RPH PRELIMS REVIEWER
LESSON 2.1
History
• Define as a story of time devided into smaller
periods and events that brought either change
or continuity in the society
• Often designated by century (100 yrs) and it
is subdivided into scores (20 yrs) and
decades (10 yrs)
Strict Counting
• From 1 to 0
• Ex. 1 to 100
Popular Counting
• Beginning of the century which is 0 and ends
with a year ending in 9
• Ex. 2000 to 2099 is the 21st century
2 points to remember in study of Philippine
History
• First - history is a narrative written by the
victors which many Filipino scholars and
academicians identify as colonial
scholarship.
➢ Colonial Scholarship – history ‘crafted
from the perspective of colonizers, the
foreigners, or the outsiders’ and can be
also called as pangkanilang pananaw.
• Second – history is a collective memory of
the people that is yet to be incorporated into
the mainstream narrative.
➢ Mainstream Narrative – an on-going
undertaking to re-evaluate colonial
sources and re-examining the socio-
economic and geo-politival landscape.
➢ Pantayong Pananaw – opposed to the
pangkanilang pananaw
Historiography
• Pertains to the close study of history and
how it evolves, reaches different conclusions
and changes over time.
➢ Historians – men and women from whom
we receive’ history and historical
understanding.
Self – strengthening personal values and sense of
openness to be better understand the world beyond
self.
Home – strengthening familial values for community-
modeling and sense of responsibility.
Community – developing identity as a source of pride
and collaborative spirit necessary for nation-building.
National – understanding cultural diversities and
shared heritage necessary for sustained growth and
development.
Global – understanding the geo-sociopolitical
landscape and how this landscape contributes into
one’s worldview.
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 – most important concept in history and it
requires exploration, explanation and evaluation as
universal focus.
Continuity – the society may stay more or less the
same as it was before because not everything
changes.
Process and Speed – changes that are important to
historians.
Cause and effect – used to examine the relationship
between historical events or actions.
Perspectives – person’s point of view, the position
from which they see and understand events going on
around them.
Emphatic Understanding – the study history talks
about understanding the past from the point of view of
the actors of the event.
Significance – importance of a particular event,
development, individual, group, movement, or
historical site.
Contestability – happens when a particular
interpretation about certain event or event from the
past are open to debate of lack of evidence or different
perspectives.
Analysis and Use of Sources – pertains to any written
and non-written materials where historians can derive
information through investigation, analysis, and
interpretation.
➢ Written materials – personal letters,
memoirs, diaries, manuscripts, etc.
➢ Non-written materials – coins, burial jars,
relics, pottery, textiles, photographs,
buildings, archaeological site, interviews, etc.
Evidence – pertains to the information or historical
knowledge that are obtained or extracted from sources
that are valuable to a particular inquiry or investigation.
Historical comprehension – skill that involves
reading creatively for role imagination through
understanding of the historical context within which the
event or events happened.
Historical research skill – writing history helps a
person understand its meaning through the formulation
of historical question, obtaining and analyzing historical
data, contextualizing the data, and presenting history
in a meaningful form. Also 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 – the heart of historical
reasoning which can be best experience through the
ability of an individual to distinguish between past,
present, and future time.
Historical concepts and frameworks – historians
frame historical narratives into political, economic,
social, and cultural.
 RPH PRELIMS REVIEWER
➢ Political – leading, legislating, decision-
making, and exercising power.
➢ Economic – controlling production, goods,
and labor.
➢ Social – societal organizations, conditions,
organizational structure, and sustenance.
➢ Cultural – influencing other members to think
or live.
LESSON 2.3
Palaeography
- Study of historical handwriting
- Involves the study of forms and processes of
handwriting
Diplomatics
- Pertains to the study of the creation, form, and
transmission of records, and their relationship
to the facts represented (SAA)
- Process of determining whether a document
is authentic or a forgery through detailed
examination of internal and external
characteristics.
Document Research
- Important method in the study of documents
that involves analysis of the document that
contains information about the scenario or
event under investigation.
Archival Research
- Study of records and archives.
- Involves the use of primary sources that are
held, accumulated, and in the possession of
the archives
Chronology
- Establishing the dates of past events
Bibliometrics
- Pertains to the study of publications
Epigraphy
- study of ancient inscriptions
Genealogy
- study of individuals and families
Historical geography
- study of a place or region at a specific time or
period in the past
- study of geographic change in a place or
region over a period of time
Heraldry
- study of weapons
Codicology
- pertains to the almost all-encompassing study
of handwritten documents, either books or
manuscripts.
