The historical context of the times in which an event happened will help the historian to understand motives that may have influenced people's actions, as well as relationships between ideas and events occurring within a cultural time and space. Historical contexts of events in the past differ from conditions in our present context, so it is important to interpret according to context then rather than according to conditions now.
Claude Bélanger, professor of history at Marianopolis College in Canada, explains that historical context "is understood as the events, or the climate of opinion, that surround the issue at hand. They help to understand its urgency, its importance, its shape, or even its timing." Historical context includes social, political, economic, intellectual, cultural and religious trends that existed when and where the event you're studying occurred. The historian will want to assess things according to context that existed at that time, rather than judging the past according to context or standards that are in place in our own time, in order to be fair to the persons of that era.
