INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS FOR

GEED 10033 Readings in the Philippine

History

Compiled by:
Prof. Cherry Lynn Roloyan
FOREWORD

This instructional material is intended for the course:Readings in the Philippine History.
The content of this instructional material was taken from the book: Readings in
Philippine History 2014 by Mc Donald Domingo Pascual, S. D. This is intended to be
used for students at Polytechnic University of the Philippines – Sto. Tomas Branch, Sto.
Tomas, Batangas.

Ms. Cherry Lynn Roloyan

Faculty PUP Sto.Tomas Branch
LESSON 1: MEANING AND RELEVANCE OF HISTORY

WHAT IS HISTORY?
History - Derived from Greek word historia which means “knowledge through acquired
inquiry or investigation”.
• Account of the past.
• The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, looked upon history as the systematic
accounting of a set of natural phenomena, especially human affairs in
chronological order.
• Focus on writing about wars, revolutions, and other important breakthroughs. •
Traditional Historian lived with the mantra of “no document, no history.” (unless a
written document can prove a certain Historical event, then it cannot be considered
as historical fact.”
• Historian started to realize the loophole and started using other kinds of historical
sources, which may not be written form but were just as valid.
• E.g. Oral traditions in forms of epic, songs, artifacts, architecture, and memory.
They started collaborating with other disciplines such as linguistics, biologist, or
biochemist (for DNA) and even archaeologist.

The Relevance of History

Collingwood (1976) tells that history is valuable because it teaches people what they
have done and thus what man is. Through history, the present generation could assess
the feats and defeats of the previous generations and can learn not only from their
errors but also from their victories. The following relevance of history were enumerated
by Peter Stearns (1998).
• History contributes to moral understanding.
• History helps us understand people and societies.
• History provides Identity.
• History is essential for good citizenship.

Questions and Issues in History

Indeed, history as a discipline has already turned into a complex and dynamic inquiry.
This dynamism inevitably produced various perspectives on the discipline regarding
different questions like: What is history? Why study history? And history from whom?
These questions can be answered by historiography.

Historiography

The practice of historical writing is called historiography. This is a traditional method in

doing historical research that focus on gathering documents from libraries and archives
to form a pool of evidence needed in making descriptive or analytical narrative. History
and Historiography should not be confused with each other. History is the study of the
past, the events that happened in the past, and the causes of such events.
Historiography, on the other hand, is history itself. (i.e., How was certain historical text
written? Who wrote it? What was the context of its publication? What particular historical
method was employed? What were the sources used?). Thus, historiography lets the
students have a better understanding of history. They do not only get to learn historical
facts, but they are also provided with the understanding of the facts’ and the historian’s
context. The method employed by the historian and the theory and perspective, which
guided him, will also be analyzed. Historiography is important for someone who studies
history because it teaches the student to be critical in the lessons of history presented to
him.

Positivism

Is the school of thought that emerged between the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
This thought requires empirical and observable evidence before one can claim that a
particular knowledge is true. It also entails an objective means of arriving at a
conclusion.
Positivist historians are also expected to be objective and impartial not just in their
arguments but also on their conduct of historical research.

Postcolonialism

Is a school of thought that emerged in the early twentieth century when formerly
colonized nations grappled with the idea of creating their identities and understanding
their societies against the shadows of their colonial past.
Postcolonial history looks at two things in writing history: first is to tell the history of their
nation that will highlight their identity free from that of colonial discourse and knowledge,
and second is to criticize the methods, effects, and idea of colonialism. Postcolonial
history is therefore a reaction and an alternative to the colonial history that colonial
powers created and taught to their subjects.

History and The Historian

History deals with the study of past events. Individuals who write about history are
called historians. They undertake historical research to create a meaningful and
organize rebuilding of the past. Historian’s job not just to seek historical evidences and
facts but also to interpret these facts. It is the job of the historian to give meaning to
these facts and organize them into a timeline, establish causes, and write history. He is
a person of his own who is influenced by his own context, environment, ideology,
education, and influences, among others. His interpretation of the historical facts is
affected by his context and circumstances. His subjectivity will inevitably influence the
process of his historical research.
HISTORICAL SOURCES

