Historical actors need to be understood in the terms available to them, even when their actions remain wrong. Historians often revise established accounts because newly discovered primary sources allow a more accurate explanation. Additional evidence can turn a simple cause-and-effect account into a chain of interacting events. The purpose of that complexity is to understand what happened more clearly, rather than to make the story complicated for its own sake.
Notable Point · 0:15-1:59
Historical context, revision, and primary sources
Historical context means examining what people thought in their own time without treating explanation as approval, while new primary sources can revise accounts of causation.