Readings in Philippine History
 Philippine Antiquity
Lesson 2.1
According to:
 American Historical Association - refers to the
‘succession of facts marching to a settled
outcome.
 University of the Philippines (UoP) - defines it
as the study of the past; it is the story of the past
and a collective memory.
 Renato Constantino – defines history as
recorded struggle of people for ever increasing
freedom and for newer and higher realizations
of human person.
 History – it is a narrative with value and
significance to a particular group or society that
forged or wrote it. A string of events that
defined such group or society’s failures and
achievements.
 The word originated from Old English istoria
which was derived from Latin and Greek
historia which means
 ‘inquiry, narrative, or account’ derived from
history which is equivalent to a ‘learned’ or
‘wise man’ which is
further rooted from Indo-European word
associated with wit; the term was subsequently
reinforced by French
historie or histoire.
 Century – 100 years
 Score – 20 years
 Decades – 10 years.
 Strict Counting – 1 to 100 is considered 1st
century, and so on and so forth
 Popular Counting – 1 to 99 is considered 1st
century. It starts with 100 – 199,…
 Philippine History is divided into three periods:
Pre – Hispanic, Colonial, and Contemporary.
 The colonial period is divided into three era:
The Spanish Era, The American Era, and the
Japanese Era.
 Prehistory is before 900 AD
 Jeffrey Sachs of Sustainable Development Goals
Academy states that he time when the first
human population left their African
homeland and mass dispersed around the globe
ushering the dawn of the history of modern
humans.
 Timeline of Philippine History
 Philippine Prehistory
 Philippine Colonial
 Philippine Contemporary History
 The oldest fossil that was discovered was
700,000 years ago.
 The fossil was called The Laguna Copperplate
Inscription.
 The Battle of Mactan in 1521 was the beginning
of Philippine Antiquity.
 Colonial Scholarship - history is a narrative
written by the victors which many Filipino
scholars and academicians
Identify. A history ‘crafted from the perspective
of the colonizers, the
foreigners, or the outsiders’ and can be called
also as pangkanilang pananaw.
 Pantayong Pananaw - history is a collective
memory of the people that is yet to be
incorporated into the mainstream narrative.
 Meaning of History
 Silent - Sources are subject to scientific and
multi-disciplinary evaluation, analysis, and
interpretation.
 Colonial Scholarship - Sources written and
produced during the early colonization up to the
Third Philippine Republic. These resources are
written from the point-of-view of outsiders and
from the lens of the ‘colonized minds’ that
needs to be re-examined from multiple
perspectives.
 Pantayong Pananaw - Historians are trying to
re-frame the past narratives into its proper
context, eliminate biases, and encourage
discourses to critically re-examine the validity
of claims, clarify vagueness, and ‘de-colonize’
the perspectives used.
 Historiography - It pertains to the close study
of history and how it evolves, reaches different
conclusions and
changes over time. It is largely concerned with
the methods and approaches of historians.
 Why Study History?
 a) It develops an understanding of our self and
the world – its past societies, systems,
ideologies, governments, cultures, and
technologies built in operation and in the
process of change.
 b) It makes a person a well-rounded individual
because it shapes our thinking and in
establishing our identity.
 c) It inspires individuals to pursue greatness
gleamed from the stories of great and brilliant
people in the past
that contributed to the development of the nation
because it teaches morals and values.
 d) It helps us comprehend more on present-day
issues, learn from past mistakes, and notice clear
warning
signs, because, from the words of George
Santayana, those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it.
 e) It develops transferable skills, developed
through the process of change over time,
because it challenges us
intellect.
 f) It builds better citizenship through the study
of relationship between a citizen and the state to
promote a strong national identity and national
loyalty.
 g) It can help a person gain a career and grow
personally through the appreciation of the past
events and how these events impacted the world
today which can bring empathy and
understanding of groups that may be different
from the mainstream.
 The Relevance of history
 Self – Strengthening personal values.
 Home – Strengthening familial values.
 Community – Developing identity as a source
of pride and collaborative spirit.
 National – Understanding cultural diversities
and shared heritage.
 Global – Understanding the geo-sociopolitical
landscape.
