MEANING AND RELEVANCEOF HISTORY SOURCES OF HISTORY HISTORIOGRAPHY HISTORICAL METHOD

WHAT IS HISTORY?

• Everything that happened in the past.

• An account of the past.

In short, history is both the past and the study of the past.

-Derived from the Greek word historia, meaning “inquiry”, “knowledge from inquiry” or “judge”.

-Systematic account for a set of natural phenomena, whether or not chronological ordering was a factor in the
account. (Aristotle, Greek Philosopher)
-Equivalent Latin word “Scientia”, came to be used to designate non-chronological systematic accounts of natural
phenomena.

• The word history was reserved usually accounts of phenomena (human affairs) in chronological order.

• Common definition, “the past of mankind.”

WHAT IS HISTORY?
-Science which first investigates and then records in their causal relations and developments such as past human events.
1. Definite in time
2. Social in nature
3. Socially significant
THREE CONCEPTS OF HISTORY
1) history-activity
2) history-as-record
3) history-as-historiography
WHY STUDY HISTORY?
1. Ignorance of history deprive us to comprehend about the past.
2. An examination of the past can tell us a great deal about how we came to be who we are.
3. Lessons of history/the past
HISTORIOGRAPHY

-The historian endeavors to reconstruct as much of the past The imaginative reconstruction of
of mankind as he can. the past from the data derived by
that process is called historiography
-Historian must be sure that his records really come from the
past and are in fact what they seem to be and that his (the writing of history)
imagination is directed towards re- creation and not creation.
-These limits distinguish history from fiction, poetry, drama
and fantasy.

SCHOOL OF THOUGHTS

-Positivism (NO DOCUMENT, NOHISTORY

-Post-colonialism
-Annales School of History
-Philippine Historiography
-Positivism is the school of thought that emerged between 18th and 19th century. Requires empirical and observable
evidence before one can claim that particular knowledge is true.
-NO DOCUMENT, NO HISTORY.
-Postcolonialism is a school of thought that emerged in the early 20th century when formerly colonized nation grappled
with the idea of creating their identities and understanding their societies against the shadows of their colonial past.
TWO THINGS IN WRITING HISTORY:
(1) to tell the history of their nation that will highlight their identity, free from that of colonial discourse and knowledge,
(2) to criticize the methods, effects and idea of colonialism

• Annales School of History is a school of history bornin France that challenged the canons of history. Annales scholars like
Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel and Jacques Le Goff studied other subjects in a historical manner.

• Annales thinkers married history with other disciplines like geography, anthropology, archeology and linguistics.

• Philippine Historiography underwent several changes since the pre-colonial period until the present. Filipino historian,
Zeus Salazar introduced the new guiding philosophy for writing and teaching history: Pantayong Pananaw (for us-from-us
perspective). This perspective highlights the importance of facilitating an internal conversation and discourse among
Filipinos about our own history, using the language that is understood by everyone.

HISTORICAL METHOD

 The process of critically examining and analyzing the records and survivals of the past.

OBJECTIVITY AND SUBJECTIVITY IN HISTORY

•Objective

the intention of acquiring detached and truthful knowledge independent of one’s personal reactions- a thing must be first
an object; it must have an independent existence outside of the human mind.

•Subjective

Inferior to objective knowledge, illusory, based upon personal considerations, and hence either untrue or biased.

SOURCES OF HISTORY

1. Primary Sources

2. Secondary Sources

HISTORICAL SOURCES

• Sources - an OBJECT from the past or TESTIMONY concerning the past on which historians depend in order to create
their own depiction of the past. (- Howell and Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Method)

• Tangible remains of the past. (- Anthony Brundage, Going to Sources)

SOURCES

• Historians has to use many materials that are not in books. Where these are archaeological, epigraphical, or
numismatical materials, he has to depend largely on museums.

• Where they are official records, he may to search for them in archives, courthouses, government libraries, etc.

• Where they are private papers not available in official collections, he may have to look among the papers of business
houses, rooms of old houses, the prized possessions of autography collectors, the records of parish churches, etc.

• A primary source is a document or physical object which was written or created during the time under study.

• These sources were present during an experience or time period and offer an inside view of a particular event.

FOUR CATEGORIES OF PRIMARY SOURCES

1. Written Sources

2. Artifacts

3. Oral Testimonies

4. Images

SECONDARY SOURCES

• A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources these sources are one or more steps removed from the
event.

