Historical Sources

Lesson Objectives
By the end of this lesson, the students will be able to:
 differentiate between primary and secondary sources;
 distinguish the importance of both types of sources;
 demonstrate the ability to conduct external and internal criticisms; and
 relate methods of external and internal criticism to the goal of identifying historical truth and
avoiding false historical claims.

Key Concepts
Primary sources. Historical sources that were produced and created in the same period as the historical
subject being studied.
Secondary sources. Historical works that were written and produced through the use of primary sources.
External criticism. The kind of criticism done to establish the authenticity of a primary source.
Internal criticism. The kind of criticism employed in analyzing the content of a primary source.

Lesson Introduction
In the previous lesson, we have looked at the historian as the primary agent of historical
knowledge. We discussed how the historian is responsible for selecting historical facts and interpreting
and examining them to convert facts to historical knowledge. With the past as history's subject matter,
the historian's most essential research tools are historical sources. There is no way for a historian to
access the past, aside from looking at its representation through sources. However, historians often
worked in the context of scarcity. There are almost always not enough documents for them to study and
to rely on to create a full picture of the past. Historical sources as a mere representation of the past are
like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that can never be completed. Historians would always have to work on what
is only available. Fortunately, historical methods guide us on the proper ways of handling limited
evidence to develop substantive and logical historical explanations and arguments.

Classification of 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,
and not on the age of the sources nor the readers' perceived importance to the topic at hand.

Primary sources are those sources produced simultaneously as the event, period, or subject being
studied. For example, suppose a historian wishes to explore the Commonwealth Constitution Convention
of 1935. In that case, potential 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 for 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 sources produced by an author who relied on primary
sources to write the material. In other words, secondary sources are products of historical research that
other historians use for additional information or as background to their study. 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. Thus,
Agoncillo's Revolt of the Masses is a secondary source because it was produced at a different time by a
person who was not an eyewitness of said period.
Moreover, in writing the book, Agoncillo used primary sources for his research, which included
the Katipunan documents, testimonies of the veterans of the revolution, and letters and correspondence
between and among Katipuneros.

However, a student should not be confused about what counts as a primary ora secondary source.
As mentioned above, the classification of primary and secondary sources 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, the same book, Agoncillo's Revolt of the Masses, is usually classified as a secondary source.
While this classification is usual, it is not always correct. If a historian chooses to write a book on the
history of Philippine history books in the 1950s, then he can utilize Agoncillo's work as a primary source.
A college textbook in history is also usually classified as a secondary or even as a tertiary source. But
suppose historians wish to study the history of tertiary-level education in the Philippines. In that case,
they can use the textbooks used by different generations of college students as a primary source.

Both primary and secondary sources are useful in writing and learning history. Secondary sources
are relevant because they enrich our historical knowledge. On the one hand, students of history who are
serious in their study but do not aspire to be historians would benefit from looking at these materials. On
the other hand, historians who wish to contribute to historical knowledge should first have a grasp on the
existing body of works on a particular topic to gain expertise and to be familiar with how other historians
looked at specific historical topics and to determine gaps in historical knowledge that they can fill as they
conduct their original historical research.

Nevertheless, aside from historians whose job is to undertake original historical research,
students of history will also benefit from reading and accessing primary sources. Primary sources can give
fresh insights to students. It can also allow them to develop their interpretation of sources instead of
depending on the interpretation of these primary sources done by authors of secondary sources.

Activity: Which Source?

The class will be divided into five groups. Each group will be assigned one topic from the list:
1. COVID-19 Pandemic
2. 2016 Philippine Presidential Elections
3. EDSA2
4. Mamasapano Massacre
5. Super Typhoon Yolanda

Each group will pretend that they are a group of historians from 2050 considering to write on the
historical event assigned to them. Identify and explain possible primary sources that you may use.
Prepare to discuss it in class.

External and Internal Criticism of Primary Sources

In the process of studying both primary and secondary sources, historians and students of history
need to thoroughly scrutinize these historical sources and evidence to avoid deception and to come up
with the historical truth. The historian should be able to conduct external and internal criticisms of these
sources. Criticism is especially crucial for primary sources that could have been subjected to different
levels of deterioration because of old age or even to forgery.

External criticism is the practice of verifying evidence's authenticity by examining its physical
characteristics, consistency with the historical character of the time when it was supposedly produced,
and the historical source's materials. Examples of the things that will be examined when conducting
external criticism of a document may include the quality of the paper used to produce the document, the
printing or copying technique, and the language and words used in the material. External criticism is an
essential process that a historian should undertake; otherwise, he would commit the mistake of using
illegitimate or fake documents. Authorship and date of production should be established.

In some instances, the historian may seek the assistance of other experts like archaeologists or
linguists. Artifacts, for example, are rare finds and usually unpreserved, especially when not taken care of
by professionals. If a historian ought to write history based on an artifact, thorough external criticism
should be carried out. The same is true with documents. Historical documents should be externally
criticized for both unintentional and intentional errors. For example, before the dawn of computers and
copying machines, manual techniques of reproducing texts were widely used. These processes were
prone to mistakes by typists and scribes. Historians should be able to detect these errors skillfully. This
skill is even more critical in cases of intentional errors like falsification of information, forgery, omissions,
and other modifications that could have been done to documents to serve different purposes and
agendas.
 Internal criticism, on the other hand, is the examination of the content of a particular document.
In the process of internal criticism, the historian ought to read the document meticulously and
understand the meaning that the document wanted to convey. Primary sources are context-specific
materials that are easy to misunderstand. If historians are not well equipped with enough background
knowledge regarding the document's specific context, they would have difficulty understanding and
constructing a narrative out of this raw material. Internal criticism entails looking at the content of the
source and examining the circumstance of its production. It looks at the evidence's truthfulness by
looking at the author of the source and their background, the document's context, the agenda behind its
production, the knowledge which informed it, and its intended purpose. For example, Japanese reports
and declarations during World War II should not be taken as a historical fact hastily. Internal criticism
entails that the historian acknowledges and analyzes how such reports can be manipulated to be used as
war propaganda.

