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 British called it the Great Famine, the Irish middle class called it the Great Hunger, and the peasantry called it the Great Starvation. Before the famine, Irish farmers grew barley and grain. They raised cattle and dined on beef, dairy products, and potatoes. Population growth and subdivision …
Khedive Ismail was heir to the throne of Muhammad Ali and became khedive (viceroy) in 1863. A keen modernizer, Ismail had grandiose plans to modernize Cairo along French architectural lines as well as to Westernize Egypt. Ismail was against the slave trade and extended Egyptian control in Sudan. …
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era unleashed forces that engulfed the whole of Europe. Nationalism became a potent force. Although the votaries of counterrevolution made a valiant effort to check the progressive ideas at the Congress of Vienna, Europe was changing fast. The rise of nationalism in …
Occupying a place in Mexican national memory as an arrogant self-serving opportunist and failure, Agustín de Iturbide (EE-toor-BE-day) was instrumental in securing Mexico’s independence from Spain, after which he installed himself as the new nation’s first (and only Mexican-born) emperor, only to be overthrown after a brief and …
Although Andrew Jackson would not be elected president until 1828, the Jacksonian age can be said to have begun on January 8, 1815, when troops under Jackson’s command successfully repelled a much larger British force at the Battle of New Orleans, sealing the War of 1812 treaty that …
Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at Shadwell in Albemarle County, Virginia. Jefferson’s father created the first accurate map of the Virginia colony, and when he died in 1757, he left his son 5,000 acres of land. Jefferson studied under several tutors, and in 1760, enrolled …
Jiaqing was the name Yongyan (Yung-yen) took as the fifth emperor of the Qing (Ch’ing) or Manchu dynasty. He was the fifth son of Emperor Qianlong (Ch’ien-lung) and was secretly designated as his heir in 1773 because of his character and diligence. The choice was not made public …
The May 31, 1889, flood in western Pennsylvania that devastated the industrial town of Johnstown and nearby communities that were home to 30,000 people left more than 2,200 dead. It was one of 19th-century America’s most famous disasters and arguably its worst. Human errors of poor land management, …
Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire was the son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. Joseph II was born in the middle of the War of the Austrian Succession on March 13, 1741. The War of the Austrian Succession …
Popularly revered as Mexico’s greatest and most beloved president, sometimes called Mexico’s Abraham Lincoln, Benito Juárez rose from humble origins to become a towering figure of the mid-19th century. Like his contemporary Lincoln, Juárez overcame his disadvantaged youth, entered the law, became attracted to politics, and by dint …
Abdul Kader (Abd al-Qadir) was born into a religious family. His father was the sheikh of one of the major Sufi orders in Algeria, and he had a religious education. Abdul Kader led the armed resistance to the French occupation of the country from 1832 to 1847. The …
Kang Youwei (K’ang Yu-wei) came from a scholarly family in Guangdong (Kwangtung) Province in southern China. A child prodigy, he distinguished himself in classical Confucian studies. Deeply impressed with the orderliness and efficiency of the British colonial administration in Hong Kong and Shanghai, he was inspired to take …
Khayr al-Din was one of the foremost reformers within the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. He was of Circassian Mamluk origin and had been brought to Istanbul, where he entered the service of Ahmad Bey, the de facto hereditary ruler of Tunisia. Khayr al-Din was given a …
During the reign of Chongjo from 1776 until 1800, there were major changes in Korea, the first involving the rapid spread of Christianity. When Chongjo died, his 10-year-old son Sunjo became king. The boy’s great-grandmother harbored a passionate hatred for Christianity, which was gaining many converts. She arrested …
From the encyclopedic treatment of the labor movement from the 1910s–1930s at the John R. Commons School, University of Wisconsin, to the emergence of a new labor history in the 1960s and after, scholarly inquiry into the history of labor unions and working people’s movements in the United …
The story of La Pérouse is one of the great mysteries of the sea. Jean de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, was born on August 23, 1741, near Albi in France. He signed on to the French navy and saw action against the British in the Seven Years’ …
By the late 17th century, the Spanish state had grown ossified, its grip on its overseas empire enfeebled. Trade and production in its American colonies had stagnated, Spain’s debts had mounted, and its imperial rivals had grown greatly in power—especially the English, Dutch, and French. Following the death …
In the wake of the American Revolution and the French Revolution in the late 18th century, Enlightenment ideologies of republicanism, political equality, secular government, private property, and the rights of citizenship spread across the Western Hemisphere, from Mexico and the Caribbean to Central and South America. Over the …
In the 1950s there emerged in Latin America an influential scholarly paradigm, later dubbed the “dependency school,” or dependistas, that emphasized Latin America’s historic insertion into the expanding global capitalist economy as a subordinate producer of primary export products for the dominant industrial economies of Europe and North …
The period from the 1770s to the 1820s has been aptly called the Age of Revolution. In North America and Europe, the successful independence struggle of the United States in the American Revolution was quickly followed by the French Revolution and, soon after, the Napoleonic Wars, transforming the …