Lesson 2.2
 Continuity and change - The aspect of life or
society that have remained the same or changed
over a period of time.
 Change - is perhaps the most important concept
in history and it requires exploration,
explanation and evaluation as universal focus.
 Process and Speed – This is important to
historians. They are interested in identifying,
describing, and explaining process of change,
the conditionalities and factors that affected or
catalyzed it and how it impacted the society in
question.
 Continuity - the society may stay more or less
the same as it was before because not everything
changes.
 It can be best understood through the following:
 a) Comparing objects from the past and present
to identify the nature of change or continuity.
 b) Analyzing aspects of daily life to identify
how some have changed
over recent times, while others have remained
the same.
 c) Sequencing events and creating timelines in
order to identify broader
patterns of continuity and change; and
 d.) Recognizing and explaining patterns of
change and continuity over time through the
examination of beliefs and values, key events
and the actions of individuals and groups.
 Cause and Effect - As a historical concept, it is
used to examine the relationship between
historical events or actions, where one event or
action occurs as a result of the other and to
identify chains of events and developments (the
factors) over the short term and long
term that caused it.
Cause and effect can be political or economic.
 Significance of Cause and Effect in History.
 It can be best understood through the following:
 a) identifying the causes and effects of change
on particular communities;
 b) demonstrating the relationship between
events and developments in
different periods and places;
 c) analyzing the causes and effects of events and
making judgments about
their importance.
 Perspective - It is the person’s point of view,
the position from which they see and understand
events going on around them.
 It can be best understood through the following:
 a) recognizing that stories of the past may differ
depending on who is telling them;
 b) examining sources to identify differing points
of view, attitudes and values in the
past and present;
 c) identifying and explaining the significance of
events and developments from a range of
perspectives; and
 d) analyzing the views of individuals and groups
at different times and explaining
how these views might reflect changing values
and attitudes.
 Empathic Understanding - talks about
understanding the past from the point of view of
the actors of the event which
include appreciation of the underlying
circumstances that they have to deal with as
well as the ‘rationalizing effect’ of their
motivations, values, and attitudes towards the
event that they have actively participated.
 The concept of empathy can be best understood
through the following:
 a) description and comparison of experiences of
different people in the past.
 b) identification of motives and actions of
people in a particular point of history.
 c) identification of differing views and sources
and how societal beliefs and values influenced
individuals and groups.
 d) explanation of the people’s context in the
past.
 Significance - significance must include the
underlying principles behind the selection of
what should be investigated and remembered.
Historical significance is subjective.
 The concept of significance can be
understood by the following:
 a) significant personal and family events.
 b) examined historical sites of cultural or
spiritual significance.
 c) recognition of people and events that brought
or usher change.
 Contestability - It happens when a particular
interpretation or interpretations about certain
event or
event from the past are open to debate by
reason of lack of evidence or different
perspectives.
 It can be best understood through the
following:
 a) identification of past events and
developments that have been interpreted in
different ways.
 b) discussion of the contestability of
particular historical terms such as
'settlement', 'invasion' and 'colonization' in
the context of Philippine’s history.
 c) identifying and analyzing the variations in
perspective which can lead to different
historical interpretations, including one’s
own.
 Analysis and Use of Sources - his pertains
to any written (personal
letters, memoirs, diaries, manuscripts, etc.)
and non-written materials
(coins, burial jars, relics, pottery, textiles,
photographs, buildings,
archaeological site, interviews, etc.) where
historians can derive
information through investigation, analysis,
and interpretation.
 Evidence - It pertains to the information
or historical knowledge that are obtained or
extracted from sources that are valuable to a
particular inquiry or investigation. It is
helpful in constructing historical narrative,
support a hypothesis or prove or disprove
a conclusion. When a source or sources
are used to support or dispel a claim, it
becomes evidence.
 It can be best understood through the
following:
 a) identification of information within a
source that can be used to support an
interpretation;
 b) by analyzing and synthesizing
information from several primary and
secondary sources and using it to answer
inquiry questions;
 c) developing a historical text done through
the identification of different
interpretations of the past and referencing
the evidence used to support these
interpretations.
