US History A
Unit 12: Age of Empire Portfolio
Portfolio instructions:
1. Read & analyze the primary sources below. Look for phrases that highlight
... [Show More] the
arguments for & against imperialism that are being made. Some key phrases have
already been highlighted for you.
2. Using the information from these sources, fill out the 2-column chart located at the
bottom of this document. The main ideas have already been given to you. What you
need to do is explain each main idea – provide an explanation of each (in your own
words), & provide examples by quoting the primary documents provided.
3. Submit your completed 2-column chart.
Pro-Imperialist Points of View
“The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. The works of
travelers along each frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common traits, and
these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of their origin,
even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American
intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness
and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that
masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that
restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal
that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—these are traits of the frontier, or
traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet
of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for
opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant
expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them. He would be a
rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely
ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a
people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never
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again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of
custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The stubborn
American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited
ways of doing things are also there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each
frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the
past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its
ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea
was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new
institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United
States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the
discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier
has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.
—Frederick Jackson Turner, from The Frontier in American History [Show Less]