Readings in

Philippine
History
 Hello!
I am Julsar T. Calonia

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 CHAPTER 1
“THE MEANING OF HISTORY, SOURCES OF
HISTORICAL DATA, & HISTORICAL
CRITICISM”

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 Why study history?
✣ to gain access to the
laboratory of human
experience.
✣ understand change and how
the society we live in came to
be.
✣ The past causes the present,
and so the future.
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 3 reasons
✣ Understand other cultures: history
programmed address questions such as
“Why are other cultures different from
ours?” or “Why are some cultures
antagonistic, whereas others are not?”. By
studying the past, you will learn more
about what makes populations tick the way
they do.

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 3 reasons
✣ Increase your understanding of
national identities and societies: as a
student of history, you will look into
how nations were formed by an
understanding of a shared past and a
common identity. In addition, it
makes societies better to learn from
the past!

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 3 reasons
✣ Understand change: history is the study of
change. The world is constantly changing,
so understanding the role of change in
society helps you interpret the world in its
current state.
✣ History provides you with a firm grasp of
why things change, the mechanisms driving
change and its significance.
✣

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 What is history?

✣ It is about a life and ✣ Historia become known

event in the past as the account of the
✣ Greek word “Historia” past of a person or of a
which means “ group of people through
Knowledge acquired written documents and
through inquiry or historical evidence
investigations.
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 What history focus on?
✣ Writes about the ✣ Writing about
lives of important wars, revolutions,
individual
⨳ Monarchs and other
⨳ Heroes important
⨳ Saints breakthroughs.
⨳ Nobilities

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History is much
more than fact
 Historical sources not limited to the
written documents in any academic
discipline and open up the possibility
of valid historical sources such as
oral traditions in forms of epic and
songs, artifacts, architecture, and
memory.

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 Writing History is finding
information about the past,
asking question, analyzing and
interpreting it and choosing
which information to include.

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 ✣ TASK
✣ Bring one object into class, that
represents something from the
past that is important to you.
✣ Explain what exactly this object
represents about your past.

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 Historical fact vs speculative fact

Historical Fact: Speculative Fact:

Presents readers the plain and basic ✣ Goes beyond facts because it is
information vis-à-vis the events that concerned about the reasons for
took place (what), the time and date which events happened (why), and
with which the date happened (when), the way they happened (how).
the place with which the events took ✣ It tries to speculate on the cause and
place, and the people that were effect of an event.
involved (who).

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 Historical fact vs speculative fact
in search of fame and fortune, Portuguese
explorer Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-
1521) set out from Spain in 1519 with a
fleet of five ships to discover a western
sea route to the Spice Islands. En route he
discovered what is now known as the
Strait of Magellan and became the first
European to cross the Pacific Ocean.

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✣ Fact cannot speak for themselves”
therefore is job of the historian to seek
the evidence and facts but also
interpret these facts.
✣ It is a the job of the historian to give
meaning to these facts and organize
them into a timeline, establish causes,
and write history.

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 HISTORIAN

A person who They seek to

understand the
write or study
present by
about history. examining what
went before.

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

✣ The whole history of the past (called

history-as-actuality) can be known to a
historian only through the surviving records
(history-as-record), and most of history-as-
record is only a tiny part the whole
phenomenon.

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 THE LIMITATION OF HISTORICAL
KNOWLEDGE
✣ Even the archaeological and anthropological discoveries are
only small parts discovered from the total past.
✣ Historians study the records or evidences that survived the
time. They tell history from what they understood as a
credible part of the record.
✣ Incompleteness of the object that historians study.

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 HISTORY AS THE SUBJECTIVE
PROCESS OF RE-CREATION
✣ From the incomplete evidence, historians strive to restore
the total past of mankind.
✣ History becomes only that part of the human past which
can be meaningfully reconstructed from available records
and from inferences regarding their setting.
✣ The historian’s aim is verisimilitude (the truth,
authenticity, plausibility) about the past.
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 HISTORY AS THE SUBJECTIVE
PROCESS OF RE-CREATION

✣ The study of natural science that has objectively

measurable phenomena, but the study of history is a
subjective process as documents and relics are
scattered and do not together comprise the total
object that historian is studying.

