Category: History Essay Examples
See our collection of history essay examples. These example essays are to help you understanding how to write a history essay. History is a fascinating puzzle with both personal and cultural significance. The past informs our lives, ideas, and expectations. Historians study the past to figure out what happened and how specific events and cultural developments affected individuals and societies. Also, see our list of history essay topics to find the one that interests you.
Although his contributions to the development of modern Communist China are overshadowed by those of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the leader of both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the country, Lin Biao nevertheless played an important role. Lin Biao was born in Wuhan, China, in 1908. The son …
Since 1950, vast numbers of new books have been published, and many from before 1950 have been republished as new editions, facsimiles of old editions, and, in recent years, as digital books. From the 1970s, there was also the emergence of what became known as “airport fiction,” describing …
Li Zongren (Li Tsung-jen) was an important military and political leader of Guangxi (Kwangsi) Province, along with Bai Chongxi (Pai Chung-hsi), between 1925 and 1949. He joined the Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist Party), founded by Sun Yat-sen, and commanded the Seventh Army; it played an important part in …
Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of the independent Republic of the Congo. Born in Kasai Province in the eastern Congo, he came from a small tribe or ethnic group—the Batatele. This background was to handicap him in future dealings with rivals who came from major tribal …
Macao (or Macau) is a tiny peninsula of eight square miles located 40 miles west of Hong Kong on the southern China coast. It became a Portuguese settlement and trading center in 1557; Portugal paid the Chinese government rent for the land until 1849, after which it became …
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is the daughter of former Philippine president Diosdado Macapagal. When she ascended to the presidency in January 2001, Arroyo joined the small group of female Asian leaders who had followed in their fathers’ footsteps to assume prominent political positions in their respective countries. An economist by …
Archbishop Makarios was born in the village of Panayia in the Paphos district of Cyprus on August 13, 1913, and died on August 3, 1977. Makarios, meaning blessed, was the name chosen by Mikhalis Khristodoulou Mouskos when he was ordained as a deacon in 1938. After being ordained, …
The modern nation of Malaysia came to being at one minute past midnight on September 16, 1963, and within weeks was embroiled in controversy. Its formation was not looked upon kindly by its neighbor Indonesia, and soon scores of “spontaneous” demonstrations filled the streets of Jakarta as angry …
The militant African-American leader was born Malcolm Little, later taking the Muslim name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. His life story, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, was published posthumously in 1965, making him a hero among African Americans. Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. His …
Nelson Mandela was considered by many to be the most respected world leader alive in the early 21st century. During the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, he remained embittered by a regime that offered him only indignity and poverty. His story cannot be separated from that …
A leading spokesperson for Third World socialist movements and social justice for the world’s downtrodden and underprivileged, Michael Norman Manley dominated Jamaican politics from the time of his father’s death in 1969 until his retirement from politics in 1992. Serving three terms as prime minister (1972–76, 1976–80, and …
Although popularly elected at first, Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, transformed the Philippines into a police state during the early 1970s. With the financial and political backing of the United States, which valued their strong anticommunist policies, the Marcoses ruled for 15 years before being forced from …
Thurgood Marshall was special counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a U.S. Supreme Court justice during the 20th-century Civil Rights movement of the United States. Marshall is lionized for his argument before the Supreme Court in the case Brown v. Board …
World War II decimated Europe’s infrastructure and economy, leaving bombed and gutted buildings, destroyed factories and businesses, and high unemployment. Hit heaviest were areas of industrial production and transportation. With Europe debt-ridden and financial reserves depleted by the war, the problems could not be easily fixed. Both U.S. …
The term McCarthyism defined a period of U.S. history during the 1950s when there was intense concern about Communist infiltration of American society. It took its name from U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, who was involved in accusing many people of being Communist or having …
Known for most of her life as Goldie Mabovitch, Golda Meir spent her formative years in Kiev, Ukraine, where pogroms and anti-Semitism plagued her life. Golda’s only memories of this time were of being afraid, hungry, and cold. Tired of their lives in Kiev, the Mabovitch family moved …
Catapulted to international fame by her moving testimonial, I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983), Rigoberta Menchú Tum was born on January 9, 1959, to a poor family of Quiché-Maya Guatemalan Indians, among the largest of Guatemala’s 26 indigenous ethno-linguistic groups. Her gripping narrative of her life, her community, and their …
Among the principal causes of the Mexican revolution (1910–20) were the country’s highly unequal landowning patterns and growing landlessness among the rural majority, especially during the regime of dictator Porfirio Díaz (1876–1910). The 1917 constitution, which has governed Mexico since that time, included among its provisions several articles …
Mobutu Sese Seko, a member of the Ngbandi ethnic group, was born in Lisala, Belgian Congo, in 1930. After receiving a Catholic education from white missionaries, he began his public life by serving in the Belgian Colonial Army. He was a colonel by 1960 and appointed chief of …
The bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, served as the most prominent example of effective grassroots activism within the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s, while also demonstrating the limits of such activism in the absence of support from the federal government. The boycott centered on the Jim Crow …
