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.
During its existence (1919–43) the Third International, or Communist International (Comintern), was an umbrella organization of the world’s Communist Parties. Its stated mission was to coordinate all Communist activities independent of the Soviet Union. In time, however, the Comintern was made to serve the objectives of the Communist …
The Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) is the most prominent communist political party in American history, though its influence has been minimal since the early days of the cold war. In 1919 Vladimir Lenin himself invited the communist faction of the Socialist Party to join the …
The Communist Party of Vietnam was formally founded on February 3, 1930, in Hong Kong by a group of Vietnamese exiles. Its first members included Nguyen Ai Quoc (later better known as Ho Chi Minh). At the urging of the Comintern, the group changed the name to the …
Between 1926 and 1929 a localized uprising exploded in Mexico’s western states in reaction to the anti-Catholic policies of Mexican president Plutarco Calles, which attacked the privileged position of the Catholic Church. Many Mexican revolutionaries viewed the church as the enemy and worked toward stripping it of its …
Euclides da Cunha was born on January 20, 1866, at Santa Rita do Rio Negro, near Cantagalo, close to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the eldest son of Manuel Rodrigues Pimenta da Cunha and Eudóxia Moreira. When the boy was three years old his mother died, and the family …
Although it is a general military term, D-day has become synonymous with the Allied invasion of Normandy, France—code-named “Operation Overlord”— on June 6, 1944, during World War II. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin called on the Allies to open …
Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, Eugene Victor Debs was a homegrown socialist at a time when most people in the United States reviled socialism as a European import. Debs ran five times for president, winning his largest vote total when he campaigned in 1920 from an Atlanta prison …
Gaiaye M’Baye Diagne was born on the island of Gorée, the old slave trade base, in 1872. His energy and intelligence attracted the attention of wealthy mulattoes (people of mixed race), who sponsored his education at a religious school, where he was baptized as Blaise. Diagne was educated …
During the 30 years before the Great Depression, the United States used a policy of loan-for-supervision, also called dollar diplomacy, with countries that it perceived as unstable. Dollar diplomacy was the U.S. policy encouraging private loans to countries in exchange for those countries’ accepting financial advisers. This became …
In a life spanning nearly a century William Edward Burghardt DuBois was one of the most brilliant, contentious, and significant leaders in the post-slavery United States. A sociologist and the founder of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), DuBois wrote extensively on issues of …
Dust bowl is a term coined by an Associated Press correspondent when he described the drought conditions that affected the residents of 27 states as they struggled to grow wheat in the unforgiving weather conditions of the “dirty thirties.” The American South, primarily the plains of Kansas, western …
The Wizard of Menlo Park, as journalists called him in reference to his New Jersey research laboratory, Thomas Edison was the quintessential American innovator. While many inventors are a century later remembered for one principal invention (Bell’s telephone, Whitney’s cotton gin), Edison is responsible for or associated with …
The revolution in Egypt broke out in March 1919 after the British arrested Sa’d Zaghlul, the leader of the Wafd Party, the main Egyptian nationalist party, and several other Wafdists. They were then deported to Malta. The exile of these popular leaders led to student demonstrations that soon …
Perhaps the most significant individual of the 20th century, Albert Einstein’s contributions to science reshaped physics in ways that continue to be explored and led to the development of atomic energy and the atomic bomb. A nonobservant German Jew, he was a late bloomer as a student, showing …
El Alamein is railway station west of the Egyptian port of Alexandria where a series of three battles were fought in 1942. The result was the end of German and Italian aspirations of conquering Egypt and advancing into the Middle East. El Alamein was one of the most …
La Matanza, a Spanish phrase translated as “the massacre” or “the slaughter,” refers to the aftermath of an indigenous, communist-inspired uprising in El Salvador in 1932. Although precise figures of the dead are difficult to discern, it is estimated that between 8,000 and 30,000 Salvadoran Indians were killed …
Ellis Island was the chief port through which immigrants came to the United States from 1892 to 1954. Located at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor, Ellis Island witnessed the arrival of more than 12 million immigrants into the United States, most of whom …
New conceptions of how humans should interact with the natural world put down roots in 19th-century America. Aristocratic Europe’s pastoral perspective valued neatly kept farms and artfully landscaped vistas. Some Americans had different views. Mid-19thcentury Massachusetts transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau studied natural processes and experimented with a new …
On June 17, 1917, little over two months after the United States entered World War I as an associated power of the Allies, Congress passed the Espionage Act, which criminalized the provision to any party by any party of any information when the intent was to interfere with …
Manuel José Estrada Cabrera was president of Guatemala from 1898 to 1920 and established a tradition of Guatemalan strongmen that was to be revived by Jorge Ubico and later presidents. Estrada Cabrera is also credited with running the longest one-man dictatorship in Central American history. Born on November …
