CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY: DEFINITION, ISSUES,
SOURCES,
AND METHODOLOGY
I. LESSON TITLE
Definition and subject matter
Question and Issues in History
History and Historian
Historical Sources
II. LESSON OVERVIEW
This chapter introduces history as a discipline and as a narrative. It presents the
definition of the history, which transcends the common definition of history as
the study of the past. This chapter also discusses several issues in history that
consequently opens up for the theoretical aspects of the discipline. The
distinction between primary and secondary sources is also discussed in relation
to the historical subject matter being studied and the historical methodology
employed by the historian. Ultimately, this chapter also tackles the task of the
historian as the arbiter of facts and evidences in making his interpretation and
forming historical narrative.
III. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
a. To understand the meaning of history as an academic discipline and to be
familiar with the underlying philosophy and methodology of the discipline.
b. To apply the knowledge in historical methodology and philosophy in assessing
and analyzing existing historical narratives.
c. To examine and assess critically the value of historical evidences and sources.
d. To appreciate the importance of history in the social and national life of the
Philippines.
IV. LESSON
A. DEFINITION AND SUBJECT MATTER
History has always been known as the study of the past. Students of general
education often dread the subject for its notoriety in requiring them to memorize
dates, places, names, and events from distant eras. This low appreciation of the
discipline may be rooted from the shallow understanding of history's relevance to
their lives and to their respective contexts. While the popular definition of history
as the study of the past is not wrong, it does not give justice to the complexity of
the subject and its importance to human civilization.
History was derived from the Greek word historia which means "knowledge
acquired through inquiry or investigation." History as a discipline existed for
around 2,400 years and is as old as mathematics and philosophy. This term was
then adapted to classical Latin where it acquired a new definition. Historia
became known as the account of the past of a person or of a group of people
through written documents and historical evidences. That meaning stuck until
the early parts of the twentieth century. History became an important academic
discipline. It became the historian's duty to write about the lives of important
individuals like monarchs, heroes, saints,
and nobilities. History was also focused on writing about wars, revolutions, and
other important breakthroughs. It is thus important to ask: What counts as
history? Traditional historians lived with the mantra of "no document, no history."
It means that unless a written document can prove a certain historical event,
then it cannot be considered as a historical fact.
But as any other academic disciplines, history progressed and opened up to the
possibility of valid historical sources, which were not limited to written
documents, like government records, chroniclers' accounts, or personal letters.
Giving premium to written documents essentially invalidates the history of other
civilizations that do not keep written records. Some were keener on passing their
history by word of mouth. Others got their historical documents burned or
destroyed in the events of war or colonization. Restricting historical evidence as
exclusively written is also discrimination against other social classes who were
not recorded in paper. Nobilities, monarchs, the elite, and even the middle class
would have their birth, education, marriage, and death as matters of government
and historical record. But what of peasant families or indigenous groups who
were not given much thought about being registered to government records?
Does the absence of written documents about them mean that they were people
of no history or past? Did they even exist?
This loophole was recognized by historians who started using other kinds of
historical sources, which may not be in written form but were just as valid. A few
of these examples are oral traditions in forms of epics and songs, artifacts,
architecture, and memory. History thus became more inclusive and started
collaborating with other disciplines as its auxiliary disciplines. With the aid of
archaeologists, historians can use artifacts from a bygone era to study ancient
civilizations that were formerly ignored in history because of lack of documents.
Linguists can also be helpful in tracing historical evolutions, past connections
among different groups, and flow of cultural influence by studying language and
the changes that it has undergone. Even scientists like biologists and
biochemists can help with the study of the past through analyzing genetic and
DNA patterns of human societies.
B. 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 for whom? These questions can be answered by historiography. In simple
terms, historiography is the history of history. History and historiography should
not be confused with each other. The former's object of study is the past, the
events that happened in the past, and the causes of such events. The latter's
object of study, on the other hand, is history itself (i.e., How was a 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 contexts. The methods 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.
History has played various roles in the past. States use history to unite a nation.
It can be used as a tool to legitimize regimes and forge a sense of collective
identity through collective memory. Lessons from the past can be used to make
sense of the present. Learning of past mistakes can help people to not repeat
them. Being reminded of a great past can inspire people to keep their good
practices to move forward.
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. Positivism also entails
an objective means of arriving at a conclusion. In the discipline of history, the
mantra "no document, no history" stems from this very same truth, where
historians were required to show written primary documents in order to write a
particular historical narrative. Positivist historians are also expected to be
objective and impartial not just in their arguments but also on their conduct of
historical research.