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 HISTORICAL METHOD AND
HISTORIOGRAPHY

✣ The process of critically examining and

analyzing the records and survivals of the past is
called historical method.
✣ The imaginative reconstruction of the past from
the data derived by that process is called
historiography.

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 HISTORICAL METHOD AND
HISTORIOGRAPHY

✣ Both of which are frequently

grouped together simply as historical
method.
✣ Historical analysis important
element of historical method.

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 HISTORICAL METHOD AND
HISTORIOGRAPHY
✣ In historical analysis, historians:
1. Select the subject to investigate,
2. Collect probable sources of information on the subject,
3. Examine the sources genuineness, in part of in whole and
4. Extract credible particulars from the sources

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 Historical sources
✣ HISTORICAL DATA are sourced from artifacts that have
been left by the past.
✣ These artifacts can either be relics or remain, or the
testimonies of witnesses to the past.
✣ RELICS OR REMAIN, whose existence offer researchers
a clue about the past. Example, the relics or remain of a
prehistoric settlement.

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 ARTIFACT
✣ ARTIFACT can be found where
relics of human happenings can be
found. Example, a potsherd, a coin, a
ruin, a manuscript, a book, a portrait,
a stamp, a piece of wreckage, a strand
of hair to other archeological or
anthropological remains.

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 archeology
✣It is the study of the past by looking
at what people left behind. An
archaeologist digs in the earth for
artifacts.

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 Paleontology
✣It is the studies
prehistoric times such as
study of fossils.

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 anthropology
✣It is the study of human culture.
Anthropologist study artifacts
and fossils too. They look for
clues about what people valued
and believed.
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 fossils
✣Are those remains of
plants and animals life that
have been preserved from
an earlier time.
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 TESTIMONIES OF
WITNESSES
✣ whether oral or written, may have been
created to serve as records or they might have
been created for some other purposes. Such
as record of property exchange, speeches, and
commentaries.

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 Written sources of history

Diplomatic or
Social
Narrative Juridical
sources Documents

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 narrative
• NARRATIVE or LITERATURE is
chronicles or tracts presented in
narrative form, written to impart a
message whose motives for their
composition vary widely.
• A NARRATIVE SOURCE therefore
broader than what is usually
considered fiction.
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 Example:
1. A scientific tract is typically composed in order to inform
contemporaries or succeeding generations;
2. A newspaper article might be intended to shape opinion;
the so-called ego document or personal narrative such as
diary or memoir might be composed in order to persuade
readers of the justice of the authors actions;
3. A novel or film might be made to entertain, to deliver a
moral teaching, or to further a religious cause;
4. A biography might be written in praise of the subjects
worth and achievements.
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 DIPLOMATIC or
JURIDICAL SOURCES

• Are understood to be those which

document/record an existing legal
situation or create a new one, and it
is these kinds of sources that
professional historians once treated
as the purest, the “best” source.
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 DIPLOMATIC or JURIDICAL
SOURCES

• The CLASSIC DIPLOMATIC source is the

charter, which a legal instrument.
• LEGAL DOCUMENT is usually sealed or
authenticated to provide evidence that a legal
transaction has been completed and can be
used as evidence in a judicial proceeding in
case of dispute. 39
 examples
biographies, histories, literary
criticism, books written by a third
party about a historical event, art
and theatre reviews, newspaper or
journal articles that interpret.
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 Social documents
Are those information pertaining to economic,
social, political, or judicial significance.

Examples: Records kept by bureaucracies such

as government report, municipal account,
research findings, civil registry records ,
records of census and property registers.

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 Non-written histories

1. Material Evidence also known as

archeological evidence such as
artistic creations of pottery, jewelry,
dwellings, graves, churches, roads,
and other that tell story about the
past 42
2. Oral evidence are those
told by tales or sagas of
ancient people and the folk
songs or popular rituals
from the premodern period.
Also known as interviews.
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 HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Examine the origins of earliest text to appreciate the
underlying circumstances upon with the text came to be.
It has 2 important goals:

1.) To discover the original meaning of the text in its

primitive or historical context and its literal sense or
sensus literalis historicus.
2.) To establish a reconstruction of the historical
situation of the author and recipients of the text.

