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.
Al-Qaeda (Arabic for “the base”) is a worldwide Sunni Islamist militant insurgent group. Founded by Osama bin Laden in 1988 in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is now dedicated to driving the United States out of the Middle East specifically and out of Muslim countries generally, to destroying Israel, and to …
Canadian history has been plagued by issues of national identity since 1763, when Britain conquered New France in the French and Indian War. Britain’s Québec Act of 1774 recognized the rights of French-speaking Roman Catholics. The British North America Act of 1867, the basis for Canada’s constitution, is …
Yitzhak Rabin was a key Israeli military and political leader. Born in Jerusalem in 1922, Rabin earned a degree from an agricultural college and joined the elite Palmach forces that fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He became chief of staff and led the army during the stunning …
The founding father of Bangladesh, Banga Bandhu (Friend of Banga) Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman, was born on March 17, 1920, in Tungipara village in the Faridpur district in erstwhile East Pakistan. He was the third child of Sheikh Luthfur Rahman and Sheikh Sahara Khatun. After the partition of India …
Sayyid Qutb was born in an Egyptian village in 1906. Although the family was poor, Qutb’s father was educated and was an early supporter of the Egyptian nationalist movement. As a boy Qutb attended the local religious school (kuttab), where he reputedly had memorized the Qu’ran before his …
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an actor who served two terms as the 33rd governor of California and later served two terms as the 40th president of the United States. Reagan’s presidency contributed to the end of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union and …
Syngman Rhee was the controversial, strongly anticommunist, and increasingly authoritarian first president of South Korea, serving from April 1948 until April 1960. He gained office through a popular election in 1948, led South Korea through the Korean War, and was reelected twice, although not without controversy, before being …
Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia, as it was known until 1980, is a landlocked nation of 13 million people occupying the plateau between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers, bordered by Zambia to the north, Botswana to the west, Mozambique to the east, and South Africa to the south. While the …
The landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade struck down state abortion laws as illegal because of their infringement on the privacy rights inherent in the U.S. Constitution. This case was the climax of a series of actions by doctors’ organizations, state legislatures, and women’s …
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accused of illegally giving information about U.S. atomic research to the Soviet Union. They were convicted of espionage on March 29, 1951, and executed on June 19, 1953. Their codefendant in the trial, Morton Sobell, received a 30year sentence. The trial was highly …
In the years after 1991 Russia experienced a revolution in the name of reform. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had been a one-party dictatorship that strove to control all aspects of life. Its collapse unleashed a host of social forces and triggered an array of experiments as …
Rwanda and Burundi were, until World War I, occupied by the Germans, being a part of German East Africa. Captured by the Allied armed forces, they were administered as Ruanda-Urundi by Belgium under League of Nations trusteeship and, from 1945, under United Nations (UN) trusteeship. The entity was …
The Sahel region is the semi-arid part of western and north-central Africa that is located between the Sahara in the north, and the humid savannah of the south— much of it being in what was formerly French West Africa. It covers the region from the Atlantic Ocean, covering …
The Treaty of San Francisco, signed on November 8, 1951, and implemented on April 28, 1952, restored full sovereignty to Japan after its unconditional surrender at the end of World War II and ended the U.S. occupation. The negotiations over the treaty revealed differing notions of what had …
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nactional, or FSLN, or Sandinistas) was a neo-Marxist politico-military organization founded in 1961–62 by a small group of Nicaraguan revolutionaries inspired by the example of the Cuban revolution. Its goals were to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship and establish a …
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest Arab country on the Arabian Peninsula. Bordering Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen, Saudi Arabia has played an important strategic role in the Middle East. Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, are located …
The School of the Americas—called by its critics the “School of the Assassins”—was founded by the United States in 1946 in Fort Gulick, Panama, as the Latin American Ground School (LAGS). In 1949 it was renamed the U.S. Army Caribbean School-Spanish Instruction and in 1963 the U.S. Army …
A Joint Communiqué was issued in Shanghai on February 27, 1972, by the United States and China on the occasion of President Richard. Nixon’s visit to the People’s Republic of China. The Shanghai Communiqué would officially break the cycle of antagonism between the two countries and would be …
Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indian prime minister at the time of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, was born on October 2, 1901, at Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh. Shastri graduated from Kashi Vidya Peeth in Varanasi in 1926, attaining the degree of shastri (equivalent to a bachelor’s degree). His surname, Shastri, …
Founded in the 1960s but not active in guerrilla activities until May 1980, the Maoist-oriented Communist Party of Peru (Partido Comunista del Perú), popularly known as the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), was the brainchild of former university professor Abimael Guzmán. For 12 years, from 1980 until Guzmán’s capture …
