The "new western history" movement emerged among professional historians in the 1980s, a belated manifestation of the 1970s "new social history" movement. The new western historians recast the study of American frontier history by focusing on race, class, gender, and environment in the trans-Mississippi West. The movement is best known through the work of Patricia Nelson Limerick

Patricia Nelson Limerick

Patricia Nelson Limerick is an American historian, considered to be one of the leading historians of the American West. She was born and raised in Banning, California....

, Richard White

Richard White (historian)

Richard White is an American historian, a past President of the Organization of American Historians, and the author of influential books on the American West, Native American history, and environmental history...

, William Cronon

William Cronon

William 'Bill' Cronon is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison...

, and Donald Worster

Donald Worster

Donald Worster is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas. He is considered one of the founders of, and leading figures in, the field of environmental history; and in 2009, he was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.-Education:Worster...

. The philosophy and historiography of the new western historians is discussed thoroughly and supportively in Patricia Nelson Limerick, Clyde Milner II, and Charles E. Rankin, eds., Trails: Toward A New Western History. An overview of the New Western History is available in Clyde Milner, et al., The Oxford History of the American West. The movement has been thoroughly critiqued by historian Michael Allen

Michael Allen (historian)

Michael Allen is an American historian. He is a professor of history and American studies at the University of Washington Tacoma, book-review editor for Pacific Northwest Quarterly and president of the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. He served in the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam War...

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Like the new social historians, new western historians made important contributions. By focusing on race, class, gender, environment, they added to the work of older Border

Border

Borders define geographic boundaries of political entities or legal jurisdictions, such as governments, sovereign states, federated states and other subnational entities. Some borders—such as a state's internal administrative borders, or inter-state borders within the Schengen Area—are open and...

lands scholars of Hispanic studies, furthered the understanding of American Indians and frontier women, and worked the fertile ground of twentieth-century western history.

Frontier history did not show the impact of the new social history until over a decade after most other historical fields. The reason for the lag is that frontier history, from its inception in Frederick Jackson Turner

Frederick Jackson Turner

Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", whose ideas are referred to as the Frontier Thesis. He is also known for his theories of geographical sectionalism...

’s 1893 "Frontier Thesis

Frontier Thesis

The Frontier Thesis, also referred to as the Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that the origin of the distinctive egalitarian, democratic, aggressive, and innovative features of the American character has been the American frontier experience...

" paper, had always been home to a strong school of non-Marxist economic determinists

Economic determinism

Economic determinism is the theory which attributes primacy to the economic structure over politics in the development of human history. It is usually associated with the theories of Karl Marx, although many Marxist thinkers have dismissed plain and unilateral economic determinism as a form of...

(“Progressives”). These “old” western historians had addressed multiethnic and environmental issues on the Colonial, trans-Appalachian, and trans-Mississippi frontiers. Although they left much work undone, these Progressives planted the fields the new western historians later harvested.