HISTORY

- reconstruction of past events

- both an event and the discipline
- as an event: historical phenomenon or experience (building blocks of historical process).
- as a discipline: e.i. BA History and component sources like Philippines in the Spanish period.
- continuous process of interaction between the historian and the series of past events into which
he inquires.
- ang kasaysayan ay ‘salaysay na may saysay’ at pag-uulat sa sarili.

THE HIERARCHY OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE

History as:

1) Reconstruction of Events

2) Written Document / Material Culture

3) Remembered / Recovered Part

4) Witnessed / Constructed Part

5) Actuality / as a Whole

CONTEXTUALIZING A SOURCE OF HISTORY

1) ARTIFACT – serves as a source of information (e.g. Bahay na Bato).

2) MENTIFACT – also called as ‘psychofact.’ This refers to the ideas, values and beliefs of a culture. (e.g.
“The Bahay na Bato represents the Filipinos sense of resilience.”)

3) SOCIOFACT – pertains to the beliefs of a with the view that these beliefs are more as facts rather than
as interpretations or mere opinions (e.g. The Bahay na Bato became the sophisticated evolution of the
Bahay Kubo).
THE HISTORIAN AS PERSON AND PROFESSIONAL

- For a person to be called a historian, he must have a degree in history and should have written
scholarships as his contribution in the discipline.
- It is the personal and professional responsibility of a historian to deal with his task as objectively
possible and have it known to different publics.

“A historian ought to be exact, sincere, and impartial, free from passion, unbiased by interest, fear,
resentment or affection, and faithful to the truth, which is the mother of history the preserver of great
actions, the enemy of oblivion, the witness of the past, the director of the future.” –Edward Hallett Carr

“The historian without his facts is rootless and futile; the facts without their historian are dead and
meaningless.” – B. R. Ambedkar

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT HISTORY

 History is a memorization of names, places, and events.

 History is highly theoretical.
 History repeats itself.
 History is for those who would like to teach.
 History majors are knowledgeable on everything.
 History majors end up unemployed.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES

PRIMARY SOURCE

- the written or unwritten testimony of the eyewitness or participant of an event being studied or
investigated.
- eyewitness or participant must have a direct involvement to the event

Advantages Disadvantages

a) provides raw data a) usually inaccessible because most of them are

kept in archives and great bulks of them are in
b) more credible than secondary source libraries and archives of countries abroad

b) susceptible by the ravages of time

c) unable to understand the language in 17 th to 18th

centuries
SECONDARY SOURCE

- written and unwritten testimony generated from a primary source

- written or told by somebody who had no direct involvement to an event.

Advantages Disadvantages

a) more accessible to historian / researcher a) may be subjected to the bias of its researcher

b) can provide ready-made analysis b) less credible than primary source

c) deteriorates competence of historian; contains

errors in the data

Examples of Historical Sources

Primary Sources Secondary Sources

Birth / Marriage / Death Certificates Textbooks
Affidavits Documentary Presentations
Memoirs / Diaries Monographs
Gov’t Reports / Census Researches
Artifacts Magazines
Autobiographies Biographies
News Article during Japanese Period News Article in 2010 about WWII
Monreal Stone Journal Articles
Oral Testimonies of Witnesses Website Articles
Letters / Correspondences
Last Will and Testament