When you write a research paper in any course, you are expected to pose a question and examine the available evidence to find an answer to that question. In history courses, a research paper will generally focus on why and how questions that can be answered using a combination of sources.
If you were studying the Vietnam War, you might be curious about how the rhetoric of the cold war shaped John F. Kennedy’s early Vietnam policy. To answer this question, you might look at government documents from the Kennedy administration, press coverage of Kennedy’s foreign policy, Kennedy’s own writings, and interviews with those who were involved in policymaking.
If you were interested in the role of women in the military during World War II, you might ask why the British government supported the expansion of women’s roles in ways that the US government did not.
Related topics:
Posing research questions
Critical essays
Book reviews
Historiographic essays