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.
François-Marie Arouet, better known to the world as Voltaire, was born in Paris on November 21, 1694. With his penetrating observations of society and his incisive wit, Voltaire would become one of the stars of the French Enlightenment, generally considered to be the beginning of the age of …
The origins of Haitian voodoo can be attributed to West African roots. Anthropologists have studied African voodoo rituals and applied this study to Haitian voodoo. The Ewe tribe in western Africa practices this religion to invoke spirits for protection. One ceremony is meant to show that voodoo rituals …
Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792), a cleric from the Arabian Peninsula (present-day Saudi Arabia), founded the Wahhabi movement after concluding that innovation and interpretation had corrupted Sunni Islam. He used the works of the early Muslim thinker Ibn Taymiyya to justify his interpretation and advocated an Islamic …
New Zealand became an official colony of Britain on February 6, 1840, with the signing of the Waitangi Treaty. The treaty gave the British government, headed by Queen Victoria, political sovereignty in New Zealand. In the treaty, the Maori gave sovereignty to the government of Britain but were …
The War of 1812 began in June with a U.S. declaration of war against Great Britain. At the time, U.S. grievances seemed clear to a majority of the American public and to members of Congress from the South and West who voted in favor of the declaration. They …
Sparked by conflicts over control of the rich nitrate fields in the Atacama Desert along South America’s Pacific coast, the War of the Pacific proved a national humiliation for the allies Peru and Bolivia and a national triumph for Chile. With its decisive victory, Chile wrested from Bolivia …
George Washington, a fourth-generation Virginia planter, played a central role in every phase of America’s separation from Britain and creation of the United States. Acclaimed during his own lifetime as Father of his Country, Washington was indeed the American Revolution’s “indispensable man.” One of seven children of Virginia …
Charles Taze Russell founded the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in 1884. This society brought together many Bible study groups that he had established throughout Pennsylvania over more than a decade. Russell rejected many traditional and mainstream Christian doctrines. However, his most radical teaching had to do …
The story of the Methodists cannot be told without John and Charles Wesley. Sermon and hymn, poetry and prose have permanently marked the story of Methodism. Methodism was indelibly formed, not only by the preached and published sermons of John, but also by the poetry and hymnody of …
The White Lotus Society was one of several secret societies that emerged from time to time during the history of imperial China. They required members, mostly from lower social classes, to adhere to rituals associated with Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism), food taboos, and penance. Such groups attracted the …
Against the background of the Enlightenment and American, French, and Industrial Revolutions, Western women’s lives changed dramatically, although not until the 20th century would most gain the right to vote. By 1900 Western societies had become accustomed to women’s participation in public affairs, even if governments, and many …
The Young Ottomans, also known as the New Ottomans, were 19th-century reformers. The members, some of whom were in the royal family, sought to continue the Tanzimat reforms. They wanted to liberalize the Ottoman Empire in order to ensure its survival. They applied the concept of Osmanlilik, Ottoman …
Zeng Guofan was a leading statesman of the Tongzhi (T’ung-chih) Restoration. His leadership and policies resulted in defeating the Taiping Rebellion, the most destructive in 19th-century China. Son of a farming family from Hunan Province, Zeng Guofan was raised under a stern Confucian tradition of hard work and …
Zho Zongtang was from a scholarly family of moderate means in Hunan Province. He obtained the juren (chu-jen) degree, the second highest in the examination system, then studied geography, agriculture and military strategy and experimented in farming, specializing in sericulture. Between 1852 until his death he devoted himself …
Theodor Herzl is considered the father of modern Zionism, or Jewish nationalism. Born in Budapest, Hungary, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Herzl attended university in Vienna. As a young journalist, he covered the Dreyfus affair in Paris. This noted case of anti-Semitism in liberal France, coupled with …
The Abbasids defeated the Umayyads to claim the caliphate and leadership of the Muslim world in 750. The Abbasids based their legitimacy as rulers on their descent from the prophet Muhammad’s extended family, not as with some Shi’i directly through the line of Ali and his sons. The …
Peter Abelard (1079–1142) was an abbot in the monastery of Saint-Gildas in the province of Brittany, France. He was born in Nantes, moved to Paris at the age of 15, and attended the University of Paris. He became a prolific writer, composing philosophical essays, letters, an autobiography, hymns, …
A’isha bint Abu Bakr was the daughter of Abu Bakr, one of the first converts to Islam and a close personal friend of the prophet Muhammad. According to the custom of the time, the family arranged A’isha’s engagement to the prophet Muhammad when she was only nine years …
The matter of heresy in the Catholic Church threatened the unity of Christendom precisely at the time that the pope was calling for an all-out war to reclaim the Holy Lands from the Muslims. Pope Innocent III conceived of the plan to wipe out the Albigensian heresy in …
Alcuin of York was an educator, poet, theologian, liturgical reformer, and an important adviser and friend of Charlemagne (c. 742–814 c.e.). He was a major contributor to the Carolingian Renaissance, a ninth century c.e. intellectual revival within Charlemagne’s domains that shaped the subsequent history of education, religion, and …
