Free History Essays

The Development of the Automatic Weapon/machine Gun and How It Impacted the Conduct of War between 1776 and 1918

By Alison Douglas

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One of the biggest weapon advancements which differentiated the First World War from past wars was the machine-gun. In 1884 Hiram Maxim developed the world’s first automatic, light, portable machine-gun. Maxim designed the gun as to use the recoil energy given off by each bullet to advance the next cartage out and load the next bullet into the chamber. This meant that a person no longer had to reload a gun or waste time re-aiming the gun. Each machine-gun had the fire power of 100 rifles, and were manned by a team of 3 to 6 men, making it more labor efficient than a rifle also. With this efficiency the machine-gun was able to fire unprecedented 400-600 rounds of ammunition per minute. The machine-gun would therefore fire until the entire belt of bullets was used up.

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Essay on Slavery as a Necessary Evil

By Susan Parker

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Table of Contents

Thesis In spite of extreme violence and violation of human rights experienced by millions of black people, slavery was a ‘necessary evil’ which became a driven force of economic development.

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Realities of Life in Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Germany

Hope. Despair. These two feelings, so different, and yet, so common in the 1930’s in the USSR and Nazi Germany set the tone of Stalin’s and Hitler’s rule of that era. As most historians would agree, hard work and complicated lifestyle characterized most of that time period. Tomes of literary works were written on the subject; generations of historians worked on discovering not only the overall situation in both states, but also looked into individual stories of people of that time. It is truly difficult to comprehend the gloom reality the citizens faced in the 1930’s through the dry statistics and compound reports. However, when one looks at individual stories, especially the lives of human beings like us, it becomes clear what hardships and shortcomings millions of people faced at the time.

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Roots and Causes of World War I

Abstract

World War I was caused by the imperialistic controversies between the group of Great Powers which had succeeded to conquer the vast territories and resources of underdeveloped overseas countries and the group of the countries which had been late. The latter being unwilling to put up with such conditions and wished to conquer their place under the sun.

Great Powers of that time were also obsessed with the legacy of dying Ottoman Empire. Russians had long fostered the idea of establishing their control over The Turkish Straits. That would allow them to spread their influence over the Mediterranean. Western Powers did their best to prevent the advent of another Mistress of the Seas.

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International Relations History

Why did the League of Nations fail to oversee the world peace? Do you think that the UN is more effective? Why or why not?

In the history of international relations and history of human kind in general there was always a struggle between national (personal) interests and international goodness (common interests). Depending on the stage of states and international relations development this opposition had different forms – from war between nations where moral values had no place to exist, to the negotiations stage and attempts to create international order preventing threat of the new World War. One of such attempts was creation of international organization aiming to be a mean of cooperation between countries and guarantor of collective security (though in the time of creation the exact term was not used). This idea was realized in the organization of the League of Nations in 1920. But it didn’t prevent the World War II.

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