ry least, it is a chicken-and-egg question, but it seems that the latter argument is the accurate one. In this same vein, Jameson cites the end of primogeniture as a social-revolutionary aspect of the war. To illustrate the inaccuracy of this interpretation, one need only mention that primogeniture was abolished in Britain over time without a war at all. It seems that the trend away from primogeniture was already afoot in the British world (of which the colonists were a part, and of which even in 1776 most wished to remain). War or no war, primogeniture would almost certainly have receded, as it did. In addition, Jameson claims that the frontier unleashed a revolution. His view is that the frontier itself was in some way responsible for revolutionary attitudes and thoughts, as if the land itself changed the way that the residents thought. For the sake of brevity, let us say only that Turner’s frontier thesis is a much more convincing picture of American history than is Jameson’s. In short, Turner argues that the frontier throughout American history has attracted and promoted certain types of people and certain types of behavior. Jameson implies that the frontier made revolutionaries, and that when the war was over, they stopped being revolutionary. Turner makes the point from the opposite pole: the frontier, by its very nature, provided an environment where people who would otherwise have been misfits and malcontents could flourish and achieve a modicum of what would then certainly have been termed “respectability.” Jameson’s argument virtually anthropomorphizes the frontier, while Turner casts the region in a more proper role: that of a passive agent. Third, Jameson discusses business and industry. He discusses how the war caused the Agricultural Revolution to be visited upon the Americas. In Europe, where land was at a premium, peasants had had to adopt new methods in order to survive their growing popula...