Historical Data are sourced from artifacts that have been left by the past. These artifacts
can either be relics or remains, or the testimonies of witnesses to the past. Thus,
historical sources are those materials from which the historians construct meaning. To
rearticulate, a source is an object from the past or a testimony concerning the past on
which historians depend to create their own depiction of that past. A historical work or
interpretation is thus the result of such depiction.
Relics or "remains," whose existence offer researchers a clue about the past. For
example, the relics or remains of a prehistoric settlement. Artifacts can be found where
relics of human happenings can be found, for example, a potsherd, a coin, a ruin, a
manuscript, a book, a portrait, a stamp, a piece of wreckage, a strand of hair, or other
archaeological or anthropological remains.
With the past as history’s subject matter, the historian’s most important research tools
are historical sources. In general, historical sources can be classified between primary
and secondary sources. The classification of sources between these two categories
depends on the historical subject being studied.

WRITTEN SOURCES OF HISTORY

Written sources are usually categorized in three ways: (1) narrative or literary, (2)
diplomatic or juridical, and (3) social documents.
1. Narrative or literature are chronicles or tracts presented in narrative form, written to
impart a message whose motives for their composition vary widely. For example, a
scientific tract is typically composed in order to inform.
2. Diplomatic 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.
3. Social documents are information pertaining to economic, social, political, or judicial
significance. They are records kept by bureaucracies. A few examples are
government reports, such as municipal accounts, research findings, and documents
like these parliamentary procedures, civil registry records, property registers, and
records of census.

NON-WRITTEN SOURCES OF HISTORY

Unwritten sources are as essential as written sources. There are two types: the material
evidence and oral evidences.
1. Material evidence, also known as archaeological evidence is one of the most important
unwritten evidences. This includes artistic creations such as pottery, jewelry,
dwellings, graves, churches, roads, and others that tell a story about the past. These
artifacts can tell a great deal about the ways of life of people in the past, and their
culture.
2. Oral evidence is also an important source of information for historians. Much are told
by the tales or sagas of ancient peoples and the folk songs or popular rituals from the
premodern period of Philippine history. During the present age, interviews is another
major form of oral evidence.

MAIN TYPES OF WRITTEN SOURCES

1. Primary sources are original, first-hand account of an event or period that are usually
written or made during or close to the event or period. These sources are original
and factual, not interpretive. Their key function is to provide facts. Examples of
primary sources are diaries, journals, letters, newspaper and magazine articles
(factual accounts), government records (census, marriage, military), photographs,
maps, postcards, posters, recorded or transcribed speeches, interviews with
participants or witnesses, interviews with people who lived during a certain time,
songs, plays, novels, stories, paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

A good definition of primary source is provided by Louis Gottschalk ( 1950) in his

book Understanding History. According to him, a primary source is -the testimony of
an eyewitness, or of a witness by any other of the senses, or of a mechanical device
like the Dictaphone-that is, of one who or that which was present at the events of
which he or it tells.] Based on this definition, a myriad of examples includes the
following: diaries, audio recordings, artifacts, letters, newspaper articles and
documents such as birth certificates, marriage contracts, and death certificates.
Visual sources like works of arts, photographs and videos are also included in this
category.

2. Secondary sources, on the other hand, are materials made by people long after the
events being described had taken place to provide valuable interpretations of
historical events. A secondary source analyzes and interprets primary sources. It is
an interpretation of second-hand account of a historical event. Examples of
secondary sources are biographies, histories, literary criticism, books written by a
third party about a historical event, art and theater reviews, newspaper or journal
articles that interpret.

Gottschalk (1950) defines a secondary source as the testimony of anyone who is not
an eyewitness-that is, one who was not present at the events of which he tells. II
Thus, the main difference between it and a primary source is the presence of the
writer or author or observer to the event being described. Secondary sources may
include sources as bibliographies, commentaries, annotations, dictionaries,
encyclopedias, journal articles, magazines, monographs, and textbooks.
Both primary and secondary sources are useful in writing and learning history. However,
historians and students of history need to thoroughly scrutinize these historical sources
to avoid deception and to come up with the historical truth.
The Repositories of Historical Sources

Philippine Depositories. The foremost depository where students of history can go to is

the National Library of the Philippines (NLP). Holding a wide array of general and rare
collections on Philippine history, it includes the following units: (1) Filipina Division and
(2) Microfilm Section. These units, indeed, are very helpful to students in their
academic pursuits and research endeavors. Important documents such as the
Historical Data Papers and the Philippine Revolutionary Records are housed in this
library.

