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.
From 1944 to 1954 Guatemala experienced an unprecedented democratic opening that began with the overthrow of the 13-year dictatorship of Jorge Ubico (1931–44) and ended with a coup d’état against president Jacobo Arbenz (1951–54), orchestrated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Serving as president during the first …
One of the best-known human rights organizations to emerge in response to the dirty wars in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Association of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) began its silent vigils on April 30, 1977, protesting against …
A major and highly controversial figure in the modern history of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was born in Douyon in southern Haiti on July 15, 1953. After being orphaned as an infant, he was raised by the Society of Saint Frances de Sales (the Salesians), a Roman Catholic religious …
The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic were constituent members of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991 when the former became the Republic of Armenia and the latter the Azerbaijani Republic. Armenia, as a part of the Soviet Union, saw a considerable …
Atomic weapons and the arms race were inseparable from the inception of the former: Developments in physics in the 1930s led physicists to believe that nuclear fission could be used as a weapon, and when World War II began, scientists stopped publishing on the topic of fission in …
World War II had changed the nature of the world, and after postwar reconstruction had finished, there were important new trends in art and architecture that were to influence the latter half of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century. From about 1950, a …
The Asian Development Bank (ADB), a nongovernmental organization headquartered in Manila, the Philippines, was founded to provide aid, funding, and various forms of financial and technical support to countries in Asia and the Pacific. The ADB started operations in 1966 and initially represented a group of 31 states. …
APEC is an organization that aims to promote free trade and economic cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific region. It was created in 1989 because of the growing interdependence of Asia-Pacific economies and the establishment of regional economic blocs such as the European Union and the North American Free Trade …
Hafez al-Assad was born in Qardaha in northern Syria to peasant parents. The Assad family was from the Alawite Muslim minority (a breakaway sect from Twelver Shi’ism), traditionally the poorest and least powerful group in Syria. Assad became a member of the Ba’ath socialist party, as a teenager …
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)— with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand as original members—was established on August 8, 1967. As outlined in the Bangkok declaration of ASEAN, it was formed to strive for the peace and prosperity of the region. An important regional organization, …
The Aswan Dam was the cornerstone of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s program for Egyptian economic development. Nasser described the project as “more magnificent and seventeen times greater than the Pyramids.” The dam was to improve the living standard for Egyptians by increasing agricultural output and providing electricity for Egyptian …
Aung San Suu Kyi was born to diplomat Daw Khin Kyi and Burmese (Myanmar) national hero Bogyoke Aung San on June 19, 1945. She was educated in Yangon, New Delhi, Oxford, and London. In 1969 she worked in the United Nations Secretariat in New York and afterward in …
The Awami League, a political party founded by lawyer and politician H. S. Suhrawardy in 1956, was at the forefront of the political developments that led to the creation of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) in 1971. When the British left India in 1947, they had left behind two …
Muhammad Ayub Khan, a military leader and the second president of Pakistan, was born on May 14, 1907, in the village of Rehana. His father, Mir Dad Khan, served in the British Indian Army. After finishing his military training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in England, Ayub …
The Ba’ath (“Renaissance” in Arabic) was a pan-Arab political party founded by Michel Aflaq and Salah alDin Bitar. From Syria, Aflaq (1910–89) came from a Greek Orthodox family; he studied at the Sorbonne and became a teacher in a well-known secondary school in Damascus. Bitar (1912–80), from a …
The term baby boom refers to the dramatic increase in the population of certain industrialized nations in the years following the end of World War II. In the United States, the population grew from 141 million to 179 million— an increase of 27 percent between 1947 and 1960—at …
The Baghdad Pact, also known as the Middle East Treaty Organization (METO) and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), was a mutual defense treaty that aimed to encircle the southwestern flank of the Soviet Union. The United States viewed the treaty, similar to NATO, as a means to prevent …
Since 1991 the region of the Balkans has been a place of dynamic change. The region (excluding Greece) has been divided into two sub regions: the Western Balkans, consisting of Albania and the entities that emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia—Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Montenegro, and …
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, the newly elected general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, introduced two concepts to his country and its satellite states that would fundamentally change the course of human history: glasnost and perestroika. Glasnost, which literally means “openness,” allowed the citizens of …
Dr. Hastings Banda was a physician and prime minister, founding president, and former dictator of the African country of Malawi. After leading the country’s independence movement against the British, Banda became prime minister in 1963. An authoritarian ruler, Banda became president in 1966 and president for life in …
