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.
Julius Kambarge Nyerere, born in 1922, attended a mission school in Tanganyika, Makerere University College in Tanganyika, and the University of Edinburgh. He returned to teach at a Roman Catholic school near Dar es Salaam and was known as Mwalimu, or teacher. In 1954 he organized the Tanganyika …
One of the goals of Baron Pierre de Coubertin—founder of the modern Olympic Games and organizer of the first modern games in 1896—was to encourage international understanding through sports, and help to create a more peaceful world. But after 50 years and two world wars—the bloodiest and most …
The Organization of American States (OAS) was founded on April 30, 1948, in Bogotá, Colombia, by 21 member states. Successor organization to the Pan-American Union (1889–1947) and retooled to correspond to the changed security environment of the post–World War II era, the OAS was founded as a regional …
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was established in 1960. Its first meeting was held in 1961, and, beginning in 1965, it was headquartered in Vienna. The charter members included Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Abd Allah al-Tariki, the Saudi director of petroleum affairs, played …
The Pakistan People’s Party was founded by Berkeley and Oxford-educated politician and lawyer Zulfikar Bhutto. During the presidency of General Ayub Khan, Bhutto served as a cabinet member and eventually as foreign minister. Ayub went to war with India over Kashmir in 1965, and eventually, with the intervention …
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established in 1964 under Ahmed Shukairy to represent Palestinian national demands for self-determination. In 1964 the Palestine National Council (PNC, or parliament) of 350 representatives met in East Jerusalem and voted on the Palestine National Charter, or declaration of independence, that declared …
Park Chung Hee became president of South Korea after leading a military junta that instigated a coup in 1963. He held this position until his death in 1979. Born Pak Chong-hui in 1917 in the farming village of Sonsan in southeastern Korea, Park was the youngest of seven …
The term Pathet Lao (land of Lao) is generally used to describe the communist movement of Laos that began in 1945 and continued until 1975, when Laos became communist. It was one of three groups active in the politics of Laos, the other two being the Royal Lao …
Leader of Bolivia’s Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionaria, or MNR) and a leading figure in the Bolivian revolution, Victor Paz Estenssoro was elected to the presidency four times and played a major role in Bolivia’s 20th century history. His overall political trajectory over four decades can be …
The Peace Corps started in 1960 as part of U.S. efforts to win the cold war and as an attempt to better the lives of people in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It is the brainchild of President John F. Kennedy. The Peace Corps has sent more than …
Subject of what many consider the most powerful political mythology in the modern history of Argentina— that of Peronismo (Peronism)—Juan Domingo Perón remains, despite his eminently public life, a deeply enigmatic figure—at once a populist, a man of the people, a friend of the working class, a dictator, …
A popular, spontaneous, nonviolent, and distinctly religious movement restored democracy to the Philippines, on February 22–25, 1986. After nearly 400 years of colonization by Spain and the United States of America in the first half of the 20th century, the Philippines enjoyed a democratic form of government until …
President and dictator of Chile from the bloody overthrow of democratically elected Marxist president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, until his resignation from the presidency in March 1990, General Augusto Pinochet (pee-noh-CHET) ranks among the most controversial figures in modern Chilean history. The years of his rule …
Poland was the most rebellious of the Soviet-bloc countries, with mass protests in 1956, 1968, 1970–71, 1976, and 1980–81. The society was heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, and the memory of the Polish pope, John Paul II, remains very strong. After the political changes of 1990, Poland …
Pol Pot (born Sar Saloth) came from a rather wealthy peasant family in the central Cambodian Kampong Thum Province. Through family connections to the Cambodian Royal Court, he was able to gain access to a formal education in both Cambodia and France. He was not the best student …
Portugal has been a land of paradoxes. For much of the 20th century, it was simultaneously a weak, agrarian, poverty-stricken, isolated state on the periphery of Europe and the seat of a vast colonial empire. It had used an alliance with Britain to sustain this paradox for a …
Czechoslovakia became fully communist in February 1948 and was a member of both the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON, the Soviet counterpart to the Marshall Plan). As such, it had very close ties to the Soviet Union, politically as well as economically. During …
The framers of the U.S. Constitution sought to check presidential power by creating a process for Congress to remove the president for reasons of “treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors.” No president has ever been removed from office in this fashion, but two presidents in the second …
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad on October 7, 1952, and was very much a product of the Soviet system. His family background was ordinary and reflected the hardships of postwar Soviet life. Putin applied himself to improving his position in the Soviet order and looked, once …
Muammar Qaddafi was born in the desert region of Sidra (Sirte), Libya, in 1942. He was the youngest child from a nomadic Bedouin family. Qaddafi attended the Sebha preparatory school in Fezzan, where he formed a secret society, the Free Officers, patterned on Gamal Abdel Nasser’s group in …
