Finding the Boundaries of the American Midwest

The founding father of Midwestern history, Frederick Jackson Turner, is popularly remembered for his essay about the influence of the frontier in American history, but his deeper interest was in the regions which developed after the frontier era passed. Writing a century ago, Turner opined that regional "self-consciousness and sensitiveness is likely to be increased as time goes on and crystallized sections feel the full influence of their geographic peculiarities." The United States was always a nation of varied regions, which is why agreeing to a national constitutional system was so difficult and maintaining it remains similarly complicated. The once-tight divisions between American regions have been eroded by post-Civil War nationalism, mass culture, and the living of seemingly placeless lives in the internet era. But regions are far from gone, as recent survey work sponsored by Middle West Review has revealed. Turner was right about their perpetuation. So it is wise to return to Turner's work on regions and geography and to reverse what Michael Steiner has described as the "stock dismissal of the major portion of our most influential historian's work."