history essay ideas

history essay ideas

Exploring Untold Stories: Compelling Topics for History Essays

1. Introduction

In conjunction with the unique perspectives of history essays, the best papers are not based on personal histories but rather on the subject matter. In other words, when you find an interesting subject and angle such as unique history papers topics on global history, understanding the subject is more important than your opinion on the matter. Therefore, when you select original topics for your essays on history, begin with fundamental concepts that you enjoy. For instance, if you encounter history topics for research papers on classic history, make sure that you are passionate about classical history and go ahead to search for interesting topics on the subject. The challenge of writing the paperwork generally adds pressure, particularly when they are focused on unique history term paper topics. However, when you employ the creativity inspired by your historic interests and your complete understanding of the topic expectations, history essays can be compelling.

No matter the discipline or area of study, writing research papers on history topics will be a part of your college experience. These history essays are not just a part of the grading, they teach you to engage in an inquiry process wherein you can expand your historical perspectives. Just because you are required to complete the project, however, doesn’t mean that you have to be bored or suffer through it without enthusiasm; there are actually plenty of compelling topics to write about. In fact, professors are usually more excited about the writing history papers when you explore the unexplored or choose an alternate viewpoint on a widely discussed issue. Here are some unique history essays topics to inspire your creativity. If you select a unique topic that is interesting to you, it will show through the essay. It will also allow you to feel more comfortable when presenting your work to your professor or peers.

2. Section I: Forgotten Figures and Movements

In the pages that follow, you will find under-explored themes from American and global history. The broad categories – Forgotten Figures & Movements, War & Conflict, America: Then & Now, and The Arts – are a starting point, and neither limit nor define the entries that populate these chapters. This doesn’t even include the various stories that fall under the listed sub-categories or the subjects that do not fall into the main four. Each of these stories presents an intriguing starting point where lessons and threads waiting to be pulled may be found. Each is an avenue for a student to begin a journey that can change our present and future societies.

When we tell our history stories, we often find ourselves continually mentioning the same historical figures and movements: the Founding Fathers, the abolitionists, the suffragettes, and Civil Rights movements. But these narratives are only a small piece of the larger historical tapestry. There are so many players and elements that have yet to be explored. Some of these stories are waiting to be unearthed, but others have been woven and told. Most people are simply ignorant or unaware of the stories and the overlooked subjects we share.

3. Section II: Overlooked Events and Consequences

Probing into the margins of history has its challenges. Written sources are inevitably thin, but this emptiness may be filled with hitherto buried wisdom when oral history is consulted. The ‘stigma’ of past events and past lives gives way to new curiosity and interest, and with it the belief that seemingly peripheral events were so at the time. This text sketches a few ideas for an alternative view of history essays, perhaps a prelude to various degrees of historical revisionism that should not be feared for its own sake but celebrated as an aspect of the richness of human historiography.

Too often, history essays focus on mainstream events and their likely consequences. Investigating a seemingly non-promising, trivial or unintended event can thus provide a fresh look, allowing readers to see very different pictures by reinterpreting ‘geezers’ as young men or women who vividly experienced what today we can only picture in our mind’s eye. The range of scenarios is virtually infinite, the partiality of mainstream history becoming very conspicuous when views shift from the movers and shakers, cogs and grease in the machinery to the outcasts.

4. Section III: Reinterpreting Well-Known Narratives

In addition to being able to relate untold stories, another fertile area for history students is in reinterpreting well-known stories. This approach certainly does not mean finding an entirely new topic or ignoring the rules governing our choice of topics. Such projects, rather, should focus on investigating important but not so well-explored areas of topics that are familiar to almost anyone who has completed, on any level, standard history courses covering American, European, or world experiences. Correctly handled, reinterpreted stories can allow students’ creativity to be seen and evaluated; they can stretch students enough to exhibit what they have learned about how to control topics, data, and sources in order to tell the tales of historical experiences; and they can serve to stimulate other students, the teacher and those at home to focus more attention on significant historical happenings of the past and present history, and hence to stimulate thoughts and interest that will affect the our future.

When tasked with writing an essay on a specific historical event, it seems that the main challenge is finding a topic that will captivate the reader. However, the bigger challenge will be standing out among the countless other essays that have been written on the topic. Fortunately, there are invariably unknown tales to be related when it comes to history topics. In this respect, there is a well of potential essay topics. Students can write the tale of how Prohibition led to a fractious political climate and culminated in the mistakes of such leaders as Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt; they can relate the famous tales of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and de Gaulle in new or different ways; they can tackle buncombe-filled elections from the Jacksonian era to the present; or they can assess mythic sports figures in political and ethnic contexts and in relation to the masses.

5. Conclusion and Future Directions

Business history has emerged from the financial margins of academic life to become an active player in the larger historical enterprise. The field’s importance can be seen by the quantity and quality of historical writing in its leading journal, Business History Review. In 1997, the Review gave readers an issue that included articles by Edie Goldenberg, Simon Lazarus, Naomi Lamoreaux, and Daniel M.G. Raff. In March 1998, the centerpiece of Journal of Economic History was the Mira Wilkins’ synthesis of foreign direct investment in the United States. In 1999, the Business History Review featured a roundtable on the history of American enterprise. As the quality and quantity of new articles indicate, the history of business is expanding at a very rapid rate.

During the last several years, the history of business, particularly in an American context, has expanded and deepened. The number of business historians has increased, as has the number of issues studied. This study provides an assessment of the major topics business historians plan to study in the future. Gender and race are prominent. So are the histories of small- and medium-size enterprises and the problems of entrepreneurship. Although the work provides a wealth of information, suggestions are provided on how the field can move forward.