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.
In October 1935 Italian armies invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia), beginning an eight-month war and a six-year occupation. Starting purely as an Italian colonial venture to expand Italy’s control as well as to impress European nations, it came to have a significance all out of proportion to its original objectives. …
Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term and concept of eugenics in 1883. Eugenics, often defined as “well-born,” was an effort to apply Darwinian evolution and Gregor Mendel’s recently recognized genetic discoveries to the physical, mental, and moral improvement of human beings. Eugenics gained …
Existentialism is a chiefly philosophical and literary movement that became popular after 1930 and that provides a distinctive interpretation of human existence. The question of the meaning of human existence is of supreme importance to existentialism, which advocates that people should create value for themselves through action and …
Since the beginning of the U.S. republic, artists and writers have felt the need to study, paint, and write in Europe while maintaining their U.S. citizenship. For these artists, insecure about their young nation’s rawness, Europe long represented true civilization, steeped in aristocratic traditions. Before 1850 some U.S. …
Fascism was a major political belief in the early 20th century, and the word was used officially by a number of political parties, notably the Italian Fascist Party. The name itself was derived from the fasces, the axe in a bundle of rods that represented the power and …
The Federal Reserve is the system of banking used since 1913 in the United States. Until the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the U.S. banking system fell under the domain of the Civil War United States Banking Act. Historically, the United States used a central banking system. Federal …
During the Great Depression rapid advances in industrial technology allowed employers to reduce their workforces while demanding increased production; layoffs, speed-ups, and reduced pay burdened destitute auto workers who were overworked, underpaid, harassed, and threatened with unjustified termination. At 10:00 p.m. on December 30, 1936, workers at Fisher …
Ricardo Flores Magón was an influential Mexican anarchist writer. He was born on September 16, 1874—the 64th anniversary of the proclamation of Mexico’s independence from Spain—in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, Mexico. His father was Teodoro Flores, a Zapotec Indian, and his mother was Margarita Magón, half Indian and …
Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company and the man who developed modern factory assembly lines for the mass production of his cars, was born on July 30, 1863, on a farm west of Detroit, Michigan. His father, William Ford, was born in Ireland, and his …
The man who led the nationalists to victory during the Spanish civil war and governed Spain until his death in 1975, Francisco Franco Bahamonde was the longest serving dictator in Europe in the 20th century, narrowly eclipsing the record set by his neighbor, Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira …
Following the defeat and the subsequent collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the geographic area of greater Syria came under French mandate rule as stipulated by the League of Nations in 1920. Under French rule, the mandate authority, in addition to expanding the Ottoman Wilayat of Lebanon …
French West Africa came into being in 1895 when France decided to consolidate its African holdings. Initially, French West Africa was a temporary combination of Senegal, French Guinea (now Guinea), French Sudan (now Mali), and Côte d’Ivoire. In 1904 it became permanent, with territories including Dahomey (now Benin), …
Freud’s theories had and still have great effects on psychiatry, psychology, and related fields. For many, Freud is the most influential intellectual of his age because his theories provided a completely new interpretation of culture, society, and history. Freud was born into a Jewish family in Freiberg (today …
Gilberto de Melo Freyre was the author of many books that traced the cultural heritage of Brazilians from Indians, Portuguese, and African slaves. He was born on March 15, 1900, at Apipucos, near Recife, and after being educated at home attended the American Baptist School, the Colégio Americano …
In 1900 Galveston, located on an island in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles southeast of Houston, was Texas’s fourth-largest city and a bustling port. On September 8 a presumed Category 4 hurricane, accompanied by ferocious tidal surges, smashed into Galveston, killing at least 6,000 of its …
The Indian leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who dominated the Indian political scene for three decades, became an internationally acclaimed person for his nonviolent path of struggle to achieve Indian independence from British colonial rule. Through ahimsa (nonviolence) and satyagraha (true force, nonviolent protest), he led one of the …
The list of players involved in the 20th-century social empowerment and civil rights movements for blacks could not be complete without the story of Marcus Garvey and the movement for separatist black nationalism started by him early in the century and known as the Universal Negro Improvement Association …
The Geneva Conventions and their subsequent protocols are a series of four treaties regarding the fundamental rules of humanitarian concerns of soldiers and noncombatants during warfare. They were first established in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1864. In addition, there are three protocols added to the Geneva Conventions that prohibit …
Tanaka Giichi was a Japanese soldier, politician, and prime minister of Japan from April 20, 1927, to July 2, 1929. He was born on June 22, 1863. Tanaka served in the Japanese military in the Russo-Japanese War (1904- 1905) and quickly parlayed a successful combat campaign into a …
The modern West African nation of Ghana was called the Gold Coast until 1957. This small African country is nestled just under the continent as it juts out into the Atlantic Ocean a few miles above the equator. Ancient in its history and traditional in its ethos, the …
