ABSTRACT
The concept of the frontier has recently become re-energized and extended as a frame for studying human-environment interactions in a global context. Frederick Jackson Turner first brought the notion of the frontier into academic discussion with his 1893 address, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1994), spawning an ongoing debate concerning the significance of the frontier for constituting the distinctively American brand of free enterprise and the laissez-faire polity that sustained it. Although some of Turner’s insights, such as the succession of different sorts of frontiers in any one region, have remained valuable, his emphasis upon American exceptionalism (Geiger 2008a, 77)―the uniqueness of the American experience of the frontier―has hindered attempts to generalize this notion to other regions, as did his concentration upon the “heroic” plainsmen with the consequent neglect of the indigenous peoples whose land was occupied by them.
