Слово "antecedent". Англо-русский словарь Мюллера

Without any antecedent knowledge, without any warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer in a totally new world.

It is not that this antecedent was most necessary to the occurrence of the event.

“And now as to the villains who seemed to be immediately implicated in the matter. The Lascar was known to be a man of the vilest antecedents, but as, by Mrs. St. Clair’s story, he was known to have been at the foot of the stair within a very few seconds of her husband’s appearance at the window, he could hardly have been more than an accessory to the crime. His defence was one of absolute ignorance, and he protested that he had no knowledge as to the doings of Hugh Boone, his lodger, and that he could not account in any way for the presence of the missing gentleman’s clothes.

  Nothing known of antecedents.

The first difficulty which we had to contend with was the finding of this American's antecedents.

To look up the antecedents of all these people, to discover their bona fides – all that takes time and endless inconvenience.

Without any antecedent knowledge, without any warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer in a totally new world.