ndamentally different from the society from which the frontiersmen’s progenitors had sprung; it is of course because those progenitors were different from their fellows that they came across the ocean in the first place. Third, the frontier developed home markets for the growing---though still small---colonial industrial base, lessening the importance of the triangular trade. Fourth, non-English settlers had caused an unintended and at first informal breach with the mother country that later fueled separatist sentiment; it is no great thing in the thick of rebellion to forget that the war was at first a war for the rights of Englishmen when one is not an Englishman in the first place. Fifth, the frontier by its very nature reflected a contest between the privileged and the non-privileged; Turner maintains that this dichotomy was more in evidence outside New England and was more of a democratic revolution outside that region than inside (Turner 1920, 106-111). Of course, one is tempted to minimize, or even belittle this last observation by pointing out that the New Englanders provided the bulk of the troops for the rebel army... In any case, Turner’s arguments foreshadow those of another historian, J. Franklin Jameson. Both argue a geographical or quasi-geographical determinism. Both argue that the war was a revolution that resulted in greater democracy, though their definitions of democracy are rather broad. Before turning to Jameson, however, another work by Turner should be mentioned, entitled “The Significance of Sections in American History,” which was published in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression. This book is not exclusively about the American Revolution. Instead, it discusses several important factors in American history from a demographic perspective. Turner echoes his own frontier thesis in this work, citing instances in the West that shaped the character of the Revolution. The behavior of the...