As a narrative, any history that has been taught and written is always intended
for a certain group of audience. When the ilustrados, like Jose Rizal, Isabelo de
los Reyes, and Pedro Paterno wrote history, they intended it for the Spaniards so
that they would realize that Filipinos are people of their own intellect and culture.
When American historians depicted the Filipino people as uncivilized in their
publications, they intended that narrative for their fellow Americans to justify
their colonization of the islands. They wanted the colonization to appear not as a
means of undermining the Philippines' sovereignty, but as a civilizing mission to
fulfill what they called as the "white man's burden." The same is true for nations
which prescribe official versions of their history like North Korea, the Nazi
Germany during the war period, and Thailand. The same was attempted by
Marcos in the Philippines during the 1970s.
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.
One of the problems confronted by history is the accusation that the history is
always written by victors. This connotes that the narrative of the past is always
written from the bias of the powerful and the more dominant player. For
instance, the history of the Second World War in the Philippines always depicts
the United States as the hero and the Imperial Japanese Army as the oppressors.
Filipinos who collaborated with the Japanese were lumped in the category of
traitors or collaborators. However, a more thorough historical investigation will
reveal a more nuanced account of the history of that period instead of a
simplified narrative as a story of hero versus villain.
C. History and the Historian
If history is written with agenda or is heavily influenced by the historian, is it
possible to come up with an absolute historical truth? Is history an objective
discipline? If it is not, is it still worthwhile to study history? These questions have
haunted historians for many generations. Indeed, an exact and accurate account
of the past is impossible for the very simple reason that we cannot go back to
the past. We cannot access the past directly as our subject matter. Historians
only get to access representation of the past through historical sources and
evidences. Therefore, it is the historian's job not just to seek historical evidences
and facts but also to interpret these facts. "Facts cannot speak for themselves."
It is the job of the historian to give meaning to these facts and organize them
into a timeline, establish causes, and write history. Meanwhile, the historian is
not a blank paper who mechanically interprets and analyzes present historical
fact. He is a person of his own who is influenced by his own context,
environment, ideology, education, and influences, among others. In that sense,
his interpretation of the historical fact is affected by his context and
circumstances. His subjectivity will inevitably influence the process of his
historical research: the methodology that he will use, the facts that he shall
select and deem relevant, his interpretation, and even the form of his writings.
Thus, in one way or another, history is always subjective. If that is so, can history
still be considered as an academic and scientific inquiry?
Historical research requires rigor. Despite the fact that historians cannot
ascertain absolute objectivity, the study of history remains scientific because of
the rigor of research and methodology that historians employ. Historical
methodology comprises certain techniques and rules that historians follow in
order to properly utilize sources and historical evidences in writing history.
Certain rules apply in cases of conflicting accounts in different sources, and on
how to properly treat eyewitness accounts and oral sources as valid historical
evidence. In doing so, historical claims done by historians and the arguments
that they forward in their historical writings, while may be influenced by the
historian's inclinations, can still be validated by using reliable evidences and
employing correct and meticulous historical methodology.
The Annales School of History is a school of history born in France that
challenged the canons of history. This school of thought did away with the
common historical subjects that were almost always related to the conduct of
states and monarchs. Annales scholars like Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, Fernand
Braudel, and Jacques Le Goff studied other subjects in a historical manner. They
were concerned with social history and studied longer historical periods. For
example, Annales scholars studied the history of peasantry, the history of
medicine, or even the history of environment. The history from below was
pioneered by the same scholars. They advocated that the people and classes
who were not reflected in the history of the society in the grand manner be
provided with space in the records of mankind. In doing this, Annales thinkers
married history with other disciplines like geography, anthropology, archaeology,
and linguistics.
For example, if a historian chooses to use an oral account as his data in studying
the ethnic history of the Ifugao’s in the Cordilleras during the American
Occupation, he needs to validate the claims of his informant through comparing
and corroborating it with written sources. Therefore, while bias is inevitable, the
historian can balance this out by relying to evidences that back up his claim. In
this sense, the historian need not let his bias blind his judgment and such bias is
only acceptable if he maintains his rigor as a researcher.
C. HISTORICAL SOURCES
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. Primary
sources are those sources produced at the same time as the event, period, or
subject being studied. For example, if a historian wishes to study the
Commonwealth Constitution Convention of 1935, his primary sources can include
the minutes of the convention, newspaper clippings, Philippine Commission
reports of the U.S. Commissioners, records of the convention, the draft of the
Constitution, and even photographs of the
event. Eyewitness accounts of convention delegates and their memoirs can also
be used as primary sources. The same goes with other subjects of historical
study. Archival documents, artifacts, memorabilia, letters, census, and
government records, among others are the most common examples of primary
sources.
