Chapter I

MEANING AND RELEVANCE OF HISTORY

 TOPIC OUTLINE
 Meaning of History
 Sources of History
 Historical Criticism
 Locating Primary Resources
 Colonial Historiography
 Philippine Historiography After WWII
 Characteristics of Contemporary Philippine
Historiography
 History Defined

 ARISTOTLE – systematic account of set of

natural phenomena, whether or not
chronological ordering was a factor in the
account.
 COURSE OF TIME, science came to be used
regularly to designate non-chronological
systematic accounts of natural phenomena.
 History – study of the PAST EVENTS presented
in chronological order and often with
explanation.
 His story & sanaysay na may saysay.
 “the past of mankind” -
 Geschichte (geschehen) – “to happen” & “that
which has happened” - “lessons of history”
 “past of mankind” as the goal of historians
becomes unattainable.
 Historiography – practice of historical writing
 SOURCES OF HISTORY
 A. DOCUMENTS – hand written, printed,
designed, drawn & other composed
materials. Ex. Books, maps, journals,
architectural perspectives, newspapers,
paintings, advertisements, & photographs.
- Colonial records (government records &
legal documents)
 B.ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORDS – preserved
remains of human beings, their ctivities &
their environment.
 Fossils– remains of animals, plants & other
organisms. Ex. Callao Man’s toe bone (67000
BCE)
Tabao Man’s skullcap (22000 BCE)

 Artifacts – remnants of material culture

Ex. Laguna Copperplate, Manunggul Jar

 Oral& Video Accounts – audio-visual

documentation of people, events & places
 GENERAL KINDS OF HISTORICAL SOURCES
 A.PRIMARY – documents, physical objects,
and oral/video accounts by an individual or
group present at the time & place being
described.
 Testimony of eyewitness or of a witness by
any other senses, or of a mechanical device
like Dictaphone.
 Aredocuments need to be original? In legal
sense, documents need not to be original
because on the issue of availability of
documents.
A document may be called “original”
Because it:
 Contains fresh & creative ideas
 Not translated from the language in which
it was first written
 In its earliest, unpolished stage
 Texts-approvedtext, unmodified &
untampered with
 Earliest available source of the information
it provides
For Historians:
 Todescribe a source, unpolished, uncopied,
unstranslated as it used from the hands of
the authors.
A source that gives the earliest available
information (i.e. origin) regarding the
question under investigation because
earlier sources have been lost.
 Primary sources need not be original in either of these two ways:
1) They need to be “original” only in the sense of
underived or first-hand as to their testimony.
* This point ought to be emphasized in order to
avoid confusion between original sources and
primary sources.
- Most historical narratives today are so reliant on
documentary sources due to the plethora of written
records and the lack of archaeological records and oral/video
memoirs.
* one basic challenge with regard primary sources – their ability
to read and understand texts in foreign language.
* to discern the cultural context and historical value of primary
sources because most of these primary documents were written by
colonialists and reflected Western cultural frames.
2) Secondary source documents, on the other hand,
provide valuable interpretations of historical
events. (Ex. The works of Teodoro Agoncillo, Renato
Constantino)
 HISTORICAL CRITICISMS
 To ascertain the authenticity and reliability of primary sources to be
used in crafting a narrative, a historian needs to employ two levels of
historical criticism, namely external criticism and internal criticism.

* External criticism – answers concerns and questions pertinent

to the authenticity of a historical source by identifying who composed
the historical material, locating when and where the historical material
was produced, and establishing the material’s evidential value.

* Internal criticism – deals with the credibility and reliability of the

content of a given historical source. It focuses on understanding the
substances and message that the historical material wants to convey by
examining how the author framed the intent and meaning of a
QWSXcomposed material.
 LOCATING PRIMARY SOURCES

