Readings in Philippine history for 1st year college

Readings in
Philippine
History
Mr. Rovenick E. Tundag, LPT

UNIT 1: Meaning and
relevance of History
Chapter I: History
and Historical
Research
Chapter II: Sources
of History

Lesson's Objectives
•
•
•

Necessary & Sufficient
-When certain necessary factors are in place,
additional factors are sufficient to cause the
event to occur
For example: It was necessary for Iraq, under
Saddam Hussein’s megalomaniacal
dictatorship, to have had weapons of mass
destruction in the past that were actually
used on thousands of Iraqi citizens. It was
sufficient for the USA to believe that he still
had those weapons for the invasion to have
been deemed necessary.

Historians must
ask many
questions during
their research.
Asking WHAT,
WHO, WHERE,
WHEN, HOW,
AND WHY
“Mare unsay
latest?”

We ask these
questions WHAT,
WHO, WHERE,
WHEN, HOW,
AND WHY
“Mare unsay
latest?”

Primary sources should be used whenever
available.
A primary source is an ORIGINAL item such
as an image, document, map, artifact, or
recording that provides evidence about the
past.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Primary Sources
Primary sources directly address your topic and often
provide information that is unavailable elsewhere.
On the other hand, some primary sources, such as
eyewitness accounts, may be too close to the subject,
lacking a critical distance. Others, such as interviews,
surveys, and experiments, are time consuming to prepare,
administer, and analyze.

A secondary source means through which a
primary source is presented.
For example, an article describing an original
document is a secondary source as it is
written to present or include information
about the primary source
Sometimes, an item can be either a primary
source or a secondary source, depending on
how it is used.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Secondary Sources
Secondary sources provide a variety of expert
perspectives and insights. Also, peer review usually
ensures the quality of sources such as scholarly articles.
Finally, researching secondary sources is more efficient
than planning, conducting, and analyzing certain primary
sources.
In contrast, because secondary sources are not
necessarily focused on your specific topic, you may have
to dig to find applicable information. Information may be
colored by the writer’s own bias or faulty approach.

Tertiary Sources
Tertiary sources provide third-hand
information by reporting ideas and details
from secondary source. This does not
mean that tertiary sources have no value,
merely that they include the potential for an
additional layer of bias.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Tertiary
Sources
Tertiary sources offer a quick, easy
introduction to your topic. They may point to
high-quality primary and secondary sources.
Conversely, because of their distance,
tertiary sources may oversimplify or otherwise
distort a topic. By rehashing secondary
sources, they may miss new insights into a
topic.

Primary Sources Secondary Sources
• Created at the time of an event, or
very soon after
• Created by someone who saw or
heard an event themselves
• Often one-of-a-kind, or rare
• Letters, diaries, photos and
newspapers (can all be primary
sources)
• Created after event; sometimes a
long time after something
happened
• Often uses primary sources as
examples
• Expresses an opinion or an
argument about a past event
• History text books, historical
movies and bibliographies (can all
be secondary sources)

Autobiographies- is an account of a
person’s life written by that person.
Memoirs- is a history or record composed
from personal observation and
experience.

Diaries- a form of autobiographical
writing, is a regularly kept record of the
diarist’s activities and reflections.
Personal Letter- is a type of letter that
usually concerns personal matters and is
sent from one individual.

Correspondence- is a body of letters or
communications.

Interviews- a conversation where questions
are asked and answers are given.
Survey- a list of questions aimed at extracting
specific data from a particular group of
people.
Fieldwork- is the collection of information
outside a laboratory, library and workplace
setting.

Photographs and Posters- they can be
considered as primary sources because
they can illustrate past events as they
happened and people as they were at a
particular time

Paintings- a form of visual art where paint or
ink is used on a canvas
Drawings- a form of visual art in which a
person uses various drawing instruments to
mark paper or another two-dimensional
medium.
Literature- a body of written works.

Speeches and oral histories- a form of
communication in spoken language, made
by a speaker before an audience for a
given purpose.

1. Bibliographies
2. Bibliographical works
3. Periodicals
4. Literature reviews and review articles

1. General references such as
dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs,
and atlas
2. Crowd sources Wikipedia, YouTube,
message boards, and social media
sites like Twitter and Facebook
3. Search sites

Repositories of Primary Sources:
• A library- is a collection of sources
of information and similar
resources, made accessible to a
defined community for reference or
borrowing.

