it stood in New South Wales to get amenable employment while serving their sentences and land grants once emancipated. Without being hemmed in by the structures of Britain a large percentage of convicts became respectable people with responsible positions in the Colony and it wasn't long before they and their descendants were disguising their convict past to increase their respectability. Only about 25% of NSW convicts were punished after arriving at the Colony, the rest tended to go along to get along and quietly make their way in the world, which is a big change from being a convicted criminal often with quite a long rap sheet.
 
How many of those other cultures and peoples you mentioned claimed to be the "city on a hill"? Or claimed to be exceptional to the point that they posess a superior morality that entitles them to intervene in any other country at will? I mean we're discussing a theory about why America is so awesome, ffs!

So I'm sorry, but no, America is not equal to those countries for the simple reason that it claims to be so much better. When we're not discussing the roots of American epicness, maybe we can have that strawman conversation of yours.



What he said

I'm not justifying white people's actions, I'm putting them in historical context that they are human and no different than the actions of every other ethnic and racial group in the aorld. For you to single them out (I am not white so I use them) is to put down the rest of humanity. Just as when people say "but native Americans used every part of the buffalo" no, they didn't use every part of every buffalo. Prior to horses the natives would start giant savannahs fires and burn Sq miles of land to force giant herds to run off a cliff. And left behind would be lots of meat and wasted animals that were not used. Humans are humans. Wasteful and war like and xenophobic. To point out whites or just Americans as different and uniquely evil is just as wrong and stupid as those you complain about who say America is "better". There is only history and science and facts. No judgements.
 
I'm not justifying white people's actions, I'm putting them in historical context that they are human and no different than the actions of every other ethnic and racial group in the aorld. For you to single them out (I am not white so I use them) is to put down the rest of humanity. Just as when people say "but native Americans used every part of the buffalo" no, they didn't use every part of every buffalo. Prior to horses the natives would start giant savannahs fires and burn Sq miles of land to force giant herds to run off a cliff. And left behind would be lots of meat and wasted animals that were not used. Humans are humans. Wasteful and war like and xenophobic. To point out whites or just Americans as different and uniquely evil is just as wrong and stupid as those you complain about who say America is "better". There is only history and science and facts. No judgements.

And I'm not disagreeing with that. I have a problem with anyone who says America is uniquely good or bad just as I have a problem with anyone who romanticises minority ethnic groups to the point of condescension. But on the subject of this particular theory, I see a nineteenth century man making some nationalistic proclamations about America's inherent awesomeness and I called that out.

Where I disagree, however, is on the subject of judgements. I think we can and should make moral judgements about history. How else can we learn? Unless we can call out our ancestors and say, "No, what you did was wrong. We should do better," how can we improve as a species? Even to call something a mistake is a judgement. What we shouldn't do is judge people. Actions and ideas absolutely deserve such scrutiny.
 
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