UNIT I

Introduction to History

Unit Objectives
By the end of this unit, the students will be able to:

 understand the meaning of history as an academic discipline;

 identify the underlying philosophy and methodology of the field;
 apply the knowledge in historical methods and philosophy in assessing and analyzing existing historical
narratives;
 examine and evaluate the value of historical evidence and sources critically; and
 appraise the importance of history in the social and national life of the Philippines.

Unit Introduction
To appreciate the study of Philippine history, students must acquaint themselves and understand the
meaning of history. This introductory unit will reintroduce students to history as something more than the
study of the past. In Lesson 1, we will talk about the meaning of history across different periods and societies.
We will look at how the definition, nature, and characteristics of history varied according to the context and to
the purposes that it served. In Lesson 2, we will discuss the historian.as the primarily responsible for the
production of historical knowledge. Here, we will explain the tasks of historians, their relationship to historical
sources and evidence, and the influence of their context on their work. In the next lesson, we are going to look
at historical sources. We will differentiate between primary and secondary sources and study the use and
importance of each one. We are also going to look at the methods of criticism of historical documents. The
final lesson zooms in on the history of Philippine History. Here, we will discuss how kasaysayan and Philippine
history changed at different junctures. Instead of mindlessly memorizing facts and events, students of history
at the tertiary level must employ more in-depth historical analyses of historical texts to have a more in-depth
and critical view of historical lessons. By the end of this unit, students ought to be ready to take on different
historical topics and issues contained in this course.

LESSON 1
Meaning of History

Lesson Objectives
By the end of this lesson, the students will be able to:
 define history and trace its development as a field of study;
 examine the issues surrounding the historical discipline; and
 evaluate the importance and function of history.

Key Concepts
Positivism. The philosophy that a particular knowledge can only be true if it can be observed in a sensorial
manner.
Historiography. The study of history as a historical discipline.
Historicism. The belief that history should be studied only for its own sake

Lesson Introduction
In this lesson, we are going to discuss the definition of history and how it developed into the modern
discipline that we know and study today. We will discuss how historical methods and evidence or historical
sources have been employed indifferent manners at different historical periods. Moreover, specific questions
and issues on the uses, values, and perspectives of history are tackled. Suffice it to say that this lesson is a brief
overview of the History of History. By the end of this lesson, students are expected to have a deeper
understanding and appreciation of history as a field of study.

Definition and Subject Matter

History has always been known as the study of the past. Students of general education often dread the
subject for its notoriety in requiring students to memorize dates, places, names, and events from distant eras.
This low appreciation of the discipline may be rooted in the shallow understanding of history's relevance to
their lives and their respective contexts. While the popular definition of history as the study of the past is not
wrong, it does not give justice to the complexity of the subject and its importance to human civilization.

History was derived from the Greek word historia, which means knowledge acquired through inquiry
or investigation. History as a discipline has existed for around 2,400 years and is as old as mathematics and
philosophy. This term was then adopted to classical Latin, where it acquired a new definition. Historia became
known as the account of the past of a person or a group of people through written documents and historical
evidence.

History can refer to two things. First, history relates to everything that had happened in the past.
Second, history also refers to a kind of research or inquiry. The second meaning is emphasized in this module.
History is a discipline or a field of study and investigation that is primarily concerned with human activities
done in the past. This meaning can be broken down into three dimensions.

First is history's focus on human activities. This focus makes it different from, say, theology, because
theology is concerned with the divine and not with human beings. History is also different from myths or
legends because these pieces of literature are concerned not with human activities but the lives and
undertakings of mythical creatures like deities and supernatural entities. Before the rise of the Ancient Greek
civilization, older civilizations like the early Mesopotamian and Sumerian civilizations did not have a notion of
history as a record of human activities. Instead, their history takes the form of theocratic history. Historians
call this kind of history quasi-history because while these stories tell us of their society's past, they were
concerned with the affairs of nonhuman entities like deities and mythical heroes and heroines. It follows that
these narratives are not records of facts. They are just stories told and passed in a particular society from one
generation to the next, which may serve various purposes like rituals and traditional ceremonies. They were
intended neither to answer hitherto unanswered questions nor to discover previously undiscovered
knowledge.

