American Space\/American Place: Geographies of the Contemporary United States <\/a> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=leithartcom-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0415935326\")
, John Agnew and Joanne Sharp describe the context and import of Frederick Jackson Turner\u2019s famed \u201cFrontier Thesis.\u201d Turner wrote in the context of the downturn of the 1890s, and his argument was partly about the future of American expansion and business. America would have to continue to expand \u201cin order to lower unemployment, reintegrate American labor into the American Dream and thus reduce the appeal of subversive politics.\u201d With the close of a terrestrial frontier, America would have to look elsewhere: \u201cTurner insisted upon the need for an end to American isolationism . . . and for the development of \u2018a vigorous foreign policy . . . and for the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries\u2019\u201d (88). <\/p>\n Americans were ready for Turner\u2019s justification of a leading role on the global stage: <\/p>\n
\u201cTo extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean had always seemed too geographically neat not to be the product of fate or the hand of Providence.\u201d Given their nation\u2019s birth in an anti-colonial revolt, however, Americans were ambivalent about territorial conquest. Their \u201ccolonialism\u201d had to take a more ideological and economic form: \u201cAmerican investors would provide needed capital. American trade would bring sophisticated American goods. American reform would bring new institutions and practices and break down barriers of caste and creed. In other words, America would bring progress as attested to by America\u2019s own experience of developing a consumerist economy\u201d (89). <\/p>\n
The ideology was Americanism: \u201cThere was a mission, contentious but unmistakable, to spread American values. Pushing American ways of economic and political organization was more than simply a mechanism for increasing consumption of American products.\u201d It did increase the sale of American products \u201clater epitomized in the global audiences for MTV, the near-universal popularity of Coca-Cola, and the global consumption of McDonald\u2019s hamburgers.\u201d But it was always about more than making a buck. Americans wanted to make a buck, and spread American idealism at the same time. <\/p>\n
From this effort emerged \u201ca new pattern of foreign direct investment designed to gain access to foreign markets for large firms.\u201d It was not, in America\u2019s view, for her leaders to \u201cpreach against European territorial colonialism as American businesses created a whole new phenomenon of internationalized production.\u201d American business was \u201claying the groundwork for the globalization of production\u201d (89). <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In their contribution to American Space\/American Place: Geographies of the Contemporary United States , John Agnew and Joanne Sharp describe the context and import of Frederick Jackson Turner\u2019s famed \u201cFrontier Thesis.\u201d Turner wrote in the context of the downturn of the 1890s, and his argument was partly about the future of American expansion and business. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,53,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-religion","category-economics","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n
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