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• Historical criticism has its roots in the 17th
century during the Protestant Reformation
and gained popular recognition in the 19th
century.
• The passing of time has advanced historical
criticism into various methodologies used
today such as source criticism, form
criticism, redaction criticism, tradition
criticism, and canonical criticism
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 2 PARTS TO A HISTORICAL
CRITICISM:

• To determine the authenticity

of the material
• To weigh the testimony to the
truth
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 2 TYPES OF HISTORICAL
CRITICISM:
• EXTERNAL CRITICISM determines the authenticity
of the source. The authenticity of the materials may
be tested in two ways, by paleographical and
diplomatic criticism.
• External criticism is a practice of verifying the
authenticity of evidence by examining its physical
characteristics; consistency with the historical
characteristics of the time when it was produced; and
the materials used for evidence.
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 Example of the things examined

• Quality of the paper

• Type of ink is used
• The language and words use in
the material
• And among others
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 Internal criticism
• Determines the historicity of the facts
contained in the document.
• Is the examination of the truthfulness of
the evidence.
• It looks at the content of the source and
examines the circumstances of its
production 49
 Internal criticism
• Looks at the truthfulness and factuality
of the evidence by looking at the author
of the source,
• its context,
• the agenda behind its creation,
• the knowledge which informed it,
• Intended purpose.
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 TEST OF
AUTHENTICITY
• Making the best guess of the date of the
document, he/she examines the materials to
see whether they are not anachronistic: paper
was rare in Europe before the fifteenth century,
and printing was unknown; pencils did not
exist there before the 16th century; typewriting
was not invented until the 19th century; and
Indian paper came only at the end of that
century. 51
• Validating historical sources is
important because the use of
unverified, falsified, and untruthful
historical sources can lead to
equally false conclusions.
• Without thorough criticism of
historical evidences, historical
deceptions and lies will be highly
probable. 52
 Classification of historical sources

1.Primary sources
2.Secondary sources

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 Primary source
• Are considered as contemporary
accounts of an event, personally
written or narrated by an
individual person who directly
written or narrated by an
individual person who directly
experienced or participated in the
said events. 54
 Primary Sources

Are those sources produced at the

same time as the event, period, or
subject being studied.

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 examples
Examples:
Original sources that directly narrate
the details of the event.
• Eyewitness and Testimonies
• Photographs
• voice and video recordings
• others 56
 Secondary sources
Are those sources which were
produced by an author who used
primary sources to produce
materials. Secondary sources are
historical sources which studied a
certain historical subjects.
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 Secondary sources
• Are materials made by people long
after the historical events. A
secondary source analyzes and
interpret primary sources.
• Interpretation of second-hand
account of a historical event.
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 example
• Biographies
• Histories
• Literary criticism
• Books written by a third party about a
historical event
• Art and theater reviews
• Newspaper
• Journal articles that interpret.
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 Activity 1
Jose was exploring the library in his new school in
Manila. He wanted to study the history of Calamba,
Laguna during the nineteenth century. In one f the
books, he saw an old photograph of a woman
standing in front of an old church, clipped among the
pages. At the back of the photo was a fine inscription
that says: “Kalamba, 19 de Junio 1861”

What is the classification of sources of the

photograph found by Jose?
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 Activity 2
It was Lean’s first day in his first your of
college in a big university. His excitement
made him come to class unusually early and
he found their classroom empty. He explored
the classroom and sat at the teacher’s table.
He looked at the table drawer and saw a book
entitled U.G. An Underground Tale: Journey of
Edgar Jopson and the First Quarter Storm
Generation. 61
He started reading the book and realized
that it was a biography of a student leader
turned political activist during the time of
Ferdinand Marcos. The author use
interviews with friends and family of
Jopson, and other primary documents
related to his works and life
Is the book a primary or secondary?
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 Requirement of this term

Make a book/article
review whether it is
Primary or Secondary
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