This discussion leads us to the second aspect of the definition of history: history as an inquiry

History, as a field of inquiry, generally falls in the sciences, particularly to the social sciences. As in
other scientific disciplines, history seeks to answer questions. It aims to find out and make sense of what is
previously unknown. The quest for these answers should be done through a systematic and methodical
collection of data and evidence, which in turn would be objectively interpreted by the historian to arrive at
rational findings and conclusions.

Finally, history is concerned with the past. This characteristic makes history different from other social
science disciplines, which are more concerned with the present, such as political science, economics, and
sociology. These disciplines, despite their usual references to historical studies, are oriented in making sense
of the society at present and, in some instances, prescribing answers or solutions to pressing issues and
problems of today. Meanwhile, history's primary object of study is the past. Historians seek to explain past
events and processes against a particular historical background or context.

Contrary to the impression that history is all about listing down events in the past in a chronological
manner or identifying key figures and personalities in specific periods, this discipline is more concerned with
answering the question of why.

Why did a particular event take place? Why was Jose Rizal executed? Why did Japan invade the
Philippines during World War II? Why was Ferdinand Marcos overthrown in 1986? History is storytelling, but
more importantly, it seeks to explain and answer questions about the past.

However, similar to other fields, the historical discipline has changed in terms of its nature,
significance, and purpose. As mentioned previously, the present meaning of history is a product of the
discipline's evolution across time. It is during the time of Ancient Greek civilization that history became
concerned with human activities. Recording the past through historical sources was pioneered by Ancient
Greek historian Herodotus. He is recognized as the Father of History because he was the one who established
History as a science. Herodotus' purpose in writing his work Histories was to describe the deeds of men in the
past for posterity or future use. His quest for knowledge of the past was not only about retelling past human
activities, but also about finding out and explaining the reasons behind such deeds.

His successor was Thucydides, another Greek historian whose magnum opus was the History of the
Peloponnesian War. If Herodotus was proclaimed as the Father of History, Thucydides was known as the
Father of Scientific History. While Herodotus was the first one who approached recording the past with a
humanistic focus, it was Thucydides who first highlighted the importance of the systematic and impartial
collection of evidence as an essential prerequisite in writing history. For Thucydides, the only reliable sources
of history were testimonies of eyewitnesses. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, his method was what
modern historians would call oral history.

One noteworthy similarity between ancient Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides was their
focus on the history of limited geographic space and of are cent historical period, i.e., a period that is within
living memory. Consequently, their idea of history was limited to the history of a particular society in a specific
period. For ancient Greek historians, the remote past is unknowable. This idea changed as the Greek
civilization expanded and developed. Once they developed notions that the world goes far beyond Greek
society and that other societies have their respective pasts, they realized that history is vast and cannot be
captured in the memory of a single generation.

Because of this, they would develop a new historical method that is not limited to collecting
eyewitness testimonies. They would learn to study the remote past through a compilation of various works
and records kept by different people at different places and times. The importance that this new method
would place in records, specifically in written records, would usher in the period of tedious and meticulous
record-keeping that would start in the subsequent medieval period. The voluminous written accounts
produced and kept by different institutions may be the most plausible explanation on why modern history
gives primacy to written documents over other kinds of historical sources like artifacts, oral tradition, visual
arts, and architecture, among others. (Historical sources would be further elaborated in Lesson 3.)

With the accumulation of historical records and the gradual expansion of the Western civilization
caused by the rise of powerful empires like the Roman Empire, World History would emerge. It would serve as
the record of many different civilizations, nations, and societies. Such would be written to serve various
purposes and would be defined in different ways. Up until the present, the purpose, subject matter, and
nature of the discipline are still debated among historians and students of history.

Activity: Meaning of History through Time.

In groups of five, create a table or diagram that would show how the definition, characteristic, and use
of history changed from the Ancient to the Modern Period.

Issues and Questions

Since the earliest historical works that followed Herodotus and Thucydides were derived from written
sources, then it is quite expected that the sectors whose past will figure in history are those who were in the
higher level of the social ladder that included monarchs, military heroes, clergymen, scholars, nobilities, and
saints. The topics written about were also the ones that were perceived to be of historical importance and,
thus, were reflected on official records. These topics include revolutions, wars, conquests, and crusades. These
traditional scope and subjects of historical writing would give rise to different questions and issues on the
discipline.