Historical Comprehension - It is a skill that
involves reading creatively for
role imagination through understanding of the
historical context within which
the event or events happened. Other historical
comprehension skills involve
being able to identify central questions in
historical writing and to come to
some conclusions about the purpose, perspective,
or point of view from
which they have been constructed.
 It involves using data presented in many
different forms: maps, visual and numerical
data, and visual, literary, andmusical sources
including:
 (a) photographs, paintings, cartoons, and
architectural drawings;
 (b) novels, poetry, and plays; and
 (c) folk, popular and classical music.
 In historical comprehension, the following
points must be remembered in order to avoid
present-day thinking and to understand that
the context of an event involves many higher
order thinking skills:
 a)the actors (those who are involved in the
action);
 b)the event (what happened)
 c)the place or venue of the event (where it
happened)
 d)the contributing circumstances (events that
led to the action)
 e)the consequences or outcomes (what
followed after the event)
 Historical research skill - Writing history
helps a person deeply understand its
meaning through the formulation of
historical question, obtaining and analyzing
historical data, contextualizing the data, and
presenting history in a meaningful form.
This skill is important in analyzing sources.
 Explanation and communication - History
can be better explained and communicated
through chronological thinking skills,
historical analysis and interpretation skills,
historical issues-analysis and decision-
making skills.
 Chronological thinking skill - is at the
heart of historical reasoning which can be
best experience through the ability of an
individual to distinguish between past,
present, and future time; ability to identify
how events take place over time; ability to
interpret data presented in time lines; ability
to analyze patterns of historical duration or
continuity as well as to recognize historical
change; and beginning to understand how
the periodization of history is culturally
constructed.
 Historical analysis and interpretation
skill. This pertains to the following
abilities of an individual:
 a) identify the author or source of a piece of
evidence and assess its credibility;
 b) compare and contrast different sets of
ideas, values, personalities, behaviors, and
institutions;
 c) differentiate between historical facts and
historical interpretations; understand that
multiple
 perspectives of the past are possible, even
though history is often written from the
point of view of winners;
 a) analyze "cause-and-effect relationships,"
(where one was able to differentiate what
happened
because of individual action, cultural factors,
or pure chance) understanding that many
events probably have multiple causes;
 b) evaluate major debates among historians
and come to your own conclusions about
them; and
 c) think about how events in the past may be
shaping our present.
 Historical issues and decision-making
skill. History has been integrally related to
political and economic decision-making for
centuries.
 The following abilities contribute to better
decision-making:
 A. identify issues and problems in the past
and to analyze the interests, values,
perspectives, and points of view of all of
those involved.
 B. examining events of the past and think
about what led up to them, what might have
been done differently to resolve problems;
the alternative actions that might have been
taken
and learn about how people made decisions
to do the things they did?
 C. evaluating the implementation of a
decision by analyzing the interests it served,
by estimating the position, power, and
priorities of each actor involved;
 D. assessing the ethical dimensions of the
decision; and
 E. evaluating its costs and benefits from a
variety of perspectives.
 Historical concepts and frameworks
 Historians frame historical narratives into
political, economic, social, and
cultural. These frameworks are ‘dividers’ or
‘organizers’ that allow historians
to discuss specific sections or groups
within a much larger population.

Lesson 2.3
 Methods in History
 Paleography - study of forms and
processes of handwriting.
 Diplomatics - the process of
 determining whether a document is
authentic or a forgery.
 Document Research - the study of
documents that involves analysis of the
document that contains information about
the scenario or event under investigation.
 Archival Research - It is the study of
records and archives. It involves the use of
primary sources. According to Georgia
State University Library Research Guides,
archives are organizations that collects the
records of individuals, families, or other
organizations”.
 Repository - repository refers to “a place
where things can be stored and maintained,
[including] any type of organization that
holds documents, including business,
institutional, and
government archives, manuscript
collections, libraries, museums, and
historical societies, and in any form,
including manuscripts, photographs,
moving image and sound materials,
and their electronic equivalents."
 Chronology - any method used
to order time and to place events in the
sequence in which they occurred.
