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.
Fearing a slave insurrection like the one from the 1790s that wracked Haiti, the Cuban landowning and merchant elite opted to remain part of the Spanish Empire while the rest of Spanish America gained formal independence in the 1820s. Yet by the 1860s that same elite chafed under …
In one of the Western Hemisphere’s most broad-based and violent struggles for independence, from 1895 to 1898, Cuba was embroiled in a massive, island wide insurrection against Spanish colonial rule that ended with U.S. intervention and quasi-colonial status under U.S. domination. In the words of one of Cuba’s …
The famous British naturalist Charles Darwin traveled around the world, wrote several books, and developed the theory of natural selection and evolution. Charles Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, in the west of England. His father, Robert Darwin, was a wealthy doctor and …
The foundational document of the Western Hemisphere’s first republic, the first genuinely republican government of the modern era, the U.S. Declaration of Independence emerged amid an escalating war as one culmination of a long process of struggle between the American colonists and Great Britain and from a protracted …
Remembered mainly as an iron-fisted dictator whose political cronyism and suppression of the rights of Mexico’s poor and Indian peoples led to the Mexican Revolution, Porfirio Díaz was a shrewd and canny ruler who used persuasion and cooperation as much as brute force to retain power. His regime …
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, ending the Thirty Years’ War, is considered the beginning of modern diplomacy in Europe. The treaty established the idea of nation-states by acknowledging the sovereign rights of individual countries. As such, conflicts came to revolve around issues related to “the state.” In …
Benjamin Disraeli, whose name would be inextricably linked with the growth of the British Empire, was born in London on December 21, 1804, to Isaac and Maria D’Israeli. Although England did not have the ugly record of anti-Semitism of other European countries, Isaac decided that assimilation into English …
Dost Mohammed Khan is remembered as a powerful and charismatic ruler who reigned over Afghanistan from 1826 until his death in 1863 and made significant attempts to unite the troubled country. The times in which he ruled were turbulent in Afghanistan because rival clans struggled for power against …
Born into slavery in Maryland, Frederick Douglass became the most significant African-American leader of the 19th century. Son of field hand Harriet Bailey and an unnamed white man (perhaps his first master, Aaron Anthony), Douglass became a powerful antislavery orator, newspaper publisher, backer of women’s suffrage, adviser to …
In 1894 Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was accused of giving military secrets to the Germans. Although he steadfastly maintained his innocence, Dreyfus was tried and found guilty in a trial that was heavily influenced by widespread anti-Semitism within the upper echelons of French …
The Eastern Question, or what was to become of the declining Ottoman Empire, was one of the major diplomatic issues of the 19th century. The major European powers, Britain, France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Russia, had differing and sometimes conflicting attitudes about what to do with the “Sick …
The Church of Christ, Scientist (official name) was established in 1879. However, the notion of Christian Science was cultivated by Mary Baker Eddy after her instantaneous recovery in 1866 from severe injuries sustained in an accident, in her words, “which neither medicine nor surgery could reach.” What did …
Enlightened despotism represented one of the most enduring experiments before the old order was forever turned upside down by the forces unleashed by the French Revolution in 1789. Ironically, enlightened despotism was fostered by the thoughts of French philosophers like Voltaire; Charles-Louis de Secondant, baron de Montesquieu; and …
The Enlightenment in Europe came on the heels of the age of science. It dates from the end of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century. Beginning with John Locke, thinkers applied scientific reasoning to society, politics, and religion. The Enlightenment was especially strong in …
Ethiopia, formerly also known as Abyssinia, has a population of about 70 million in an area of approximately 435,000 square miles. It has a history going back more than two millennia. Topographically, it is a high plateau with a central mountain range dividing the northern part of the …
The Fashoda crisis of 1898 was a confrontation between the British and French over control of the Sudan. The British wanted control of the water sources of the vital Nile River upon which Egypt (which they already controlled) depended. Some British imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes also had …
Between 1866 and the 1870s a small number of Irish nationalist exiles invaded British Canada several times from the United States in hopes of forcing Britain to grant Ireland its independence. The Fenians failed; their attacks created new tensions between Canada and the United States but also sparked …
Ferdinand VII was one of the monarchs of Europe about whom these words by Thomas Jefferson were particularly fitting: “I was much an enemy of monarchies before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely …
Several financial panics took place during the 19th century in America. The first major financial crisis happened in 1819, when widespread foreclosures, bank failures, unemployment, and a slump in agriculture and manufacturing marked the end of the economic expansion that followed the War of 1812. The nationwide depression …
Charles Grandison Finney was one of the most prominent evangelists of the Second Great Awakening in 19th-century America. He was born on August 29, 1792, in Warren, Connecticut. When he was two years old his family moved to Hanover, New York. After graduating from Oneida Academy, Finney taught …
