NARRATOR:Listen to part of a lecture in a United States History class.

旁白：听一段美国历史课的讲座。

FEMALE PROFESSOR:I’d like to talk today, about, about an important paradigm in the history of the United States, and how it came to be changed upon a second look.

女教授：今天我想谈谈美国历史上的一个重要范式，以及它是如何重新审视的。

In 1893, an eminent American historian by the name of Frederick Jackson Turner delivered a lecture at the American Historical Association.

1893年，美国著名历史学家弗雷德里克·杰克逊·特纳 (Frederick Jackson Turner) 在美国历史协会发表演讲。

And, uh, his lecture was entitled The Significance of the Frontier in American History.

他的演讲题目是——边疆在美国历史上的意义。

Now, when he was talking about the frontier, he was referring to the part of the American West that wasn’t yet settled.

当谈到边境时，他指的是美国西部尚未定居的部分。

The point Turner made in his lecture was that the 1890 U.S. census had provided new data about settlement, and those data showed, showed that, well, there was no longer a frontier.

他在演讲中指出，1890 年的美国人口普查提供了有关定居点的新数据，而这些数据表明，不再有边界。

This disappearance of the frontier seemed, to him, tremendously significant and prompted him to-to gather ideas about how the frontier might’ve shaped American history and the American character.

在他看来，边境的消失有着重大意义，并促使他收集有关边境可能塑造美国历史和性格的方式。

Turner asserted that the existence of a frontier with cheap or, or virtually free land for the taking, available for individuals to sort of try their luck tended to promote certain ideals that were central to the American character.

特纳断言，边界的存在提供了更便宜或几乎免费的土地，可供个人尝试碰运气，这往往会促进某些关于美国性格的重要观点的形成。

Ideals of economic self-sufficiency, individualism, political independence, small town democracy, suspicion of large government, things like that.

经济上自给自足、个人主义、政治独立，小镇民主，怀疑大政府，诸如此类的观点。

He saw these things being really shaped by the economic and social conditions of the frontier.

他认为这些东西真正受到边境经济和社会条件的影响。

And for Turner, the end of the frontier in 1890 meant the end of this particular era of American character, and that Americans would become less individualistic, less independent-minded.

对特纳来说，1890 年边境的终结意味着这个美国特色时代的终结，美国人将变得不那么个人主义，不那么独立。

And the frontier thesis was pretty much the accepted paradigm of the history of the American West until the 1970s.

直到 1970年代，这个关于边境的看法几乎是美国西部历史公认的范式。

Then for a variety of reasons historians studying the American West began to question this thesis, and ultimately many of them ended up pretty much turning it on its head.

然后，由于各种原因，研究美国西部的历史学家开始质疑这个论点，最终他们中的许多人最终几乎跟这一观点唱反调。

And this is what fascinates me about this debate, the change that happened was not so much a matter of people finding new evidence that hadn’t been available to Turner, it was more a question of people looking at the same evidence with a different eye, with different emphases.

这就是这场辩论让我着迷的地方，变化的发生并不是因为人们找到了特纳没有得到的新证据，这更多是因为人们用不同的眼光、不同的重点来看待相同的证据。

There are two main areas of challenge to Turner that arose in what’s been called the New Western History.

在所谓的新西部历史中，特纳面临两个主要方面的挑战。

One was that Turner tended to overemphasize the importance of Americans of European descent on the Western frontier.

一是特纳倾向于过分强调欧洲血统的美国人在西部边境的重要性。

This was somewhat of an, of an unconscious bias on his part, but, you know, if you looked at Turner’s picture of the frontier, it was basically white men from Europe who set the tone and defined the culture.

这在某种程度上是他潜意识里的偏见，但要知道，如果看看他对边境的看法，基本上是来自欧洲的白人为文化定下了基调，

Um, New Western Historians took another look at the West and realized that it was actually a pretty culturally diverse place.

新的西部历史学家重新审视了西部，意识到那里实际上是文化很多元化。

You had, obviously, American Indians, Mexicans, Chinese, and others.

很明显，那里有美洲印第安人、墨西哥人、中国人等等。

So, so the cultural uniformity of the frontier that Turner saw, the New Western Historians look at it and, and see something very, very different.

所以，特纳看到的边疆的文化统一性，而新的西部历史学家看到了非常不同的东西。

The other main area of challenge by the New Western Historians was that Turner really, in their view, underestimated the role of the federal government and large cor-corporations in shaping the economic life of the frontier.

新西部历史学家挑战特纳的另一个主要领方面是，特纳确实低估了联邦政府和大公司在塑造边境经济生活中的作用。

I mean, just as a for-instance, the federal government to this day is the largest land owner west of the Mississippi River.

好比说，迄今为止联邦政府仍是密西西比河以西最大的土地所有者。

And people’s lives, when they got to the frontier, were, were really dictated by market forces beyond, pretty much beyond their control.

当人们到达边境时，他们的生活实际上是由市场力量决定的，生活并不受他们自己的控制。

You know, you grew wheat, you exported it to Europe, and whether you prospered or not depended at least partly on the price of wheat,which you had relatively little control over.

种植小麦，出口到欧洲，致富与否至少部分取决于小麦价格，而你并不能控制小麦价格。

Uh, so, these two main areas of challenge result in a very different picture of the Western frontier.

因此，这两个主要的挑战领域带来了西部边境的一幅截然不同的画面。

The New Western Historians see a culturally diverse place, a place where people weren’t really in charge of their destiny, even before the end of the frontier.

新西部历史学家看到了一个文化多元化的地方，一个即使在边境扩张结束之前人们还没有真正掌握自己命运的地方。

People are, you know, their destinies were controlled by large impersonal forces, federal policy, changes in the prices of agricultural products, things like that.

人们的命运被巨大的非个人力量控制，联邦政策改变农产品价格，诸如此类。

For Turner, the end of the availability of cheap land marks a crucial change in United States history.

对于特纳来说，供应廉价土地的终结标志着美国历史上的一个关键变化。

But for the New Western Historians it’s really more of the same, a, a continuation of the same kind of conflicts that had gone on in the days before the so-called closing of the frontier.

但对于新西部历史学家来说，这实际上更像是一种延续，在所谓边境关闭之前发生的就有的冲突，它们延续了下来。

So, again, as I say it’s so interesting because it’s a case of a shift in perception rather than a shift in the underlying evidence that, that guided the initial perception.

回过头来，正如我所说，这个故事很有趣，因为它是一个感知转变的案例，而不是引导最初认知的基础证据的转变。