By the nineteenth century, a particular school of thought would emerge and dominate various
scientific disciplines for many generations: positivism. Positivism is an essential philosophy that would serve as
a vital anchor of the scientific method. It asserts that real knowledge lies in the actual observation of facts.
Meaning, for an idea to be real, it must be verified. with sensory experience. It should be observable by the
senses and be the subject of experimentation. In history, positivism created the mantra of “no document, no
history." It means that, unless the written record can support a specific historical event, then it cannot be
considered as a historical fact.

The rise of positivist history contributed to the further development of history as a scientific field.
However, because history is a unique field of inquiry, positivism also has a set of limitations. Unlike other
scientific fields like biology, physics, and chemistry, historical truth is not something that can be experimented
on in science laboratories. The past is not something that can be contained in test tubes and Petri dishes,
observed, and from such sensorial observation, interpreted. In simpler terms, no document can capture entire
historical truths.
Moreover, the preference for written sources potentially privileges the sectors mentioned earlier
because their lives were reflected in voluminous sources. Nobilities, monarchs, the elite, and even the middle
class would have their birth, education, marriage, and death as matters of government and historical record.

But what of peasant families or indigenous groups who did not give much thought about being
registered to government records? Indeed, if we hold “no document, no history" as true, do we also accept
that people and societies who were not reflected in written sources and documents, such as peasants,
workers, the urban poor, and indigenous peoples, do not have history?

This loophole was recognized by historians who started using other kinds of historical sources, which
may not be in written format but were just as valid. A few of these examples are oral traditions in the forms of
epics and songs, artifacts, architecture, and memory. History, thus, became more inclusive and started
collaborating with other disciplines as its auxiliary disciplines. With the aid of archaeologists, historians can use
artifacts from a bygone era to study ancient civilizations that were formerly ignored in history because of the
lack of documents. Linguists can also help trace historical evolutions, past connections among different
groups, and the flow of cultural influence by studying languages and the way that they changed and
developed. Even scientists like biologists and geneticists can help with the study of the past by analyzing
genetic and DNA patterns of human societies. These data can explain how past societies interacted, how they
migrated from one location to another, and so on. With these advances, history is a continuously developing
discipline that is shaped by productive debates and discussions on its nature, method, and purpose.

Indeed, history as a discipline has already turned into a complex and dynamic inquiry. This dynamism
inevitably produced various perspectives on the discipline regarding different questions like: What is history?
Why study history? And for whom should history be? These questions can be answered by historiography. In
simple terms, historiography is the history of history. History and historiography should not be confused with
one another. The former's object of study is the past, the events that happened in the past, and the causes of
such events. The latter's object of study, on the other hand, is history itself. Examples of historiographical
questions are: How was a specific historical text written? Who wrote it? What was the context of its
publication? What was the particular historical method employed? What were the sources used? and so on.
Thus, historiography lets students of history have a better and deeper understanding of the past. They do not
only get to learn historical facts, but they are also provided with an understanding of the facts' and the
historian's contexts. The methods employed by the historian and the theory and perspective which guided him
are also analyzed. Historiography is essential for anyone who studies history because it teaches students to be
critical with history lessons presented to them.

As discussed previously, history's nature and meaning have changed over long periods. Corollary to
this, history's purpose and uses have also changed from one era to another. Initially, history was recorded for
posterity. Herodotus and other historians of the ancient world wrote history so that people can have
something to look back on as reference should they be faced with similar challenges in the present and the
future. In other words, by recording the past, the historian creates a guide for the following generations. In
doing so, Herodotus and Thucydides envisioned that the future generation, equipped with the lessons of past
human actions, would be more able and empowered to control their destiny.

In the medieval period, when Christianity and the Church became the most powerful institutions,
history ceased to be a record of man's deeds. It started to be a record of how man became instrumental in the
fulfillment of the divine plan. In this sense, history was no longer written to enable man to control his destiny
because God already predetermined his destiny. Instead, history became a crucial part of the endeavor to
discover and expound on this divine plan.