• Secondary sources may have pictures, quotes or graphics of primary sources in them.
PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES

-Written and oral sources are divided into two kinds: primary and secondary.

-Primary Source - it is the testimony of an eyewitness, or of a witness by any other of the senses, or of a mechanical device
- the one who/that which was present at the events he or it tells (eyewitness).

-Secondary Source must thus have been produced by a contemporary of the events it narrates. It does not, however, need
to be original in the legal sense of the word original - that is, the very document (usually the first written draft) whose
contents are the subject of discussion.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN PRIMARY AND OTHER ORIGINALSOURCES:

Original:
 It contains fresh and creative ideas.
 It is not translated from the languages in which it was first written.
 It is in its earliest, unpolished stage.
 its text is the approved text, unmodified and untampered.
 It is earliest available source of the information it provides.
It is best used by historians in only two senses:
1. To describe a source, unpolished, uncopied, untranslated, as it issued from the hands of the authors (e.g., original
draft of the Magna Carta)
2. A source that gives the earliest available information (origin) regarding the question under investigation because
the earlier sources have been lost.
“Primary sources need not be original in either of these two ways. They need be “original” only in the sense of underived
or firsthand as to their testimony.”
Primary

 of all kinds, such as tools, coins,  Autobiography and memoirs  Public opinion polls
potsherds, clothing, furniture, etc.
 Diaries, personal letters and  Speeches and oral
 Audio recordings, DVD’s and video correspondence histories
recordings
 Interviews, surveys and fieldwork  original documents
 Government documents (reports, (birth certificates,
bills, proclamations, ordinances,  Internet communications on email,
property deeds, trial
executive/office orders, hearings, blogs, litservs and newsgroups
transcripts)
etc.)
 Photographs, drawings and posters
 Research data, such
 Patents
 Works of art and literature as census statistics
 Technical reports
 Books, magazine and newspaper  Official and unofficial
 Scientific journal articles reporting articles and ads published at the records of
experimental research results. time organization and
government agencies

Secondary

 Bibliographies  History books and other popular or

scholarly books
 Bibliographical works
 Works of criticism and
 Reference books, including
interpretation
dictionaries, encyclopedias, and
atlases.  Commentaries and treatises

 Articles from magazines, journals,  Textbooks

and newspaper after the event
 Indexes and abstracts
 Literature reviews and news
articles (e.g. movie review & book
reviews)
“ARTIFACTS AS SOURCES OF HISTORY”

-ARTIFACTS - objects, other than words, that the historian can study. But they are never the happenings or the events
themselves, but rather results of events. Such as potsherd, coin, ruin, manuscripts, book, portrait, stamp, piece of
wreckage, strand of hair, or other archaeological or anthropological remains.
-Artifacts or documents, they are raw materials out of which history may be written.
-Historical context can be given to them only if they can be placed in a human setting.
-Setback: infinity of other suppositions is possible. Without further evidence the human context of these artifacts can
never be recaptured with any degree of certainty.
-Historical truths can be derived immediately from such materials.
-A piece of pottery was handwrought, that a building was made of mortared brick, that a manuscripts was written in a
cursive hand, that a painting was done in oils..
-Artifacts are not the essence of the study.
-The historian deals with the dynamic or genetic (the becoming) as well as static (the being or the become) and aims at
being interpretative a well as as descriptive.
-Without further evidence the human context of these artifacts can never be recaptured with any degree of certainty.
DOCUMENT
In history, used in several senses:
1. used to mean written source of historical information as contrasted with oral testimony or with artifacts, pictorial
survivals, and archaeological remains.
2. Reserved for only official and state papers such as treaties, laws, grants, deeds, etc.
3. Contained in the word “documentation”, which, as used by the historian among others, signifies any process of proof
based upon any kind source whether written, oral, pictorial and archaeological.
-Document becomes synonymous with source, whether written or not, official or not, primary or not.
THE “HUMAN” AND THE” PERSONAL” DOCUMENT

Human Document - Personal Document - any self-revealing record that

intentionally or unintentionally yields information
an account of individual experience which
regarding the structure, dynamics and functioning of the
reveals the individual’s actions as human
author’s mental life.
agent and as a participant in social life.

