Caraga state university

Ampayon, Butuan City 8600, Philippines

URL: www.carsu.edu.ph

INTERNAL AND
EXTERNAL CRITICISM
 HISTORICAL METHOD

 refers to the process of probing primary sources that

will be used in writing history. This includes source
criticism which studies the external and internal
validity of sources.
According to Gilbert J. Garraghan and Jean Delanglez
in 1946, source criticism asks the following questions:

 When was the source, written or unwritten, produced?

 Where was it produced? By whom was it produced?
 From what pre-existing material was it produced?
 In what original form was it produced?
 What is the evidential value of its contents?
 EXTERNAL CRITICISM

 The first five questions are considered to be part of

external criticism.

 Historians determine the authenticity of sources by

examining the date, locale, creator, analysis and
integrity of the historical sources. These information
must be consistent with each other. It means, for
example, that the materials used in a source must
match the time and place when it was produced.
 INTERNAL CRITICISM

 The last question is treated as internal criticism as it

helps the historians determine the credibility of the
source. (What is the evidential value of its contents? )

 It studies the content of the source to know its

truthfulness. For a source to be valid, its content must
be reasonable and historically precise. One should
now rely on a data which is not supported by
evidence.
Neuman in 2013 has explained the difference between external
and internal criticism in the illustration:
Historians also have presented the following principles of
source criticism for determining reliability (Olden-
Jørgensen, 1998 and Thurén, 1997):

 Human sources may be relics such as a fingerprint; or

narratives such as a statement or 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.

 A primary source is more reliable than a secondary

source, which is more reliable than a tertiary source,
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 no direct interest in creating bias then the
credibility of the message is increased.
THANK YOU!
 Reference:

Dolina, Virgilio, Nery, Imelda, and Sion, Paul John

(2019). Readings in Philippine History, 2-7 Copyright
2019 ISBN 978-621-95942-4-0