As history developed as a scientific discipline, due in part to the rise of the positivist philosophy,
professional historians who made a career out of history's academic study argued that studying history should
not have any other purpose but for its own sake. This intellectual movement is referred to as historicism. In
their view, assigning a pragmatic reason for the study of the past, like political training and historical analyses
of social problems, renders a sense of partiality or bias on what should be historically studied and how.
Leopold von Ranke, the leading positivist historian of the nineteenth century, was the primary advocate of this
idea. He argued that the task of the historian is neither to guard certain values nor to judge certain pasts.
Instead, the task of the historian should be to bring the past back to life. Ranke popularly declared that the
aim of history is “merely to show how things actually were.” Insisting on the social relevance of history
obscures a faithful and complete reimagination of the past because it tends to be viewed in light of the recent
problems.

However, this view disregards the fact that any historical writing, albeit highlighting certain aspects of
the past, would always be influenced by the context of the historian who is writing from the present. Recent
developments in the historical discipline, such as the emergence of subdisciplines like Women's History,
Environmental History, Labor History, and Urban History, were products of present issues that demanded a
thorough and scientific explanation of historical processes that led us to the current situations. As the Italian
historian Benedetto Croce said, “All History is contemporary History.”
 Moreover, faithfulness to the past and social relevance are not necessarily incompatible with one
another. A historian can respond to present issues without compromising academic rigor, impartiality, and
objectivity. Aside from this, whether the historian refuses to engage in present relevance or not, history can
always be used and distorted to serve different agendas. In the relatively recent past, states and governments
used history to unite a nation and to legitimize regimes by forging a sense of collective identity through the
manufacture of social memory. This use of history was especially true for nations who prescribe official
versions of their history, such as North Korea, Nazi Germany during the war period, and Thailand. Aside from
legitimizing their regimes, distorted notions of the past have also been used to justify atrocious policies and to
escape historical accountability for past wrong doings. When American historians depicted the Filipino people
as uncivilized in their publications, they intended to justify their colonization of the islands. They wanted
colonization to appear not as a means of undermining the freedom of the Filipino people who recently gained
independence from Spain but as a civilizing mission to fulfill what they call the “white man's burden.” At
present, the family and loyalists of former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos have been systematically
revising and changing history to acquit Marcos of his sins in the past and to falsely paint his corrupt and brutal
regime as a Golden Age of the Philippines. In these instances, isn't it the duty of the historian to rescue the
past from entities who intend to use it to escape accountability, justify oppression, and spread deceit? The
historian's mission of preserving and resurrecting the past, as argued by historicists, is always attached to his
duty to respond to the issues of the present.

If history should not be studied only for the sake of studying the past, what other purposes should it
then serve? One answer is that history can provide us with multiple ways to view, interpret, and respond to a
particular problem. History reminds us that there can be a range of different options that have manifested in
the past, which we can use for present issues. History's utility has always been referred to as “learning from
the mistakes of the past,” as if everything that has happened in the past was a mistake. This reference is not
necessarily accurate. History can also be an “inventory of alternatives.” It is also a repository of good ideas.
Aside from this, the ancient Greek notion that history can provide humanity with lessons from the past to have
better control of their destiny is also true. History can help us control not just our future, but also our present
situation.

Finally, history helps humanity to acquire a sense of self-knowledge. As British historian R. G.

Collingwood elegantly put it, “Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows
what he can do until he tries, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history,
then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”

Activity: Historical Birthday.

The class will be divided into groups with three to five members each. Students who have birthdates
closest to one another will belong to the same group. For example, students who celebrate their birthdays in
January will belong to one group. Students will do a quick Internet search of events that happened on the date
of their birth. The group will then create a timeline of their birthdays with the corresponding historical events,
and present the timeline in class.

Lesson Summary
 History is the study of human activities in the past. This definition makes history a unique discipline.
 The meaning and characteristics of history changed from the ancient period to the present. These
changes were dependent on the purposes that history served.
 History is a scientific discipline that relies on different sources.
  Several issues revolve around the meaning and function of history as a discipline. These issues relate to
different aspects of the discipline, such as meaning, method, and use.

Lesson Assessment
Short-response questions. Based on the discussions in this lesson, answer the following questions. Limit your
answers to one to three sentences.

1.What are the three dimensions of history? Briefly explain each one.
2.What is positivism, and how is it applied in history?
3.Enumerate some uses and importance of history.