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.
The Boer War, from 1899 to 1902, was a conflict between Great Britain and the Boers, or Dutch settlers, in South Africa. The Boers were mostly farmers who had settled as early as the 18th century in South Africa. The British wanted to unify their Cape Colony and …
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and brilliant theologian who was made famous by his role in the German resistance movement. He was executed in April 1945 for his involvement in plots to overthrow Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer and his twin sister, Sabine, were born on February 4, 1906, …
During the summer of 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, as many as 25,000 World War I veterans calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force marched on Washington, D.C., to ask Congress for bonuses promised for wages they had lost while in service to their country. The …
Subhas Chandra Bose abandoned an intended career in the Indian civil service to support Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress (INC) in the cause of Indian independence from Great Britain. However, he later found Gandhi’s nonviolent movement too moderate, attacked Gandhi for negotiating with the British …
The Boxer Rebellion in China was the culmination of the reactionary policies of the dowager empress Cixi (Tz’u-hsi) after she crushed the reform movement of 1898 and imprisoned Emperor Guangxu (Kuang-hsu), who had advocated the thoroughgoing reforms. The defeat of the Boxers by forces of seven Western powers …
A son of German immigrants who became a crusading attorney and the United States’ first Jewish Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis made his mark as a leading progressive and helped shape President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Brandeis was born in St. Louis but made Boston his home …
Although British control of Palestine started on December 11, 1917, the Palestine mandate was not approved by the council of the League of Nations until July 24, 1922, through the Treaty of San Remo. The mandate was formally established on September 29, 1923. Some of the causes of …
Although he lost the presidency three times, William Jennings Bryan used powerful oratory and sympathy for America’s downtrodden to transform the Democratic Party. In the Woodrow Wilson administration, Bryan tried unsuccessfully to keep the United States out of World War I. A committed Christian, he spent his final …
The Cairo Conference was convened by the British to decide how to govern their newly gained Arab territories after World War I. Opening in March 1921, the conference represented a virtual who’s who of British experts on the Middle East from the foreign office and the military. Lawrence …
China was Japan’s first target during World War II and fought alone from July 1937 until Japan attacked the U.S. Pacific naval base at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and British interests in East and Southeast Asia in December 1941. These events led to a general declaration of war …
Plutarco Elías Calles was president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928, taking over from Alvaro Obregón. He was the founder of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Party), which in 1946 would become the Institutional Revolutionary Party and dominate Mexican politics until 1988. Plutarco Calles was born on …
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río was president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940 and was drawn into Mexican revolutionary politics during the presidency of Francisco Madero from 1911 until 1913. Born on May 21, 1895, in Jiquilpan de Juárez, Michoacán, Lázaro Cárdenas was the eldest of eight children. When …
Venustiano Carranza Garza was president of Mexico from 1914 to 1920, having been a supporter of the Mexican Revolution of Francisco Madero. Born on December 29, 1859, at Cuatro Ciénegas, in Coahuila, he was the son of Colonel Jesús Carranza, who had served in the army of Benito …
E. Casely Hayford made enormously important contributions to the theory of Pan-Africanism and organized the National Congress of British West Africa. Casely Hayford became an inspiration for Ghana’s independence movement leader and first president, Kwame Nkrumah, though Nkrumah’s generation no longer accepted the British presence in the way …
Claire Lee Chennault grew up in rural northeastern Louisiana. He served as a fighter pilot of the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War I. After the war he served as an instructor in the army air service, organized and led an air corps acrobatic team called Three …
Chiang’s proper name was Chung-cheng, but he is better known by his courtesy name, Kai-shek. The son of gentry parents from Fenghua in Zhejiang (Chekiang) Province, Chiang was raised by a widowed mother, graduated from the first class of Paoting Military Academy, and then studied in a Japanese …
Japan’s unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, ended World War II. China was Japan’s first victim and had suffered eight years (since 1937) of devastating warfare on its soil. In 1945 its economy was in ruins, while about a fifth of its population awaited resettlement. While the Nationalist, …
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was formed in 1921. On October 1, 1949, with the founding of the People’s Republic of China, it became the ruling party of that country. The October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the subsequent success of the Communist Party in the Russian …
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, one of the greatest prime ministers of Great Britain and Nobel laureate for literature, was born on November 30, 1874, in Oxfordshire. He studied at Harrow and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. With intermingling careers in the army and in journalism, he …
Georges Clemenceau was one of the most famous political figures in the Third French Republic and a major contributor to the Allied victory in World War I. He was born in 1841 in the small village of Mouilleron-en Pareds in the Vendée, a region on the western coast …
