Westward Expansion Analysis

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westward expansion was and always will be a core part of America’s foundation. This was always the case even before the USA had stretched from coast to coast. The concept of the USA’s manifest destiny was a deep rooted one even before 1763, although the questions were not asked why they should or if it was even right to follow in the first place? However this fundamental part of the United State did not only act as a unanimous guiding spirit. Many negative consequences wrought by westward expansion had unimaginable impact in direct causation of the events that shaped the face of the United States; the effects of some these still lingers in USA today.
The debate over whether westward expansion and it’s legacy was a stabilising or ruinous dogma to
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Citing Turner’s thesis as a representation of the “old west view” that is preoccupied with focusing on the triumphs of the white male in this uncharted territory, forgetting to consider the impact of Women, Native Americans or the multicultural society of Mexican-Americans. Her argument puts forward the suggestion that westward expansion does not follow the same major turning points as suggested by “old west” historians, but rather begins in the “understanding of the many different groups of Indian Americans who have inhabited the land for centuries.” This implies her views that the ‘colonising’ of the west was not a utilitarian act that benefited all, but in fact the Frontier “had been won for the benefit of a wealthy democratic nation-state.” Thus the interpretation states a far less Triumphalist view of westward expansion, creating some stability perhaps for the richer white male, but uprooting and fracturing societies for other groups, in which the ‘new frontier’ had already been their home. This is in opposition to the romanticised Old West, with infinite expanses and unlimited possibility to make a “man of yourself” that Turner and many others