Civilization and its Discontents
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800-pound gorilla of American historiography in the century after it was first
presented, as well as simply offering a paradigm of historical understanding that
would remain immensely popular or often mahgned ever since.
In his paper and subsequent essays Turner espoused the notion that the key to
understanding the success of America as both a nation and a people lies in a number
of important issues, all hnked to a western expansion, or a continuously receding
frontier. This allowed for the movement of labor, capital, and a “return to primitive
conditions on a continually advancing frontier hne” with “new development in
that area” (Turner, 1). In Civilization, as well as in other Sid Meier games, these
notions of expansion and a resulting level of progress through economics and
technological advancement are often key elements. In Railroad Tycoon, for example,
the player must work to create a monopolistic enterprise that allows economic
control of this frontier. In Pirates, the player negotiates the edges of a similar
frontier in the colonial Caribbean, gamering economic and social advantages for
personal gain. Each of these Sid Meier games negotiates game play around and
through this American mythic structure, allowing players to become part of this
simulated Tumerian myth.
While it might then be possible to simply claim that Civilization presents a
Tumerian model of historical change and progress, and leave it at that, it is important
to note that Turner’s thesis wasn’t the actual birth of the idea. The frontier is a
concept with far deeper origins in the American mythological stmcture, and this
helps account for some of Civilization'^ continuing popularity. Indeed, while Turner
was perhaps the first historian to place significant emphasis on the notion of frontier
in this style, he did not create the mythic stmcture of American historiography, but
merely described it. As has been noted often since Turner, the concept of the frontier
was significant long before Turner declared it so. Slotkin {Regeneration), traces
the concept as far back at the 1600s in pre-American culture, noting that “narratives
of disco very... and colonization tracts” where present almost from the beginning
of American myth-making (18). The same mythological stmcture is inherent in
Civilization, where the player must colonize^ other areas, often supplanting other
people who are there, in order to prosper in the game. Further, unless those “other
people” happen to be part of a competing “civilization”"*they are simply represented
in the first two incarnations of Civilization as “barbarians” to be destroyed or
conquered. In Civilization III, they are called, instead, “minor states” but the effect
is the same.
For the player of Civilization, as for Turner, the frontier is that “meeting point
between savagery and civihzation” (Turner 18). Success, for Turner’s America
and C ivilization'players, is determined by moving that frontier ever more outward.
It is perhaps not all that surprising then that Sid Meier would follow up the success
of the original Civilization game with a similar narrative, based strictly on such