History & historical ideas
Events, change over time and the ways people interpret the past.
Studying History: Why Historical Interpretation Requires Creativity
An argumentative essay explaining why historians need imaginative interpretation to make sense of the past, while showing how evidence and uncertainty limit responsible conclusions.
1960s Social Activism and Conservative Political Change
An evidence-based comparison of interpretations that emphasize protest movements or conservative organization as forces of social change from 1945 to 1980.
The Nazi Party’s Rise and the Causes of World War II
The Nazi Party’s rise enabled an authoritarian government to pursue rearmament and territorial expansion. Its invasion of Poland turned that aggressive course into war with Britain and France, while earlier crises and other governments’ choices shaped the path.
Does a More Complex Present Make History Irrelevant?
An evidence-based argument that modern complexity limits simple historical analogies but does not make historical knowledge irrelevant to important decisions.
Reform Movements and Industrialization in the United States, 1820–1900
An evidence-based comparison of labor organizing, child-labor reform, and farmers’ campaigns against corporate power, showing how reformers used petitions, legislation, and political pressure to address industrial change.
European International Relations from the French Revolution to 1815
The most consequential change was the intensification of the British-French struggle for European supremacy into a prolonged series of conflicts that continued the French Revolutionary Wars. This rivalry repeatedly drew other states into a struggle over power and helped make warfare, rather than stable diplomacy, a defining feature of European relations in the period.
Can We Connect Current Events to the Past in Time to Act?
A model argument that reflection on the past matters, but that decision-makers can and must learn from history while events are unfolding.
Economic Change and Federal Involvement, 1865–1940
Reconstruction-era struggles over land, labor, and economic independence elicited sharply different responses from freedpeople and white Southerners. Later, Depression-era unemployment helped expand federal action, including government employment programs.
Portuguese and Spanish Overseas Expansion, 1450–1650
Portugal and Spain pursued overseas wealth and power through different imperial patterns. Later competition among European states made overseas trade and territory part of wider conflicts, although colonial rivalry was not the sole cause of war.
Sectional Tensions and American Society, 1800–1848
An evidence-based argument about how slavery and expansion intensified sectional conflict, shaped reform and party politics, and remained constrained by cross-regional coalitions and national institutions.
European Art from 1450 to 1700: The Most Significant Change
An argument that expanding naturalistic representation was the period’s most consequential artistic change because it reshaped how artists constructed space and engaged viewers across different subjects and settings.
The New Deal and Working-Class Political Change
An essay explains how Cohen’s account connects Chicago workers’ political participation and Democratic support with expectations of greater federal responsibility, using the Social Security Act as a separate development of the New Deal era.