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Western Mindanao State University

College Of Liberal Arts


HISTORY DEPARTMENT

MODULE 1
Basic Concepts and
Information
Basic Concepts and Information
A. Meaning and Relevance of History
B. Distinction of Primary and secondary sources
C. External and Internal Criticism
D. Repositories of Primary Sources
E. Different Kinds of Primary Sources
Meaning and Relevance of History
History can be described in two ways: Etymology and its
definition.

Etymology
The word history comes ultimately from ancient Greek
utopia. This Greek word was borrowed into Classical Latin as
“historia”, meaning inquiry (investigation, research, account
description, written account of past events, recorded of past
events, story or narrative). This is an inquiry into what happened
in the past, when it happened, and how it happened.
The word history entered the English language in 1390
with the meaning of “relation of incidents, story.” In the middle
English, the meaning was story in general.
Meaning and Relevance of History
• History can be defined in several ways. It could be defined
as a documented record of man and his society.
• History can be defined as everything that has happened or
occurred from the beginning of the time to the last
instance.
• As a field of study, it is a study of man and his achievements
from the beginning of written records to the present time
(Gray, 1956 in De Viana, 2015)
• As a record, it is a documented history of man and his
society.
• As literature, history is and effective presentation of the
unfolding events
• According to De Viana, 2015, history as a record of events
show the evolution of man and his society and from the
age of barbarism to what he is today.
History has been defined differently by
different scholars.
• History, in its broadest sense, is everything
that ever happened. (Henry Johnson)
The modern concept of History
• According to modern concept, history does not
contain only the history of kings and queens,
battles and generals, but the history of the
common man-his house and clothing, his fields
and their cultivation, his continued efforts to
protect his home and hearth, and to obtain a just
government, his aspirations, achievements,
disappointments, defeats and failures. It is not
only the individual, but the communities and the
socities are the subject of history. It has thus
become a future-oriented study related to
contemporary problems.
6 W questions
• What happened?
• When did it happen?
• Where did it happen?
• Why did it happen?
• To whom did it happen?
• What were its consequences?
Brief History
• The historical development of history goes
back to the ancient Greek times, particularly
in the time of Herodotus (fifth century BC c
484-425 BC), the father of history. A Greek
historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the
Persian Empire (Modern-day Bodrum, Turkey)
and He wrote about the Graeco-Persian wars
(Histories) that contains a mine of information
including those relating to the ancient
Egyptians and Persians.
History
• Thucydides (460 BC – 400 BC) is credited having
approached history with a well-developed historical
method in his work the History of Peloponnesian War.
(Thucydides, unlike Herodotus and other religious
historians, regarded history as being the product of the
choices and actions of human beings, and looked at
cause and effect, rather than as the result of divine
intervention)

• Thucydides emphasized chronology, a neutral point of


view and that the human world is the result of the
human actions.
History
• Greek historians also viewed as cyclical, with
events regularly reoccurring.

• 15th century- The Arab historian, Ibn Khaldun,


who lived in the 15th century AD., was another
early writer of ideas relevant to history. He
introduced a scientific/historical method to the
study of history. His historical method include the
role of state, communication, propaganda, and
systematic bias in history.
• Traditionally, the study of history was limited to the
written and spoken word. However, the rise of
academic professionalism and the creation of new
academic scientific fields in the 19th to 20th centuries
brought a flood of new information that challenged
this notion. Archaeology, Anthropology and other
social sciences were providing new information and
even theories about human history. Some traditional
historians questioned whether these new studies were
really history, since they were not limited to written
word. A new term, prehistory, was coined.
• Historians began looking beyond traditional
political history narratives with new
approaches such as economic, social and
cultural history,
Sources of History
• Sources are the originators of information and
data. Abbott places sources with documents,
written materials that says something about
historical documents.
• Documents can be letters, receipts, copies of
speech, eyewitness accounts, narrations, or
books. (These are some of the sources and not
the ONLY sources of history.)
Sources of History
• There are some also resources which are not
written such as relics, fossils, remains, and
memorabilia. Some sources are alive such as
living eyewitnesses. When the researcher uses
them in his/her research, they are always known
as respondents or informants.
• In the study of Philippine history, sources are
called Batis which also means stream or a spring.
A batis therefore is the spring of historical
information. The usual batis are documents
especially archival documents.
Types of Sources
• Primary Sources are considered as the lifeblood of
history. De Viana (2015) states that the primary sources
directly talks about the subject matter. Accounts of
people who are direct participants or eyewitness to an
event are also primary sources.

• Ex. Minutes of meeting, diaries and journals,


autobiographies, speeches, receipts, essays written by
a person expressing his/her views, laws, letters of
instructions, decrees, letters, eyewitness accounts,
official reports, newsletter articles reporting directly
about the event, editorial or books containing direct
quotation of events.
Types of Sources…
• Secondary Sources are documents or works
made by individuals who are not directly
involved to the events or made by people who
obtained the information from somebody else
or from primary sources.
• E.g. Textbooks, Encyclopedia entries,
newspapers, accounts of a meeting, magazine
articles
External and Internal Criticism
• External Criticism is the establishment of authenticity.
It’s purpose is to ensure that the documents are not
mere forgeries or inventions. (Physical and chemical
tests)
• Internal Criticism is the establishment of accuracy. It’s
purpose is to evaluate the accuracy and the worth of
data. In determining the accuracy of the data, four
factors are to be considered, namely: (a) author’s
knowledge and competence, (b) time delay, (c) motives
and biases of the author and (d) consistency of the
data.
Some Repositories of Primary Source…
See Repositories of Primary Source ppt.

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