January 2007. Revised June 2011 and March 2022.

Thesis statements—the presentation of a thesis in the introduction of a work—can take many forms, so long as they pose a question and offer an interpretive answer. [1] Though I do not want to confine my students to formulas, here is one that may help them remember the key elements:

Why did [person/persons] [do/say/write something surprising]? [Plausible explanation], but in fact [better or more complete explanation].

Consider this passage example from Gail Radford:

Conventional wisdom suggests that Americans never would have abandoned their cherished dream of owning their own home, preferably a free-standing, single-family house in the suburbs. Yet some scholars have argued that this seemingly transhistorical commitment to homeownership in the United States was considerably strengthened if not actually created in its pres.. ent form during the interwar period. Also, evidence from the case studies of the PWA housing developments in this book suggests that many Americans might well have enjoyed living at least some part of their lives in good quality, economical garden apartment buildings or rowhouses surrounded by attractive landscaping and generously provided with recreational opportunities and social services within easy walking distance.

In fact, Americans were never given such a choice, so it is impossible to tell how they would have reacted. Only some of the PWA developments that were built successfully embodied much of the spirit of the modern housing idea, and few Americans ever saw one of these. Encouraged by the housing industry, conservative forces in Congress made sure that there would be no federal support for this policy direction in the permanent legislation that ultimately emerged from the turmoil of the 1930s. As we will see, this vision for American housing had limitations and ambiguities. Yet, the problems it sought to solve have not disappeared, and many of the ideas it put forward could help us today as we try to craft solutions to our contemporary dilemmas. [2]

Rephrased it template form, it looks like this:

Why did Americans reject public housing except as an option of last resort? Given the popularity of homeownership today, one might think that Americans have always insisted on owning their own homes. But in fact, some Americans preferred quality public housing to home ownership, and only strong efforts by the housing industry and conservative politicians foreclosed this option.

Or, this, from David Mindell:

Hampton Roads drew such an energetic and lasting public response that the battle became a familiar icon of popular culture. The Monitor symbolized American technology, and success in military technology meant strength in commercial technology as well. A typical promotion proclaimed: “The fight settled the fate of the ‘Wooden Walls’ of the World and taught all nations that the War Ship of the future must be-like the McCormick Harvester-a Machine of Steel”. Official sources, expressed in congressional commendations, newspaper reports, and traditional histories, reflected a similar view. All touted the revolution in naval warfare, the new American standing on the international stage, and the maturity of industrial technology. Even today, the battle between the Monitor and the Virginia forms the most mythic and the most technological image of the Civil War.

But, for Herman Melville, Hampton Roads conveyed another message. Both broader in its implications and more personal in its effects Melville’s reading of the ironclads illuminates a fundamental but elusive characteristic of technological change: the human experience that accompanies new machinery. His poem anticipates the rise of a cold, calculated, and distanced way of fighting, possibly reducing human grandeur in war. His poems on the Monitor, from his Battle Pieces collection on the Civil War, explore the paradoxical implications of mechanical warfare: like the Monitor, machines protect, but they also dehumanize. Melville wrote Battle Pieces during the war and published it soon after. Even without the advantage of hindsight he saw in the Monitor metaphors and conflicts hidden behind the public rhetoric of victorious new weapons.[3]

Here’s the template version:

What did Herman Melville mean when he wrote that “warriors/ Are now but operatives”? Official sources, newspaper accounts, and subsequent histories have presented the USS Monitor solely as a symbol of American technological success, but Melville understood machinery’s ability to dehumanize warfare.

Finally, here’s one from Adam Rome, in which the second part of the template appears nearly verbatim:

The Bulldozer in the Countryside does not merely fill gaps in the historical literature on environmentalism. The argument here recasts or revises a number of well-accepted conclusions about the movement’s roots, evolution, and limits. Six points stand out. Though a growing concern about the loss of wilderness ob­viously contributed to the rise of environmentalism, the movement also was a response to environmental change at the edges of the nation’s cities. [4]

To make it fit the template, we need only make Rome’s question more explicit:

Why did Americans become more concerned about the environment in the decades after World War II? Though a growing concern about the loss of wilderness obviously contributed to the rise of environmentalism, the movement also was a response to environmental change at the edges of the nation”s cities.

I even found an essay that uses the form almost exactly as it appears here:

How did Syria come to this pass? While some observers see in recent events a parallel with 1989, with the break-up of the East European–style system introduced by the Baathists in the 1960s, this is no velvet revolution, nor is Syria like Jaruzelski’s Poland. The regime’s violence is not ideological. It is far from being the result of an emotional or philosophical commitment to a party that long ago abandoned its agenda of promoting secular Arab republican values and aspirations. The regime’s ruthless attachment to power lies in a complex web of tribal loyalties and networks of patronage underpinned by a uniquely powerful religious bond. [5]

(For more examples, see  The Princeton Guide to Historical Research, 285-286)

Let’s take a look at the components of this form:
1. Why? History theses answer the question, why, or, occasionally, how. Who, what, where, and when are important too, but why and how make an argument. [6]
2. Person/persons. History is about people. Abstract nouns (capitalism, war, society, etc.) are important, but a thesis without people lacks life.
3. Something surprising. The function of any scholarship is to explore the unknown and the mysterious. Challenge yourself with difficult questions.
4. Plausible explanation. A good way to know that you have formed a good question is if it forces you to choose among interpretations. The question, who wrote “A Utilitarian View of the Monitor”s Fight”? has only one right answer (Herman Melville). The question, why did Melville write “A Utilitarian View of the Monitor”s Fight”? has many plausible answers. Like the second example, the most thorough theses note exactly who believes or believed an alternative explanation.
5. Better or more complete explanation. Not all answers are equally good. Some are plain wrong; they cannot be supported with evidence (Melville was trying to impress Adah Isaacs Menken). Others account for some, but not all, of the available evidence (Americans were impressed by the power of the Monitor). The task of a thesis is to show that your explanation explains words or deeds that were not explained before.
Not all good thesis statements need to take this particular form, but most good theses present all of these elements. Show that your argument can explain more evidence than can a rival, and you have yourself a thesis.

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For more on developing a thesis, see “Elements of a Thesis Statement” and “Dialectical Thesis Statements.”
[1] For all their classroom talk of concise thesis statements, academic historians generally spread the statement of their own theses over several paragraphs at the start of an article or several pages of the introduction of a book. Thus, if you want to find a compact thesis statement, you are better off reading historiographical essays or book reviews that summarize the arguments of other works.
Here I have borrowed the idea of a thesis-statement template from the “magic thesis” presented by the UCLA Office of Instructional Development, http://write.oid.ucla.edu/handouts/Thesis_statement_history.rtf(August 8, 2006).
[2] Adapted from Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 6.
[3] Adapted from David A. Mindell, “’The Clangor of That Blacksmith”s Fray”: Technology, War, and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor,” Technology and Culture 36 (April 1995), 242-245.
[4] The second sentence is a direct quotation from Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 7. It is one of six thesis statements Rome presents in his introduction (pages 7-12), each beginning with the word “though” and taking the form of a weighing of two alternative explanations.
[5] Malise Ruthven, “Storm Over Syria,” New York Review of Books, 9 June 2011.
[6] A remaining question—what is to be done?—is of great interest in other disciplines, but historians answer it only under duress. Others want to change the world; our task is to interpret it.