 Bibliometrics - This pertains to the study of
publications, usually in academic
publishing, that uses statistical methods to
analyze books, articles, and other
publications especially in scientific
contents.
 Epigraphy – study of ancient inscriptions.
 Genealogy – It is the individuals and
families.
 Historical Geography - geographic
study of a place or region at a specific time
or period in the past, or the study of
geographic change in a place or region over
a period of time.
 Heraldry - It is the study of weapons; the
science and the art that deals with the use,
display, and regulation of hereditary
symbols employed to distinguish
individuals,
armies, institutions, and corporations.
 Codicology - It pertains to the almost all-
encompassing study of handwritten
documents, either books or manuscripts.
Codicology focuses on the physical aspects
of the book to determine its origin,
provenance, and role in the life of the one
who owned
it.
 Numismatics - It is the study of coins and
other currency units
and is usually associated with the appraisal
and collection of rare coins which involves
the study of the coin’s physical properties,
production technology, and historical
context of
specimens of currency.
 Sphragistics - It pertains to the science of
seals and signets dealing
especially with their history, age,
distinctions of types, manner of use,
and legal function.
 Sigillography - the study of seals
attached to documents
 Historical digital literacy - It is the study
of new media.
Lesson 2.4
 Perspective – It is the ‘point of view’ from
which the creator of the source of historical
narrative described
the events.
 Historical Perspective - is one of the
foundational concepts in the study of
history and it is meant to be engaged with in
every assessment piece. requires
understanding of the social, cultural,
intellectual, and emotional settings that
 shaped people’s lives and actions in the
past.
 Perspective Diversity - a key to taking
historical perspective.
 Opinion pertains to the ideas expressed by
a person while Perspective is a point of
view from which one view the situation.
 Perspective is the point of view by which a
person sees a historical event from.
 Bias is when a source is clearly one-sided
in its description of the event.
 Points to Remember:
 1. Every source has a perspective, but not
every source has
 clear bias.
 2. You can determine a source's perspective
by doing
 background research on the source creator.
 3. To determine a source's bias, you need to
find specific words in the source that are
either extremely positive or extremely
negative.
 Historical perspectives versus historical
frameworks
 Historical frameworks allow historians to
discuss specific sections or groups within a
much larger population by subdividing
them into
political, economic, cultural, and social
frameworks.
 Historical perspectives are settings that
shaped people’s lives and actions in the past
and involves understanding of the social,
cultural, intellectual, and emotional settings
in the past.
Lesson 3.1
 Primary Sources.
 Bowdoin Library defines primary
 sources as ‘an account of an event by a
participant or eyewitness at the time’ or as
viewed by
 University of Michigan Library, “is
closest to the event, person, idea, or period’
under study or investigation. Usually
textual in form
but it may take other forms in various
research areas.
 The Library of Congress defines it as ‘the
raw materials of history – the original
documents and objects which were created
at the time under study.”
 According to UDC Library, these are
‘generally considered to be the
first-hand account or the artifacts of a
historical event, person or culture.
 According to the University Libraries,
Seton Hall University, since primary
sources are first-hand or contemporary
account of an event
or topic, these are more direct evidence of a
time or event because they were created by
people or things that were there at the time
or
event.
 Primary sources are original materials,
regardless of format’ because they are
record of the original words, images, text,
or objects created by people who were
present at that
time.
 Based on the above definition, there are
three elements that must be satisfied in
identifying a primary source:
 a ) Originality. The document (or artefact)
must be first-hand
account.
 b) Proximity. The actor’s presence or
absence in the time period under study or
scrutiny.
 c) Signification. The value or significance
of the account have not been modified by
interpretation.
 Kinds of Primary Sources.
 Diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies
 Interviews, speeches, oral histories,
personal narratives
 Scientific data and reports
 Scholarly journal articles (depends on
discipline)
 Statistical and survey data
 Original artistic creation or works of art,
photographs, music, or literature (novel,
poem, etc.)
 Archeological artifacts
 Legal cases, hearings, laws
 Official government documents and reports
 Maps
 Minutes of organization meetings
 Unpublished manuscripts
  Period newspaper and magazine articles
(Contemporary observations)
 Video recordings
 Types of Primary Sources
 1) Literary or cultural sources. These
include novels, plays, poems (in published
and manuscript forms); television shows,
movies, or videos; and paintings or
photographs.