On the other hand, secondary sources are those sources, which were produced
by an author who used primary sources to produce the material. In other words,
secondary sources are historical sources, which studied a certain historical
subject. For example, on the subject of the Philippine Revolution of 1896,
students can read Teodoro Agoncillo's Revolt of the Masses: The Story of
Bonifacio and the Katipunan published originally in 1956. The Philippine
Revolution happened in the last years of the nineteenth century while Agoncillo
published his work in 1956, which makes the Revolt of the Masses a secondary
source. More than this, in writing the book, Agoncillo used primary sources with
his research like documents of the Katipunan, interview with the veterans of the
Revolution, and correspondence between and among Katipuneros.
However, a student should not be confused about what counts as a primary or a
secondary source. As mentioned above, the classification of sources between
primary and secondary depends not on the period when the source was
produced or the type of the source but on the subject of the historical research.
For example, a textbook is usually classified as a secondary source, a tertiary
source even. However, this classification is usual but not automatic. If a historian
chooses to write the history of education in the 1980s, he can utilize textbooks
used in that period as a primary source. If a historian wishes to study the
historiography of the Filipino-American War for example, he can use works of
different authors on the topic as his primary source as well.
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 historian should be able to conduct an external and internal criticism of the
source, especially primary sources which can age in centuries. External criticism
is the practice of verifying the authenticity of evidence by examining its physical
characteristics; consistency with the historical characteristic of the time when it
was produced; and the materials used for the evidence. Examples of the things
that will be examined when conducting external criticism of a document include
the quality of the paper, the type of the ink, and the language and words used in
the material, among others.
Internal criticism, on the other hand, is the examination of the truthfulness of the
evidence. It looks at the content of the source and examines the circumstance of
its production. Internal criticism looks at the truthfulness and factuality of the
evidence by looking at the author of the source, its context, the agenda behind
its creation, the knowledge which informed it, and its intended purpose, among
others. For example, Japanese reports and declarations during the period of the
war should not be taken as a historical fact hastily. Internal criticism entails that
the historian acknowledges and analyze how such reports can be manipulated to
be used as war propaganda. Validating historical sources is important because
the use of unverified, falsified, and untruthful historical sources can lead to
equally false conclusions. Without thorough criticisms of historical evidences,
historical deceptions and lies will be highly probable.
One of the most scandalous cases of deception in Philippine history is the hoax
Code of Kalantiaw. The code was a set of rules contained in an epic, Maragtas,
which was allegedly written by a certain Datu Kalantiaw. The document was sold
to the National Library and was regarded as an important precolonial document
until 1968, when American historian William Henry Scott debunked the
authenticity of the code due to anachronism and lack of evidence to prove that
the code existed in the precolonial Philippine society. Ferdinand Marcos also
claimed that he was a decorated World War II soldier who led a guerilla unit
called Ang Maharlika. This was widely believed by students of history and Marcos
had war medals to show. This claim, however, was disproven when historians
counterchecked Marcos's claims with the war records of the United States. These
cases prove how deceptions can propagate without rigorous historical research.
The task of the historian is to look at the available historical sources and select
the most relevant and meaningful for history and for the subject matter that he
is studying. History, like other academic discipline, has come a long way but still
has a lot of remaining tasks to do. It does not claim to render absolute and exact
judgment because as long as questions are continuously asked, and as long as
time unfolds, the study of history can never be complete. The task of the
historian is to organize the past that is being created so that it can offer lessons
for nations, societies, and civilization. It is the historian's job to seek for the
meaning of recovering the past to let the people see the continuing relevance of
provenance, memory, remembering, and historical understanding for both the
present and the future.
Philippine historiography underwent several changes since the precolonial period
until the present. Ancient Filipinos narrated their history through communal
songs and epics that they passed orally from a generation to another. When the
Spaniards came, their chroniclers started recording their observations through
written accounts. The perspective of historical writing and inquiry also shifted.
The Spanish colonizers narrated the history of their colony in a bipartite view.
They saw the age before colonization as a dark period in the history of the
islands, until they brought light through Western thought and Christianity. Early
nationalists refuted this perspective and argued the tripartite view. They saw the
precolonial society as a luminous age that ended with darkness when the
colonizers captured their freedom.
They believed that the light would come again once the colonizers were evicted
from the Philippines. 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.