An archive- is an
accumulation of historical
records or the physical
place they are located.

A Museum- is an institution
that cares for (conserves) a
collection of artifacts and
other objects of artistic,
cultural, historical, or
scientific importance.

A historical society- in an
organization dedicated to
preserving, collecting,
researching, and implementing
historical information or items.

Document Collection
-is used in historical research
and in other research designs
in combination with other
ways of data collection.

1. External Criticism – refers to
genuineness of the documents
a researcher uses in a historical
study

Questions to establish the
genuineness of a document or relic:
• Does the language and writing style
conform to the period in question
and is it typical of other work done
by the author?

• Is there evidence that the author
exhibits ignorance of things or
events that man of his training and
time should have known?

• Did he report about things, events,
or places that could not have been
known during the period?

2. Internal Criticism-refers to
the accuracy of the concerns of
a document.

Questions to check the content of a
source of information:
 What was meant by the author by
each word and statement?
 How much credibility can the
author’s statements be given?
 What is the evidential value of its
contents (credibility)?

General Principles for
Determining Reliability

 Human sources may be relics such
as a fingerprint; or narratives such
as a statement of a letter. Relics are
more credible sources than
narratives.

 Any given source may be forged or
corrupted. Strong indications of the
originality of the source increase its
reliability.

 The closer a source is to the event
which it purports to describe, the
more one can trust it to give an
accurate historical description of
what actually happened.

 An eyewitness is more reliable than
testimony at second hand, which is
more reliable than hearsay at
further remove, and so on.

 If a number of independent sources
contain the same message, the
credibility of the message is
strongly increased.

 The tendency of a source is its
motivation for providing some kind
of bias. Tendencies should be
minimized or supplemented with
opposite motivations.

 If it can be demonstrated that the
witness or source has indirect
interest in creating bias than the
credibility of the message is
increased.

Contradictory Sources
What if your sources are
contradicting each other?
What do you do?

The seven-step procedure of source
criticism in history by Bernheim and
Langlois & Seignobos:
1. If the sources all agree about an
event, historians can consider the
event proved.

2. However, majority does not rule;
even is most sources relate events in
one way, that version will not prevail
unless it passes the text of critical
textual analysis.

3. The sources whose account can
be confirmed by reference to
outside authorities in some of its
parts can be trusted in its entirety if
it is impossible similarly to confirm
the entire text.

4. When two sources disagree on a
particular point, the historian will
prefer the source with most
“authority”- that is the source
created by the expert or by the
eyewitness.

5. Eyewitnesses are, to be preferred
especially in circumstances where the
ordinary observer could have
accurately reported what transpired
and, more specifically, when they
deal with facts known by most
contemporaries.

6. If two independently created
sources agree on the matter, the
reliability of each is measurably
enhanced.

7. When two sources disagree
and there is no other means of
evaluation, then historians take
the source which seems to accord
best with common sense.

Questions raised by R.J. Shafer to
evaluate eyewitness testimony:
 Is the real meaning of the
statement different from its literal
meaning? Are words used in sense
not employed today? Is the
statement meant to be ironic
(mean other than it says)?

 How could the author observe the things he
reports? Were his sense equal to the
observation? Was his physical location
suitable to sight, hearing, touch? Did he
have the proper social ability to observe:
did he understand the language, have other
expertise required (e.g., law, military); he
was not being intimidated by his wife or the
secret police?

 How did the author report? and,
what was his ability to do so?
 Do his statements seem inherently
improbable: e.g., contrary to
human nature, or in conflict with
what we know?

 Remember that some types of
information are easier to observe
and report on than others.
 Are there inner contradictions in
the document?

1. On whose primary testimony does the
secondary witness base his
statements?
2. Did the secondary witness accurately
report the primary testimony as a
whole?
3. If not, in what details did he accurately
report the primary testimony?

1.Broad conditions stated.
2.Particular conditions formulated

Synthesis: Historical
Reasoning
One individual pieces of information
have been assessed in context,
hypotheses can be formed and
established by historical reasoning.

Generalization in Historical
Research
As in all research, researchers who
conduct historical studies should
exercise caution in generalizing from
small or non-representative samples.

Readings in Philippine history for 1st year college

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Readings in Philippine history for 1st year college