The When: The Historical Context of an Earlier Era

Like with our considerations about what historians study, the question of the “when” is similarly complex. It is not just a date. Historians study earlier eras or moments in time, and these earlier times are like completely different worlds from today. Each moment in time is unique because there are differing circumstances of a particular era. Historians refer to this as the context. Context gives meaning to past events; it helps us understand the importance of an event given the larger picture. Imagine, for instance, a picture of a flower. Without understanding what surrounds that flower, we cannot really understand its importance or even its meaning. Only when we step back and see what is around the flower does it make sense. Is it a flower in a field or in a bouquet? If a bouquet, is it being offered to a women by a man, or is it surrounded by flowers in a funeral arrangement? We cannot know the meaning of the flower unless we see the full picture around it. Likewise with history, we must see the full picture to understand the meaning of any one event. This is context.

Historians explore economic, cultural, social, intellectual, and political contexts. These contexts expose the norms, beliefs, values, and ideas of the time and allow the historian to assess an event or person on its own terms. Without understanding the economic context of the 1930s, for instance, there is little meaning to a family's migration from Kansas to California in 1936 during the height of drought conditions. Or, we cannot comprehend the American Civil War without knowing the political issue of states' rights, the economics of the slave labor system, or the social attitudes about slavery and Southern paternalism and honor. Understanding the context gives meaning to historical facts and information.

Historians must ground any historical topic in the larger context because the past is truly a different world from the one we inhabit, and only context gives meaning to any historical event. Historians try to take the perspective of people from earlier times rather than applying their own values and sensibilities to people from a previous era. The first person to do this was Herodotus, an ancient Greek who lived during the fifth century BCE. Herodotus is considered the father of history because he did not apply his own way of thinking on an earlier time and people. Historians use their historical imagination to understand earlier people, events, or concepts in their own right and on their own terms rather than using today's standards. Using today's standards or values to judge something in the past is called presentism, and historians consider this a violation of basic standards of historical research. Sometimes today's concepts, like the notion of psychology, for instance, were not even in existence in an earlier time—in this case, prior to the late nineteenth century when psychology and psychological concepts did not exist. Similarly, as abhorrent as we find slavery, we must try to understand the values and beliefs of antebellum Southerners that allowed them to find slave labor acceptable in their world. If we do not, we are not seeing these people on their own terms. Once we realize the importance of context—of understanding the broader economic, political, social, cultural, and intellectual aspects of an earlier period—we can focus on the time frame we wish to study.

Historical research varies according to the length of time under study. Some historians focus on a very short time span, say the integration of Boston's public schools in the early 1970s. Others explore a much longer time frame, such as the history of the laboring classes from the dawn of industrialization in the eighteenth century to today. What the former provides in extreme detail the latter usually treats in much broader terms that allow the historian to give an interpretation about continuities and sweeping changes over time.

Thus considering the “when” of historical research goes beyond a date. It is an attempt by historians to understand the full entirety of an earlier period. Context gives meaning to particular events and helps us see them as people then would have. If we try to master context and the ability to see the past on its own terms, then we are being pretty good historians. We also see that the length of time under study may determine the depth of interpretation. Either way, if historians are true to the context, then they are contributing a piece to a bigger puzzle of the past.