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Late Nineteenth Century: Contrast To The American West

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Exam Paper 1 In what ways did the American West of the late nineteenth century represent a contrast to the East? In what ways did the two regions resemble each other? The contrasts between the American West and East in the nineteenth century range from a new start to the adventure of the living in the Wild West. The east had become overcrowded and did not allow much opportunity for people of lesser wealth. “In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner gave a celebrated lecture, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in which he argued that on the western frontier the distinctive qualities of American culture were forged: individual freedom, political democracy, and economic mobility. The West, he added, acted as a “safety …show more content…

The east was full of diverse cultures and new ideas, the west had many cultures that gave it diversity as well. The east was filled with large metropolises and businesses. The west was a wide open range metropolis that had ranches that could reach thousands of acres and enough cattle to feel a moderate city. So while the east was full of people making money for people the west too was full of people making money for people. The diverse cultures where basically the same. The immigrants tired of slaving for big corporations in the east moved west and brought their cultures with them. The west had cultures from all over the globe because the ones that moved out west for the opportunities that the west presented also brought family members that hadn’t even been to this country yet. The east at times was just as scary as the west with gangsters, and mobsters, and rich powerful politicians. You could just as easily disappear in New York as you could in San Francisco. The similarities between the east and west didn’t stop there, with the introduction of the railroad the west became a booming place for business. A lot of smart business men saw this potential and jumped on it just as they had building huge manufacturing plants on the east coast they bought up land to create mega ranches that eventually put a lot of the smaller farms out of

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