Numismatics
- study of coins and other currency units.
- Study of coin’s physical properties, production
technology, and historical context of
specimens of currency.
Sphragistics
- Pertains to the science of seals and signets
dealing especially with their history, age,
distinctions of types, manner of use and legal
function.
Sigillography
- Study of seals attached to documents
Historical digital literacy
- Study of new media
- Facility with using artifactual or digital sources
LESSON 2.4
Historical perspective – foundational concepts in the
study of history and it is meant to be engaged with in
every assessment piece.
Historical perspective taking
- Requires understanding of the social, cultural,
intellectual, and emotional settings that
shaped people’s lives and actions in the past.
- Demands comprehension of the vast
differences between us in the present and
those in the past
Perspective diversity – key to taking historical
perspective.
Opinion versus Perspective
➢ Opinion – pertains to the ideas expressed by
a person.
➢ Perspective – point of view from which one
view the situation.
Perspective versus Bias
• Every source has a perspective, but not every
source has a clear bias.
• You can determine a source’s perspective by
doing background research on the source
creator
• To determine a source’s bias, you need to find
specific words in the source that are either
extremely positive or extremely negative
➢ Perspective – point of view by which a
person sees a historical event from.
➢ Bias – when a source is clearly one-sided in
its description.
Historical perspective 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 perspective – 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
- Original materials, regardless of format
- An account of an event by a participant or
eyewitness at the time. (Bowdoin Library)
- Closest to the event, person, idea, or period
under study or investigation. (Michigan
Library)
- Raw materials of history – the original
documents and objects which were created at
the time of study. (The Library of Congress)
- First-hand account or artifacts of a historical
event, person or culture. (UDC Library)
 RPH PRELIMS REVIEWER
Originality – document or artefact must be first-hand
account.
Proximity – actor’s presence or absence in the time
period under study or scrutiny.
Signification – 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
• 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 or organization meetings
• Unpublishes manuscripts
• Period newspaper and magazine articles
• Video recordings
Types of Primary Sources
➢ Literary or cultural sources – novels, plays,
poems, television shows, movies, or videos,
and paintings or photographs
➢ Account describing people, events, and
ideas – newspapers, chronicles or historical
accounts, essays and speeches, memoirs,
diaries, and letters, and philosophical
treatises or manifestos.
➢ Finding information about people –
census, obituaries, newspaper articles, and
biographies.
➢ Finding information about places – maps
and atlases, census information, statistic,
photographs, city directories, and the local
library or historical society.
➢ Finding information about organizations –
archives and search Library Catalog or
WorldCat using the name of the organization
as an author.
Secondary Sources as Primary Sources – when
such sources sheds light about the works or writings of
a particular historical figure under investigation.
Repository
- Defined as a place such as a building where
primary sources are located or stored and as
a database or central location where data is
stored and managed.
- Pertains to a place, a building, or a receptacle
where things are or can be stored. (Oxford
English Dictionary)
- A person who has a lot of information or
detailed knowledge (Cambridge Dictionary)
Physical repository – 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 – emerging trend in making primary
sources more accessible to general public using high-
resolution scanners, advanced imaging techniques,
and secured databases.
Digitization – 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
- its most important goal is intellectual control
where they have the vital knowledge about
the primary sources that they hold and not
only the known information about the
collection.
- The value of it has 4 categories:
preservation, contextualization,
presentation, and enabling usage.
METHODS OF EVALUATING PRIMARY SOURCES
Internal Criticism – applied to check the credibility of
the document whether the contents given in it are
believable of not after it has been subject to external
scrutiny. It has two types:
➢ Negative criticism – examines the source to
its position to tell the truth
➢ Positive criticism – finds out whether it is
telling the truth.
External Criticism – applied through textual criticism,
verification, and identification of dates
➢ 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 dates and place – 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 = interprets, discusses, and
analyzes the events related in primary sources.
(Bowdoin Library).
• Kinds of Secondary Sources
- Books
- Scholarly journal articles
- Magazine articles
- Encyclopedia entries
- Reviews, criticisms, and histories
 RPH PRELIMS REVIEWER
Local and international Repositories of Primary
and Secondary Sources
- National Archives of the Philippines
- National Museum of the Philippines
- National Historical Commission of the
Philippines
- Universities Libraries
- Local Museum and Historical Shrines
Private Museums and Libraries
- Ayala Museums
- Bahay Tsinoy, Museum of Chinese in
Philippine life
- Ateneo de Manila University Rizal Library
- De La Salle University
- UP University Mian Library
- UST Miguel de Benavidez Library
- Michigan State University Library