The Archives of the University of Santo Tomas contains rich Spanish-era collection,
especially with r e g a r d s to education-related r e co r d s during the Spanish Period.
The National Archives of the Philippines (NAP) also contains rich Spanish-era
collection, more particularly when it comes to government-related records of the
Spanish
regime. If the students wish to conduct researches on ecclesiastical-related topics, they
can go and visit the Archdiocesan Archives of Manila which i s located in Arzobispado, l
n t r a m u r o s . This depository contains vast information on Church affairs. It is also here
where the infamous Retraction Letter of Rizal was found. Moreover, the Manila
Observatory Archives contains pertinent data regarding the various weather
disturbances and conditions. This is due to the fact that the Observatories served as
the weather forecasting bureau of the Spanish colonial government.

Other institutions of higher learning boast their rich collections of both primary
and secondary sources. Among them are the University of the Philippines Main Library
in Diliman Quezon City; the Ateneo de Manila University's Rizal Library and Historical
Collection of the United States Embassy in Loyola Heights, Quezon City; and, the De La
Salle University Libraries in Ermita, Manila.
Students who wish to conduct researches on ethnic groups can visit the SIL
Philippines in Horseshoe Drive, Quezon City. The said archives offer almost 2,000 titles
relating to the languages of the Philippines. The archives of the Congregation of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM), also in Quezon City, offers collections on documents
written by CICM missionaries who were posted in the northern parts of Luzon. Other
depositories are the centers established by local historical networks. These centers
provide helpful sources about the history of their towns or provinces; thus the study of
local history becomes easier.
Spanish Depositories. The following are the principal Spanish depositories which
contain tons of collections pertaining to the Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines
1. Archivo General de lndias (Seville)

2. ArchivoHistorico Nacional (Madrid)

3. Museo Naval de la Ministerio de Marina (Madrid)
4. Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid)
5. Biblioteca Nacional de Espana (Madrid)
6. Archivo de Ministerio de A suntosExteriores (Madrid)

The Spanish government through the Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte launched

the Portal de Archivos Espafloles (PARES) which offers free access to digitized copies
of documents and other sources that can be found in Spanish Archives. Through this
initiative, students of history in the Philippines can freely access digitized documents
and other sources online.

Mexican Depository. The Philippines was a part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the
capital of which was situated in Mexico. The ties between the two Spanish territories
ended when Mexico gained its independence in 1821. Because of this, a multitude
number of sources could possibly be sitting in the Archivo General de la Nacion de
Mexico which can be very useful to students.
British Depository. For a brief period of time, that is from 1762-1764, the British
occupied Manila. It was through this invasion that some historical sources written
during the Spanish period made its way to the British Museum. As a matter of fact,
Jose Rizal took some time to research inside this facility in an attempt to annotate the
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas of Antonio de Morga.

American Depositories. Among the main depositories in the United States of

America include the following:
1. National Archives and Records Service (NARS)

2. Library of Congress (Washington D.C.)

3. Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library (Chicago, Illinois)
4. Lily Library (Bloomington, Indiana)
5. Harvard University
6. Stanford University
7. University of Michigan

The proliferation of online archives is also beneficial to researchers who do not have the
capacity to conduct research in any of the above-mentioned depositories. Although
many of their collections are yet to be digitized, arch ive.org and Project Gutenberg offer
a wide array of scanned sources which are available for download.
TESTS OF AUTHENTICITY AND CREDIBILITY

What is the Difference between Method [of History] and Historiography?

Method pertains to the process of thoroughly examining and critically analyzing

the records and survivals of the past. Likewise, it means the accumulation of data
about the past to be thoroughly examined and critically analyzed by a set of scientific
rules so that a certain past that is attempted to reconstruct can be determined
whether it actually happened or not.
On the other hand, Historiography refers the process of reconstructing
historical data that have already been tested by the method. Also, it means the
synthesizing of historical data into a narrative or discourse. The writing of history
books, researches such as theses and dissertations or articles for publications or for
lectures in conferences and seminars undergo historiography.