 2) Accounts describing people, events, and
ideas. Include newspapers, chronicles or
historical accounts, essays and speeches;
memoirs, diaries, and letters; and
philosophical treatises or manifestos.
 3) Finding information about people.
Include census, obituaries, newspaper
articles, and biographies.
 4) Finding information about places.
Include maps and atlases, census
information, statistics, photographs, city
directories, and the local library or
historical society.
 5) Finding information about organizations.
Included in this category are the archives
(often
held by libraries, institutions, or historical societies)
and search Library Catalog or WorldCat using the
name of the organization as an author.
 Secondary Sources as Primary Sources –
sometimes secondary sources act as primary
sources because the actual primary sources
are destroyed or not have been found
anymore.
 Repositories of Primary Sources - Today
that the world is advancing in many fields,
primary sources are becoming accessible, at
least in its digital format, to general public
including students, researchers,
academicians, and other interested parties.
 Repository - pertains to a ‘place, a building,
or a receptacle where things are or can be
stored’ as defined by Oxford English
Dictionary although it can also include ‘a
person ... who has a lot of information or
detailed knowledge’ according to Cambridge
Dictionary (2023).
 Physical Repository - is where primary
resources are kept, stored, and preserved in
its physical form and access to these
materials may be limited or restricted
depending on the
nature, condition, and importance of the
material.
 Digital Repository - is an emerging trend in
making primary sources
more accessible to general public using
high-resolution scanners, advanced imaging
techniques, and secured databases.
 Digitization - aims to digitally
preserve original manuscripts for posterity;
promote access and usage for scholars and
researchers without tampering the original
copies; create a digital library as a resource
base of digitized copies of some of the
significant manuscript
collections; and to create standards and
procedures.
 Digital Archiving - The most important
goal of digital archiving is intellectual
control – they have the vital knowledge
about the primary sources that they hold and
not only the known information about the
collection.
 METHODS OF EVALUATING
PRIMARY SOURCES
 Internal Criticism - applied to check the
credibility of the document whether the
contents given in it are believable or not
after it has been subject to external scrutiny.
 There are two types of internal criticism –
negative and positive. The negative
criticism examines the source as to its
position to tell the truth while positive
criticism finds out whether it is telling the
truth.
 There are reasons or circumstances that
prevents the historian to tell the truth
such as:
 a) Human tendency of having a habit of not
telling the truth;
 b) Incompetence to ascertain the truth;
 c) Ability to reach out the truth which is
dependent on time and space;
 d) Degree of attention and training;
 e) Important developments at time are
ignored;
 f) Witness of the parties maybe of interest
parties of the author;
 g) Intention to gain favor from the leaders.
 The bias in favor of development is called
Studium while that is against it is called
 Odium which is often motivated by racial,
domestic, or social institutions.
 External Criticism - is applied through
textual criticism, verification, and
identification of dates. It is an aspect of
historical method that deterred the veracity
of the source is
questioned.
 Textual Criticism - originality of the text is
extremely important which can be checked
with the authors, language, ideas, versions,
and styles of writing, the passages,
additions, and omissions.
 Verification - can be made by determining
the authorized handwriting, the style, and
the method of presentation.
 Identification of plates and date - where
such document or source
originated including the physical properties,
quality of paper, color,
weight, ink, and other materials are also
important aspects of external
criticism.
Lesson 3.2
 Secondary Sources - As defined by
Bowdoin Library, secondary sources
‘interprets, discusses, and analyzes’ the
events related in primary sources; usually in
text formats and written by someone who is
distant geographically and in terms of time
to the event/s being interpreted, discussed,
or analyzed.
 Tertiary Sources - include encyclopedias
and textbooks because they are further
removed or often summaries of information
found in primary and secondary sources.
 Kinds of Secondary Sources
 Books
 Scholarly journal articles (depends on
discipline)
 Magazine articles
 Encyclopedia entries
 Reviews, criticisms, and histories
 Difference of Primary and Secondary
Sources
 Primary sources are firsthand, contemporary
accounts of events created by individuals
during that period of time or several years
later (such as correspondence, diaries,
memoirs and personal histories).