National Library
National Archives
Academic Institutions
Privately owned museums and
archives
Religious congregations
Abroad
 COLONIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
 In 1890, Jose Rizal came out with an annotation of Antonio de Morga’s
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Events in the Philippine Islands), a book
originally published in 1609. He used de Morga’s book, a rare Spanish
publication that positively viewed precolonial Filipino culture, as a
retort to the arrogant Spaniards. However, cultural bias against
Filipino culture continued even after Rizal’s death and the end of
Spanish colonialism.
 Spain Wickedness and American Benevolence and Filipino generations
forgot the bloody Filipino-American War as exemplified by the
Balangiga Massacre in Eastern Samar and the Battle of Bud Bagsak in
Sulu.
 Consequently, such perception breathes new life to the two part view
of history: a period of darkness before the advent of the United States
and an era of enlightenment during the American colonial
administration.
 PHILIPPINE HISTORIOGRAPHY AFTER
WORLD WAR II
 Teodoro Agoncillo pioneered nationalist historiography in
the country by highlighting the role of the Filipino
reformists and revolutionaries from 1872, the year that
saw the execution of the GomBurZa priests, to the end of
the Philippine Revolution as a focal point of the country’s
nation-building narrative. Two of his most celebrated
books focus on the impact of the Philippine Revolution:
The Revolt of the Masses: The Story of Bonifacio and the
Katipunan (1956) and Malolos: The Crisis of the Republic
(1960). His writings veered away from emphasizing
colonial period and regarded events before 1872 as part of
the country’s “lost history.”
 Renato Constantino, whose published work entitled,
“The Miseducation of the Filipino” became a staple
reading for academics and activists beginning in the late
1960s. Constantino advanced the idea of a “people’s
history” – a study of the past that sought to analyze
society by searching out people’s voices from colonial
historical materials that typically rendered Filipinos as
decadent, inept and vile. Following this mode of
historical inquiry, he authored The Philippines: A Past
Revisited (1975), a college textbook that offered a more
critical reading of Philippine history compared to
Agoncillo’s History of the Filipino People (1973).
Undoubtedly, these two nationalist scholars inspired or
challenged other historians to reevaluate the country’s
national history.
 The first of these scholars is Zeus Salazar who conceptualized “Pantayong
Pananaw” as an approach to understanding the past from our own cultural
frame and language. He emphasized the value of our Austronesian roots in
defining Filipino culture and encouraged other scholars to conduct outstanding
historical researches in Filipino such as the work of Jaime Veneracion’s
Kasaysayan ng Bulacan (1986).
 Reynaldo Ileto who wrote about his “history from below”treatise in his
ground-breaking work, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the
Philippines, 1840-1910 (1979). In this work, Ileto endeavored to recognize the
way of thinking of ordinary folks by using alternative historical sources such as
folk songs and prayers. His other works spurred new interpretations such as
common topics such as Jose Rizal, Philippine-American War, and American
colonization.
 Samuel Tan, another prolific historian who is best remembered for
mainstreaming the role and relevance of Filipino Muslims in the country’s
national history. His definitive work, The Filipino Muslim Armed Struggle, 1900-
1972 (1978), sought to examine the struggle of Filipino Muslims in the context of
20th century nation-building dynamics during the American colonial regime and
subsequent postcolonial Filipino administrations. In his book, A History of the
Philippines (1987), Tan attempted to write a national history reflective of the
historical experiences not only of lowland Christianized Filipinos but also of the
other cultural communities in the archipelago.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE
HISTORIOGRAPHY

PoliticalNarratives
Colonial Histories in Historical Narratives
Elite-centric Perspectives in Historical
Narratives
 Patriarchal Orientation in Historical
Narratives
Emphasis on Lowland Christianized
Filipinos
Project: (To be presented 3rd week of September)

 Write the history of your town, community, organization,

family, church. The objective of the project is to examine
the available primary documents such as letters, minutes
of the meeting, pictures, and other memorabilia that you
can use in making a historical account. It is important to
identify and explain the turning points or highlights of
your historical narrative. Your paper will be graded based
on extensiveness of the primary documents to be utilized
and organization of the historical account.
Chapter 2. Nature of History: History as Reconstruction
 First: History is the sum total of everything that has happened in the past.
 Second: History is an account of the past.
 “History is not ‘what happened in the past’; rather, it is the act of selecting, analyzing, and writing about the past…”
 (James Davidson and Mark Lytle, 1982)

 Nature of History
 History is both the past and the study of the past.
 …visualize walking at night…
 …a companion turns on a search light.
 …the landscape represent the past.
 …the one with the search light is the historian.


 This analogy may give us an idea of the nature of history….

 …but it is IMPERFECT.


 NO ONE CAN PRESENT THE PAST AS IT ACTUALLY WAS…

 HISTORY is an individualized view…
 …an act of creation…
 AN ACT OF RE-CREATION.
 Louis Gottschalk (1950): Only a part of what was observed
in the past was remembered by those who observed it;
only a part of what was remembered was recorded; only a
part of what was recorded has survived; only a part of
what has survived has come to the historians’ attention;
only a part of what has come to their attention is
credible; only a part of what is credible has been grasped
and can be expounded or narrated by the historian…
Before the past is set forth by the historian, it is likely to
have gone through eight separate steps at each of which
some of it has been lost; and there is no guarantee that
what remains is the most important, the largest, the most
valuable, the most representative, or the most enduring
part. In other words, the “object” that the historian
studies is not only incomplete, it is markedly variable as
records are lost or recovered.
 Process of History
 Historian must rely on surviving records…
 Historians are fallible, capable of error, with personal biases,
political beliefs, economic status, and idiosyncrasies.
 There is an element of subjectivity in historical accounts.
 Historiansare justified in viewing an event from any
perspective they wish.
 Historianscould excessively focus on his or her own
viewpoint.
 The Question of the Truth
 Limited records of past events still constitute a tangible link
between past and present.
 History is not fiction. History must be based on available
relevant evidence.
 History is dynamic or constantly changing.
Conclusion
 The realization that history involves the study of
individual interpretations or versions of the past
is unsettling.
 History is not the lifeless study of the dead past.
 Learning how historians think and sharpening the
analytical and communication skills
 Are essentials for success in college and
professional life.
 The methods of history are not especially
complicated and confusing… still doing
 history is not altogether easy.