Sources of Data: Precolonial History

Before 1926, there were 2 important archaeological undertakings in the Philippines:

(1) The first one was by Alfred Marche, a Frenchman in 1881. He worked in the island or Marinduque and explored
other sites in the cental Philippines. Most of his collections were surface finds and are now with Musee de l’homme in
Paris and other in Madrid. The other one was by a German traveler Feodor Jagor reported having encountered a priest
in Naga, Camarines Sur who collected artifacts from ancient graveyards.

(2) The second systematic work in prehistoric archaeology took place between 1922 and 1925. It was carried out by Carl
Guthe of the University of Michigan. The purpose was to collect Chinese ceramics exported to the Philippines from China
that would aid in the reconstruction of Philippine-Chinese relationship.

Sources of Data

 In 1963-64, Marcelito Maceda of USC assisted the National Museum conducted excavations in Kulaman Plateau
and recovered a number of limestone burial jars. A graduate student from Siliman University, Samuel Briones,
reported in 1966 the presence of limestone burial jars in several caves located north of Kulaman Plateau while
doing ethnographic work.

 In 1967, Alexander Spochr of the University of Pittsburgh carried out an archaelogical research in Sanga-Sanga
Tawi-Tawi. Between 1968 to 1970 archaelogical diggings were also conducted in Cebu, Laguna, Palawan, in
Nueva Ecija, Batangas by Filipino students and universities abroad.

 Archaeological research and excavations in 1970 shifted.

 In 1973, Robert Maher of the University of Western Wisconsin returned to Ifugao to document the dates the
scholars gave to the rice terraces. Radiocarbon-14 tests were performed on the site revealed a date between
800±1000 BP. Feelix Keesing’s suggestion that the people of Central Cordillera moved into the interior as a
 result of Spanish pressure is challenged by Maher’s data as untenable, it also challenge Bayer’s cnclusion that
the rice terraces were constructed about 3000 BC.

 Archaelogical diggings in Tabon and other caves in Palawan done by the archaelogists of the National Museum
was the most dramatic among others.

 Other promising archaelogical sites found in Cagayan Valley. Data from these sites excavated indicate in close
association of fossil remains of ancient animals like elephas ans stegodons and stone tools made by prehistoric
men.

 The Cagayan Valley theory was reinforce by the preliminary findings of the Ateneo de Manila University group
in the Lemery-Taal sites. It appears that the group has uncovered series of stratified sites, each representing
atleast four cultural periods in Philippine prehistory. These periods span a development of culture in the area
over at least 40,000 years.

 In the Philippines, the dating techniques used may categorized into 2: (1) traditional technique - which
establishes dates on the basis of historical records, nature of artifacts and geological layers where the artifacts
are found; (2) modern technique - which employs carbon-14 determinations of organic samples recovered in
archaelogical sites.

Persisting problems

 Advent of antique collectors and pothunters whole collection of prehistoric materials for sale (abroad/locally)
has caused damaged to archaeological sites.

 Pothunting is the term used for unsystematic diggings of prehistoric sites by private collectors and untrained
individuals. Such activity contributes to the destruction of the only source of evidence about man’s early
lifeways in our country.

 Lack of support for systematic excavations.

 Systematic fieldwork takes time and is often very expensive.

External Criticism

 Used to determine the authenticity or genuineness of a historical document.

 factors that may have influenced the production of a document: authorship, time, place, purpose and
circumstances or composition and what part of the document is true to the original.

 Useful in internal criticism.

Purpose of External Criticism To detect the following:

1. Forgeries and hoaxes

2. Authorship, time, and filiation of documents

3. Incorrect borrowings

4. Inventions and distortions

Internal Criticism

• The process of determining the true meaning and value of statements contained in a document.

• It is positive, if efforts are made to discover the true meaning of the contents of a document,

• It is negative, if efforts are exerted in finding reasons for disbelieving the contents of the document.

Is History a Science or one of the Humanities?

Scientific and historical methods are systematic, sequential, logical and progress in definite steps. Scientific method is
not peculiar to the sciences; it is also applicable to history and the social sciences.

“HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE LIMITED BY INCOMPLETENESS OF THE RECORDS”

The past of mankind for the most part is beyond recall - the incompleteness of records.

“Most of human affairs happen without leaving vestiges or records of any kind behind them. The past, having happened,
has perished forever with only occasional traces.”

THINGS TO REMEMBER

• There is no single understanding of truth in history.

• Different historians reach different conclusions about the same period, event or issue.

• History is composed of competing and conflicting arguments and viewpoints and is always changing.