 Secondary Sources - are closely related to
primary
sources and often interpret them. These
sources are documents that relate to
information that originated
elsewhere.
 Local and International Repositories
 National Archives of the Philippines. This
government repository of archival records
feature
Erección de Pueblos among other
collections, a bundle of 236 manuscripts,
drawings, maps,
illustrations, and plans dealing with the
establishments of towns during the Spanish
colonization and over 60 million documents
since then. Link:
https://nationalarchives.gov.ph/.
 National Museum of the Philippines -
Started as Museo-Biblioteca de Filipinas
(1887) established by a royal order; opened
on October 24, 1981 and expanded
throughout history, the NMP is a
government trust for educational, scientific,
and cultural acquisition,
documentation, preservation, exhibition, and
fostering scholarly study and public
appreciation
of art, specimens, and cultural and historical
artifacts representative of the unique cultural
heritage of the Filipino people and the
natural history of the Philippines. Link:
https://www.nationalmuseum.gov.ph/.
 National Historical Commission of the
Philippines - Collections are located in
several museums affiliated,
maintained, or curated with the Commission.
Link: https://nhcp.gov.ph/museums/.
 University Libraries
 Local Museums and Historical Shrines
 Private Museums and Libraries
 Ayala Museum - It houses archaeological,
ethnographic, historical, fine arts,
numismatics, and
ecclesiastical exhibits.
 Bahay Tsinoy, Museum of Chinese in
Philippine Life - It houses the Kaisa-
Angelo King
 Heritage Center - a museum documents the  Perry-Castañeda Map Collections,
history, lives and contributions of the ethnic Philippine Maps, University of Texas at
 Chinese in the Philippine life and history. Austin,
 Ateneo de Manila University Rizal  University of Texas Libraries. Collections:
Library - It is the main university of the Among the digital collections are the
ADMU which mainly serves and supports historical
teaching and research in Loyola schools. maps of Manila in 1851 taken from
 De La Salle University - It features a Diccionario Geografico-Estadistico-
collection of almost 10,000 books. Its Historico De Las Islas Filipinas. Madrid
collection includes 21,218 titles and 33,741 1851; Manila in 1898 from Plano de Manila
volumes on language and literature as of y sus Arrables, Francisco J. de Gamoneda;
2008,[110] 3,751 titles and 4,898 volumes imp. lit. de Ramon Montes, original scale
on fine arts and music as of 2006, and 1:10,000, 1898; and other maps. Link:
17,999 titles and 26,526 volumes on https://library.ust.edu.ph/heritage-
philosophy and religion as of 2005. A 2001 library.html.
assessment places its number of periodicals  Archivo General de Indias (General
at Archives of the Indies. Collections:
 14,362 titles. Extremely valuable
 UP University Main Library. Collections: archival documents about the rich history of
Special Collections of the Main Library the Spanish Empire in the Americas and in
consists of rare books and other types of Asia from 16th to 19th century. Link:
Filipiniana materials. They usually do not https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/
fall into any of the conventional categories
like books and serials. They may be rare,
unique, out of print, unpublished and non-
textual. They supplement or offer
information on various subjects not readily
available in the Book and Serials Section.
Link: https://mainlib.upd.edu.ph/
 UST Miguel de Benavidez Library.
Collections - The Heritage Library is a “Good luck bitches… Don’t fuck it up”
depository of the vast printed collections of Lady Trixie Ashirene
the University of Santo Tomas of
approximately 30,000 volumes of historical
materials such as: Rare Books from 1492
through 1900; Filipiniana Rare; Rare
Periodicals; Rare Legal Collections,
Medical Books and Books on Pharmacy.
Link:
 https://library.ust.edu.ph/heritage-
library.html
 Michigan State University Library.
Collections: The United States and its
Territories 1870 to
1925: Age of Imperialism is a digitized
collection of printed materials such as
books, dictionaries, journals, etc. from US
territories including the Philippines from
1870 to 1925. Link:
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/.