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 revolutions of 1848 were transitory events that erupted throughout Europe and collapsed as quickly as they arose. For a brief moment they promised much in the way of democratic and social reform, but without direction and steady leadership delivered little. The forces opposing revolutionary change and radical …
Cecil John Rhodes was born the son of a vicar of the Church of England (Anglican) in Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire in 1853. Rhodes coincidentally was born in the year that the eighth Kaffir War, between the British and Africans of the Xhosa tribe, came to a conclusion. …
Louis Riel, a man of mixed Native American (Ojibway) and French descent (Métis), sought to preserve Native land rights against an expanding Canadian government. The Canadian government wanted to assert its authority over the territory acquired from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1869. This agenda conflicted with the …
One of the major figures who led Argentina to independence, Bernardino Rivadavia became the country’s first president with his belief in a nation focused on the capital, Buenos Aires. He was also the creator of many of the major institutions of the country. Born in Buenos Aires, Rivadavia …
Probably the most famous Romanovs besides Peter and Catherine the Great were Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children, whom the Bolsheviks murdered in 1917. The legend of the survival of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, lingered into the 21st century, strengthened by …
Juan Manuel Ortiz de Rosas dominated the Argentine political scene from 1829 until 1852 as governor of Buenos Aires and then supreme chief of the confederation. Although professing federalism, Rosas was a centrist and a dictator, and his model of rule was to be followed by many of …
Raja Ram Mohan Roy exemplified the new English-educated class of Indians who emerged in the late 18th century. He came from a distinguished Brahman family in Bengal—the headquarters of the British East India Company. Feeling somewhat alienated from his orthodox family, he eventually became an employee of the …
During the 19th century as European colonization continued to expand, czarist Russia launched a concentrated campaign to extend its own empire by annexing lands in central western Asia. In Central Asia, the Russians were particularly interested in the Uzbek oasis states of Kokand, Bukhara, and Khiva, all part …
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottomans and Russians fought a series of wars over territory around the Black Sea and the Balkans. As the Ottoman Empire slowly declined, the Russians extended their control over former Ottoman territories around the Black Sea. Russia sought access to warm …
The Balkans had been effectively under the rule of the Ottoman Turks since 1389, when the medieval Serbian kingdom was crushed at the Battle of Kosovo. However, beginning in the 17th century with the Turkish defeat at Vienna in 1683, the Turks were in almost a constant retreat. …
In its most popular form, the Salafiyya movement of Africa was a modern Muslim reform movement established by Jamal al-Afghani and Muhammad ‘Abduh at the turn of the 20th century. The term Salafiyya (also spelled Salafiyah) is derived from the Arabic root salaf, which means “predecessors,” and is …
In 1878 in London, England, William Booth and his wife, Catherine, became the founders of a Wesleyan and Holiness-oriented organization, which they called the Salvation Army. William, a discontented Methodist minister and then an evangelist, envisioned “a cathedral of the open air.” The couple had eight children, and …
Dominating Mexican political life for most of the first three decades of the independent Mexican republic, Antonio López de Santa Ana is often regarded as a classic caudillo—a shrewd political opportunist, beholden to neither principle nor ideology, who used his personal charisma, the fierce loyalty of his followers, …
Santeria (Santería), or “the way of the saints,” is a syncretic religious practice that combines elements of Catholic and Yoruba faith; the practice originated in Cuba. It is often called La Regla Lucumi or La Regla de Ocha. Santéria was a derogatory term used by the Spanish to …
The Sanusiya was a religious reformist movement founded by Muhammad ibn ‘Ali alSanusi. Born in Algeria, al-Sanusi studied in Cairo and Mecca. He was heavily influenced by the teachings of the noted Sufi Ahmad ibn Idris. Al-Sanusi established his first lodge, or Sufi collective, outside Mecca in 1827. …
Most famous for his classic polemical study of caudillo politics and life in the Argentine interior, Facundo, or Civilization and Barbarism, and for his educational reforms during his term as president of Argentina, Domingo F. Sarmiento ranks among the most influential statesmen and intellectuals of 19th-century Latin America. …
The origin of the Satsuma Rebellion in Japan lay in the voyage to Japan of U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry to Japan in July 1853. Perry carried with him instructions from President Millard Fillmore for the government of Japan to move away from isolationism. If the government did …
On his 1798 expedition to conquer Egypt, Napoleon also took along 167 savants, or French intellectuals. Some had been eager to join the expedition, but others had to be persuaded to join. A few of the savants traveled on the same ship with Napoleon, who insisted that at …
The regimes of the Second Republic and Third Republic solidified the republican tradition in France. Modern France has emerged as the product of the competing ideologies of the French Revolution and the Counterrevolution, of how much of the changes made by the French Revolution to keep and how …
The Seven Years’ War—its name in Europe—was known as the French and Indian War in North America. Officially, hostilities began in 1756 with a declaration of war between Britain and France and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Actual fighting, however, began in 1754 in North …