Validating historical sources is essential because the use of unverified, falsified, and untruthful
sources and evidence can lead to equally false conclusions. Without thorough criticisms of historical
evidence, historical deceptions and lies will be highly probable.

One of the most infamous cases of deception in Philippine history is the hoax Code of Kalantiaw.
The code was a set of rules contained in an epic, Maragtas. A certain Datu Kalantiaw allegedly wrote the
Code in 1433, more than a century before Spain officially colonized the Philippines. The document was
donated to the National Library and was regarded as an important pre-colonial document until 1968.
American historian William Henry Scott debunked the code's authenticity due to anachronism and lack of
evidence to prove that the code existed in the pre-colonial Philippine society. Had the historians and the
national librarian employed thorough internal and external criticism, the hoax could have been avoided.
Another debunked historical claim was Ferdinand Marcos' declaration that he was a decorated World
War II soldier who led a guerrilla unit called "Ang Mga Maharlika."Students of history widely believed this
claim, and Marcos had war medals to show. However, this claim was disproved when historians
counterchecked with the war records of the United States. These cases prove how deceptions can
propagate without rigorous historical research.

In the case of the Kalantiaw Code, Scott debunked the validity of the document by pointing out
inconsistencies with more credible sources and glaring inaccuracies in simple historical details in the text.
For example, the Code details certain barbaric laws implemented by Datu Kalantiaw in governing his
people. These laws include drowning murderers in the rivers or burning them with boiling water, and
feeding those who disturb graveyards to ants. These are ludicrous and fascinating. Perhaps this is why a
lot of people believed them without much effort of verification.

However, Scott's closer scrutiny revealed that no credible sources describe pre-Hispanic Philippine
societies as barbaric when it comes to penalizing criminals. Instead, offenders were punished with fines
and servitude. Such characteristics remain in societies that were not subjected to colonization. Aside
from these, historians pointed out more dubious details in the document. For example, the third article of
the Code punishes a man who does not properly care for his, wife and children to swim for three hours.
Ancient Filipino societies did not use “hour” as a unit to measure time. Thus, it is entirely impossible for a
law to stipulate that kind of punishment. Knowledge about the ancient Philippine societies enabled Scott
and other historians to criticize and ultimately debunk the Code of Kalantiaw as a legitimate primary
source. They corroborated and compared the source with other primary and secondary sources that
spoke of that period.

Corroboration is also what revealed the fakeness of Ferdinand Marcos' war medals. As early as
1945, Marcos already claimed that he received prestigious awards from the United States government to
recognize his heroism in Bataan during the Second World War. These medals were the Distinguished
Service Cross that is the second-highest military decoration for any member of the U.S. Army; the Silver
Star, which is the third-highest decoration; and the Order of the Purple Heart, given to any member of
the U.S. Armed Forces wounded in battle. In 2016, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines
concluded that these awards were not real, and Marcos' claimed war exploits that won him the medals
were fake. For example, Marcos' biographies claimed that the Distinguished Service Cross was bestowed
to Marcos because he single-handedly delayed the Fall of Bataan for three months. Renowned World
War II historian Dr. Ricardo T. Jose found this implausible, saying that if such claims were valid, Marcos
would have received the highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, and not the second.
But aside from this apparent implausibility, Jose also debunked Marcos' claim that it was Gen.
Douglas MacArthur himself who pinned this medal to him in 1945. Jose scoured the archives of
MacArthur Memorial in Virginia and found no single mention of MacArthur pinning Marcos the
Distinguished Service Cross. Aside from this, the alleged guerrilla unit led by Marcos "Ang Mga Maharlika"
was never recognized by the U.S. government as shown in its military record. The U.S. Armed Forces
denied Marcos' appeal for the recognition of his unit because of the “limited military values of this duty.”
If Marcos' guerrilla unit was perceived as insignificant by the U.S. Army, how could Marcos be given
prestigious military decorations? All of these findings were found by rigorous examination of relevant
primary sources, and multiple sources did not corroborate Marcos' biographies.

These two cases demonstrate the importance of internal and external criticism of primary
sources. Without the rigor of historical methodology, historians and students of history would never get
close to unraveling true historical knowledge.

Activity: Primary Sources in Your Pockets.

The students will form a small group in class. Each group shall pick a person who would be
hypothetically dead. The rest of the group will try writing about that person's life history using the
sources found in their wallet such as IDs, photographs, receipts, etc. The wallet's owner cannot
participate in the discussion since the person is supposedly dead. The group will present their narrative
before the class and the “dead” person will come back to life and confirm whether the group mates
presented an accurate narrative or not.

Lesson Summary
 Primary and secondary sources serve different functions, and both are important for historians
and students of history.
 Primary sources are important representations of the past that are analyzed and interpreted by
historians. For a source to be classified as primary, it should be produced in the same period as
the subject or by eyewitnesses present in the period being studied.
 Secondary sources are historical texts read by students to gain historical knowledge and by
historians as related texts to their research. These sources are products of historians' work using
primary sources.
 Historians should employ internal and external criticism to debunk false historical claims such as
the Code of Kalantiaw and Marcos' fake war medals.