Why study history

To determine a sense of direction or purpose

To justify the need to learn the subject because any course of study needs justification

History

Facts constitute the heart of every historical writing. They are collected from various sources and
carefully investigated and written by a historian.

A) It deals with the past events

B) The records of the past such as chronicle, annals, official records like birth certificates, marriage
certificate,

C) History as an academic discipline

Meaning and importance of history

Definitions

Dr. Zeus A Salazar defined history as “mga pangyayari sa saysay para sa grupo ng taong sinasaysayan
nito” (2002) Salazar advocated the use of Filipino in historical discourse.

History as defined by a foreign scholar “is the record of what one age finds worth of note in another”

For Carr, history is a study of human achievements.

As defined by Medina, “History is not just the past but also and principally the present and future”.

Keith Jenkins, history can never be and will never be for one’s self. It is always for one person

History as a discourse is a series of tactics of organizing, and sequencing events and past systems
according to individual outlook, interest, objective or goals.

Samuel Tan defined history as a dynamic process of dealing with the past in which the stages or aspects
of development are interrelated, brought upon by the understanding of the present and the future

Renato Constantino, who emphasized that history is the achievement of man not the individual but the
collective.
History meant a systematic account of a set of natural phenomena, whether of not chronological
ordering was a factor in the account; and the usage, though rare, still prevails in English in the phase
natural history.

The past of mankind for the most part is beyond recall. Even those who are blessed with the best
memories cannot re-create their own past.

A fortiori, the experience of a generation long dead, most of whom left no records or whose records, if
they exist have never been disturbed by the historian’s touch, is beyond the possibility of total
recollection.

Objectivity and Subjectivity

Subjective

 Objective like ruins, parchments and coins survive from the past
 Derived from testimony and therefore are facts if meaning
 Cannot be seen, felt, tasted, heard or smelled
 Symbolic or representative of something that was once real

Objective

 The intention of acquiring detached and truthful knowledge independent of one’s personal
reactions
 Must have an independent existence outside the human mind
 Written or spoken testimony

History can be divided to:

General history, economic history. Cultural history, social history, and myth history

Artifacts as sources of History

Relies of human happenings

-potsherd, a coin, a ruin, a manuscript, a book, a portrait, a stamp, a piece of wreckage, a stand of hair,
or other archaeological or anthropological remains.
Historical knowledge limited by incompleteness of the records

The whole history of the past (what has been called history-as-actually) can be known to him only
through the surviving record of it (history-as-record) and most of history-as-record is only the surviving
part of the remembered part of the observed past of that whole. Even when the recorded of the past is
derived directly from the archaeological or anthropological remains. They are yet only the scholar’s
selected parts of the discovered parts of the chance survivals from the total past.

History as the Subjective process or Re-creation

From this probably inadequate reminder that historian must do what he can to restore the total past of
mankind. He has no way of doing it but in terms of his own experience. That experience, however, has
taught him (1) that yesterday was different from today in some ways as well as the same as today in
others. And (2) that his own experience is both like and unlike other men’s.

History and Philippine Historiography

 Historiography is the art of writing. It also refers to the theory and history of historical writing.
 Data like oral history, folklore, indigenous materials and the likes which traditionally cannot be
considered as sources of history are now considered as a possible source of history.

A. Factual History
B. Speculative History

Factual History – presents readers the plain and basic information, the evens that took place
(what), the time and date with which the vent happened(when), the place with which the event
took place, and the people that were involved. (who)

Speculative – It goes beyond facts because it is concerned about the reasons for which events
happened(why), and the way they happened (how)

The practice of historical writing is called Historography, the traditional method in doing
historical research that focus on gathering of documents from different libraries and archives to
from a pool of evidence needed in making descriptive or analytical narrative.

“Only a part of what was observed in the past was remembered by those who observed it; only
a part of what was remembered was recorded; only a part of what was recorded has survived;
only a part of what has survived has come to the historian’s attention”
-Louis Gottschalk, Understanding History
Sources – an object from the past or testiomny concerning the past on which historians depend in order
to create their own depiction of that past.

All such artifacts can give us information about the past

Primary and secondary sources

Primary – enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an
historical event or time period.

Primary resource

Autobiographies – an autobiography is when you write a story or book about yourself.

Sound recordings and interviews are considered primary sources.

What is a secondary source

Secondary source – a secondary source is something written about a primary source; written “after the
fact” – that is, a later date.; second hand infromation

Why use primary sources

- More accurate, unfiltered, open to the public.

Disadvantage

- Can be incomplete or unusable.

Why use Secondary sources?

- Can provide analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information.

Disadvantage

- Might lack of quality and can contain error.

Diplomatic Sources

-professional historians once treasted as purest, “best” source.

Social Documents

- These are information pertraining to economic, social, political or judicial significance.

External Criticism – The problem of authenticity, to stop fabricated, forged, faked documents

-to distinguished hoax

Test of authenticity

1. determine the date of the document to see whether they are anarchronistic
2. determine the author
3. anachronistic
4. Anachronistic reference to events
5. Provenance or custody
6. semantics
7. hermeneutics

What is internal Criticism

- The problem of credibility

Test of credibility

1. Identification of the author