External Criticism: The Test of Authenticity

Authenticity means originality. In history, it is more important to use original

sources than secondary sources because they provide raw data that have not been
subjected to the interpretation of historians. They also lead directly the researcher or
historian to the perception and milieu of the eyewitness in relation to the event being
studied. Genuine sources are usually the sources from which secondary materials
derived their data.
The 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 the evidence.
Why the Test of Authenticity is done? It is done in order to determine the
genuineness of sources. It is necessary to determine real accounts from hoax stories
or those that were fabricated covertly by persons who wanted to have false claims on
documents that allegedly prove certain phenomena in the very remote past. An
example to this is the alleged Maragtas which was purported by Pedro Monteclaro.
William Henry Scott (1984) argued in his book Prehispanic Source Materials for the
Study of Philippine History that Maragtas was made by Monteclaro based on
suspicious oral and fabricated written sources.
Sources are likewise fabricated in order to justify the supposed occurrence of
events. A classic case on this matter is Negative Revisionism which, in anyway,
attempts to alter history or its course by means of trying to moderate or restrain the
impact of history to a person, institution or groups.

Another reason in performing the Test of Authenticity is for the historian to

detect misleading sources. Sources that mislead purposively can misinform and,
therefore, miseducate people because they divert the value or real meaning of
events. Moreover, identifying the authorship of a source, the time of an event,
including the
time when the source was written, and the space of an event are equally important.
The authorship of the source provides strong authenticity and credibility to it while time
and space, together with the prevailing practices of that period, become the bases of
the context of an event, the building blocks of a historical process. It must be noted
that an event being studied must be situated .
1. Competence of the source in telling the truth
2. Willingness of the source in telling the truth
3. Adequacy of data relayed by the source
4. Reliability of the source when corroborated by other independent sources.

According to Gottschalk (1950), in examining the credibility of a source, the

historian or the skilled history researcher plays the role of a ―prosecutor, attorney for
the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But as a judge, he rules out no evidence
whatever if it is relevant. To him, any single detail of testimony is credible—even if it is
contained in a document obtained by force or fraud, or is otherwise impeachable, or is
based on necessary evidence, or is from an interested witness—provided it can pass
the four tests‖ enumerated above.

An independent source, even when it states certain pieces of information

claimed by another source, is a kind of source that derived its information from the
occurrence of the event itself. In other words, its author was there both in time and
space and that he was mentally mature and conscious to absorb the building blocks of
an event as they happened before his eyes. This means that an independent source is
an account that did not rely on some extrinsic informants. Certainly, secondary
sources cannot be considered independent sources because of their reliance to
primary sources. In order to adequately establish the credibility of a source, two other
independent sources—written or unwritten—must corroborate its claims.

In History, there is no such thing as objectivity or judgment-free account. Even

primary sources contain biases. Biases can be seen in the author ‘s [or eyewitness ‘]
perspective, affiliation, acclamation or appreciation of certain individuals and
institutions, preferences, manner of description and worse, one-sided view, etc. But
biases must be minimized in order that the account would not be considered a
product of what is known as yellow journalism.

Basic Assumptions with Sources

Here are some assumptions which can guide historians or researchers in examining
primary sources:

1. Sources like relics, artifacts, remains, documents, and witnesses are accurate
when proven to be authentic and credible. Relics, artifacts, and remains, though,
are more reliable while documents (or narratives) and witnesses are more
detailed and specific.
2. The authenticity of a source increases the credibility of that source.
3. A primary source is more reliable than a secondary one.
4. The credibility of a source is increased if it is corroborated by independent
sources. 5. Sources would tend to be bias, especially to its provenance or to the one
who made it or held its custody.
6. If sources like witnesses or their testimonies do not have immediate interest or
direct involvement to the event, they become more credible than those who have
interest or direct involvement.
7. If all independent sources agree to a certain event, then the event becomes
usually acceptable or factual.
8. Testimonies of witnesses are credible if the witnesses are mentally and
emotionally fit at the time of the interview or declaration.
9. The source that does not conform to its milieu is considered a fabricated source.

References
Gottschalk, L. (1950). Understanding history. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hoefferle, C. (2013). The
st
essential historiography reader (1 Ed.). Pearson.
Howell, M., & Prevenier, W. (2001) From reliable sources: An introduction to historical methods. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Rosales, A., & Sebastian, R. R. (2008) Historia: Pag-usbong, pakikipagtagpo at pagbubuo.
Manila: Mary Jo Publishing House.
Stearns, P. N. (1998). Why study history? Retrieved from https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and
membership/aha-history-and-archives/historical-archives/why-study- history-(1998).