History is relevant to both originalism and textualism in different ways. Originalists look to what the writers intended the words to mean. (This is how we interpret contracts in Anglo legal systems.) Textualists disregard what the writers intended, but do care about what the words meant at the time they were written.

This often leads to the same result, but can sometimes produce divergent results. The drafters of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, for example, probably didn't intend to create a framework for striking down laws that treat women differently than men. Ginsberg's brilliance as an attorney was to make essentially textualist arguments that convinced courts that--regardless of what the drafters meant to say, the words they actually used plainly apply to discrimination between the genders is it did to discrimination between races.