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.
Prior to 1867 North American Canada was better described as a collection of Canadas. The Atlantic Maritime provinces focused on fishing, lumbering, and shipping. Lower Canada was home to New France habitants pushed unwillingly into the British Empire when the Seven Years’ War/French and Indian War ended in …
In mid-18th century the Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty of China confined all foreign traders to the port of Canton (Guangzhou) in southern China and restricted trade. In Canton, all merchants were banned from direct contact with Chinese officials and were confined to an area of 13 factories, located outside …
When Czarina Elizabeth died in December 1761, her nephew Peter ascended the throne. He had already alienated his wife, Catherine (Sophia Augusta, the princess of Anhalt-Zerbst in the Holy Roman Empire), by his evident lack of affection for her. Some historians believe that their son Paul was actually …
Understanding the phenomenon of the caudillo is essential for understanding the political history of 19th-century Latin America. (The terms caudillismo and caudillaje refer to the more general phenomenon of rule by caudillos.) While there is no universal definition that fits every caudillo under all circumstances, scholars generally agree …
Count Camillo Benso di Cavour was an Italian statesman who forged the unified Kingdom of Italy. Cavour was born in northwestern Italy in Turin, the capital of Piedmont-Sardinia, ruled by the House of Savoy. Cavour was earmarked for an army career, and he enrolled in the military academy …
The term National War in Central America refers to the combined military efforts of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to defeat the forces of Tennessee-born U.S. filibuster William Walker in 1856–57. The Walker episode represented the pinnacle of 19th-century U.S. filibustering, or private mercenary efforts …
The Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka in 1505 and took over the kingdoms of Kotte and Jaffna, with the kingdom of Kandy, largely because of its geographical position in the center of the island, managing to remain free of their rule. Thus, when the Dutch admiral George Spilberg …
The Chakri dynasty was established on April 6, 1782, when Chao Phaya Chakri was crowned the king of Thailand (formerly Siam) as Rama I. The rulers belonging to the house of Chakri have been kings of Thailand ever since. The illustrious rulers of this dynasty took the country …
The fast-moving blaze that consumed more than three square miles of Chicago, Illinois, causing the Chicago River to boil, killing at least 300, and leaving 90,000 homeless, would, within two decades, produce a reinvented city more prosperous and beautiful than had seemed possible when the fire burned itself …
China’s military and economic weakness and heightened Western imperialism worldwide during the 1890s resulted in the division of China into Western spheres of influence that threatened its eventual partition. The downward spiral began with the Sino-Japanese War, caused by Japan’s quest to control Korea, a Chinese vassal state. …
In 1882, in response to the vociferous insistence of California’s anti-“coolie” clubs and Irish immigrant Denis Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party of California, Congress passed the first law in U.S. history to ban explicitly the further immigration of a particular racial or ethnic group. Known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, …
This most deadly and destructive of any U.S. war was the “irrepressible” outcome of sectional conflicts over land, labor, and political power that emerged in the earliest days of colonial rule and festered for decades in the young republic. When it was over, some 620,000 Americans—Union and Confederate—were …
Yehe Nara (or Yehenala) was the daughter of a minor Manchu official. She entered the harem of Emperor Xianfeng (Hsien-feng) in 1851 and became a high-ranking consort upon the birth of a son, his only male heir, in 1856. An incompetent ruler, Xianfeng’s disastrous foreign policy led to …
In the second half of the 19th century, what is often referred to as a “coffee revolution” swept large parts of Latin America, especially southern Brazil, northern South America (Colombia and Venezuela), and Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua). The consequences of this revolution were …
The War of the Thousand Days in Colombia lasted from October 1899, when the Liberals staged a revolt to unseat the Conservative government, to November 1902. It is estimated that 100,000 people died during the war, which left Colombia and Panama (then a part of Colombia) devastated. It …
The comuneros’ revolt was a rebellion against Spanish colonial authority that took place between March and October 1781 in what is now considered Colombia. This rebellion in the Viceroyalty of New Granada was a response by colonists to changing economic conditions. While some of the conditions were long-standing, …
In 1870 the Congo basin was unknown to Europeans. It contained 250 ethnic groups, 15 cultural regions mostly speaking Bantu languages, and a diverse climate and terrain, chiefly savanna and dense rain forest. States were highly organized, with some large kingdoms; agriculture was varied; technology was somewhat developed, …
External challenges had motivated previous unsuccessful attempts at creating a union between the 13 English North American colonies. But neither these, nor the First Continental Congress that convened in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, aimed at founding an independent republic. Rather, they were concerned with restoring the rights …
James Cook was born in Marton-in-Cleveland, England, on October 27, 1728. His family was Scottish in origin, having left Scotland for England after the upheaval of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. Cook’s father was a farmworker. When James was seven, his father’s employer arranged for him to attend school, …
The Crimean War was a struggle between Russia and Britain, along with its allies, over Russian expansion into the Ottoman-controlled territories of the Black Sea. The war was part of the so-called Eastern Question, or what should be done about the weakened Ottoman Empire. Eager for territorial gains …
