How to Write a History Essay: Let’s Take the Crusades as an Example

Essay writing is a very common assignment students get in college. Sometimes students get a specific topic to write on, sometimes they only have a study field within which they have to choose the topic themselves. However, students often struggle with putting their thoughts together especially when it comes to such a complex study field as History. To meet all the academic requirements and to make sure their essays deliver the message clearly students tend to buy college essays online from professional writers.

Writing a history essay is not just about writing a story, background, or timeline of an episode, personality, or historical period: it requires the building of an argument in answering the question raised. While researching for your essay, you may discover that the available data may offer more than one answer to the question. Hence, you will make your view by assessing and reviewing the sources, and this will be the core of the argument suggested in your answer.
To understand the step-by-step plan, here’s an example.

It’s much easier to understand by getting a concrete case, so we concentrated on Crusades for the sample. You can use this plan for any other History field.

Tips: How to Write a History Essay

As an article on a website, the first paragraph in an essay is important; it can impress or frustrate the reviewer.

The steps are as follows:

1. Study the issue.
2. Start the research.
3. Work through the objections.
4. Plan the structure of the essay.
5. Break down thoughts into paragraphs of 100-200 words.
6. Finish with a spectacular conclusion.
7. Don’t forget the references to sources.

Study the issue

For example, you want to write about the beginning of the Crusades. To do this, you should study the literature recognized by universities (nonfiction or alternative literature). This might include Thomas Asbridge’s “The Crusades. Medieval Wars for the Holy Land”, Pierre Vuimard’s “The Crusades: myth or reality of holy war” etc.

Start the research

An essay can set a challenge, a question, a call to an opinion. It can reflect an attitude about something. For example: “what were the causes of the Crusades.” This immediately outlines a certain period of time: the beginning of the eleventh century. Obviously, the prerequisites for such a phenomenon are not “born” in a year or even 10 years. It is logical to lead up to the narration of the announcement of the first crusade with an account of the state of affairs during the previous century or centuries. This is the accession of Palestine to the Persian Sultan’s territories, the crisis of the Catholic Church, the break with Byzantium, the division into Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the expectation of ordinary people of the “apocalypse,” the appearance in Europe of a special privileged stratum of knights, and so on.

This is the step where most students give up and go find the best services on Reddit to get some help with their writings. The reason is that it is hard to organize all the available literature, define what is important and what could be overlooked.

Work through the objections

When defending your point of view in writing, you must assume what objections the reader may have. Quotations from respected writings with references work well here. For example, by the eleventh century, there was a “population explosion” in Europe, which also influenced the waves of the Crusades. There is evidence of this. If you are making the point that the population embraced the idea of the Crusades with enthusiasm, back that up. For example, there is evidence that even children were sent on such a military pilgrimage, asking each locality whether this was Jerusalem.

Plan the structure of the essay

You can arrange it chronologically or by theme. Mark each paragraph with one sentence and gather information for them.

Sample essay structure:

1. Where it all began.
2. The church at the beginning of the crusades.
3. The population at the beginning of the crusades.
4. Knights and the Muslim world at the beginning of the crusades.

All parts should focus on only one topic or issue.

To summarize

You shouldn’t give a lot of supporting evidence if the essay seems chaotic.

Some extra tips for writing an essay:

1. write in the 3rd person (you should not write “I think…”);
2. write in the past tense, exceptions may be in references to works by contemporary authors (“as Professor I. writes”);
3. avoid generalizations – historical events are always complex phenomena, where there should not be 100% statements (“all peasants were outraged”, “women, as always, …”, “all Germans then supported …”);
4. use the active voice more when constructing sentences (“crusaders besieged Jerusalem”, not “Jerusalem was besieged by crusaders”).

There are an unlimited number of ways to write an essay because any form of writing is a means of self-expression. Give yourself time if you want to write the best essay among your peers. Make yourself a plan and follow it. Your essay will be high-quality if you make sure it is unique and not mediocre.