History

Developing a Thesis Statement

In your historical analysis essay, you will need to make an argument* about the topic you are writing about; this argument needs to be supported by evidence from your research. An argument takes a stance; it is not simply a description or a summary of the information. Understanding how to construct an effective thesis statement will be an important skill for writing papers in your future classes. Furthermore, knowing how to support your claim with evidence is necessary in any argument.

In order to form a coherent argument, you will need a thesis statement. The thesis statement* is the backbone of an essay, and therefore, writers often feel a lot of pressure to come up with a final, polished version of the statement right from the start. The problem with that method is that our perceptions and writing changes over time, so a thesis statement that was written at the start of the writing process may not end up aligning with ideas in the most recent draft.

Now that you have already begun the process of constructing your historical analysis essay, you are ready to construct the claim you are making. A thesis statement is a sentence in which you state your argument about a topic and then briefly describe how you will prove this argument. Your thesis statement can be more than one sentence long, but it should be succinct and specific. Your thesis statement should appear at the end of the introductory paragraph of your essay.

Forming an Argument

You have already formulated a research question*, which means part of the work has been done towards forming your thesis statement. In order to write a good thesis statement, you should focus on one aspect of your topic. Your thesis statement should be specific, and you need to be able to support it with specific evidence.

There are a few strategies you can use to create your thesis statement.

1. Turn your research question into an assertion and give evidence and reasons for this argument.

2. Summarize the main idea of the essay you want to write, and turn that summary into an argument.

3. Use a formula to develop an initial thesis statement. For example, you can use the following formats to create an initial thesis: