MEANING AND

RELEVANCE
OF HISTORY
MODULE 1

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WHAT IS HISTORY?

2. Chronological record of 3. Came from the Greek

significant events often word “Historia” which
1. Study of the past. including an explanation of means “knowledge
their causes. acquired through inquiry or
investigation.”
NO DOCUMENT,
NO HISTORY!
• if there’s no written document that can
prove a certain historical event, then it
cannot be considered as a historical fact.
VALID HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
• Government records
• Chronicle’s accounts
• personal Letters
• Receipts
• Diaries
• Atifacts
• architecture
• etc.
 DIVISIONS
OF HISTORY
1. PRE Period where no written records
HISTORY/ exist or when the writings of eole
were not Preserved.
PRE analyzed through fossils and
HISTORIC artifacts by Archeologists and
PERIOD Anthroologists.

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 Period when man started to
write and record events using a
system of writing.
2. analyzed through wood carves,
engraved metals, written
HISTORY PaPyrus, written PaPers , etc.
it is studied by historians.
 HISTORY VS.
HISTORIOGRAPHY
 Writing of history
 based on critical examinations of sources,
selection of particular details from
authentic materials in those sources and
the synthesis of those details into a
narrative.
 done through “historical research” with the
aid of “Historical Methodology”.
HISTORICAL WRITING
1. Choosing a topic.
2. Looking for data through historical
sources.
3. Determining the data as a primary or
secondary source.
4. Analyze the data through historical
criticisms.
5. Writing the entire narrative.
IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY
1. To unite a nation.
2. To legitimize regime and forge a
sense of collective identity through
collective memory.
3. To make sense of the present.
4. To not repeat mistakes of the past.
5. To inspire pepole to keep their good
practices to move forward.
DISTINCTION OF
PRIMARY AND
SECONDARY
SOURCES;
External and
Internal Criticism

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HISTORICAL SOURCES
1. PRIMARY SOURCES
• Produced at the same time as the event being
studied (Contemporary Accounts)
• Include documents or artifacts created by a
witness or participant of the event.
• “firsthand testimony”, “eyewitness accounts”
• It may include diaries, letters, interviews,
photographs, newspapers
6 POINTS OF INQUIRIES TO EVALUATE
RIMARY SOURCES (Garraghan, 1950)
1. DATE- when was it roduced?
2. LOCALIZATION- when did it originate?
3. AUTHORSHIP- who wrote it?
4. ANALYSIS- what reexisting material serves as a basis
for its production?
5. INTEGRITY- what was its original form?
6. CREDIBILITY- what is the evidential value of its
content?
ADVANTAGES OF PRIMARY
SOURCES
1. PRIMARY SOURCES
• provide a window into the past - unfiltered
access to the record of artistic, social, scientific
and political thought and achievement during the
specific eriod under the study and produced by
people who lived during that period.
• these unique, often profoundly personal
documents and objects can give a very real
sense of what it was like to be alive during a long
past era.
DISADVANTAGES OF PRIMARY SOURCES

PRIMARY SOURCES
• are often incomplete and have little contect.
• students must use prior knowledge and work
with multiple rimary sources to find patterns.
2. SECONDARY SOURCES
• Produced by authors who used and interpreted
rimary sources.
• analyzed a scholarly question and often use
primary source as evidence.
• include books, thesis, dissertations, journals,
magazines, knowledge of historians.
• written few years after the exact time of the
event.
ADVANTAGES OF SECONDARY SOURCES
SECONDARY SOURCES
• provide analysis, synthesis, interretation, or
evaluation of the original informatiion.
• best for uncovering background of historical
information about a topic and broadening your
understanding of a topic by exosing to others
perspectives, interretations and conclusions.
• allows the reader to get exert views of events
and often bring together multiple primary
sources relevant to the subject matter.
DISADVANTAGES OF SECONDARY SOURCES

SECONDARY SOURCES
• their reliability and validity are oen to question,
and often they do not rovide exact information.
• they do not represent first hand knowledge of a
subject or event.
• there are countless books, journals, magazine
articles and web pages that attemt to interpret
the past and finding good secondary sources can
be an issue.
HOW TO EVALUATE THE VALIDITY AND
CREDIBILITY OF THE PRIMARY AND
SECONDARY SOURCES

1. how did the author know about the given details?

 Was the author Present at the event?
2. Where did the information come from?
 Is it a ersonal experience, an eyewitness account, etc.
3. Did the author conclude based on a single or multiple
source?
IN TERMS OF HISTORICAL
RELIABILITY

PRIMARY SOURCES
SECONDARY SOURCES
the closer the date of
creation, the more the more recent, the
reliable one more reliable one.
GUIDE QUESTIONS

 when it was written?

 where it was written?
 who was the author?
 why did it survive?
 what were the materials used?
 were the words used were being used during
those times?
WRITTEN
SOURCES
OF
HISTORY

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1. NARRATIVE OR LITERARY
2. DIPLOMATIC SOURCES

• sources that rofessional historians treated as purest,

and best source.
• a LEGAL DOCUMENT is usually sealed or authenticated
to rovide evidence that a legal transaction has been
completed and can be used as evidence in judicial
proceedings in case of dispute.
3. SOCIAL DOCUMENTS
• these are information pertaining to economic, social,
political or judicial significance.
• they are records ket by bureaucracies such as
government reports, municipal accounts, proerty
registrations and census records.
HISTORICA
L
CRITICISM

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1.
INTERNAL
CRITICISM

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INTERNAL CRITICISM

1. Looks at the truthfulness and factuality of the

evidence by looking at the author of the source,
its context, the agenda and the purpose behind its
creation.
2. it looks at the content of the source and
examines the circumstance of its production.
GUIDE QUESTIONS
 was it written by eyewitness or not?
 was it written?
 is there consistency?
 what are the connotations?
 what is the literal meaning?
 what is the meaning of the context?
7FACTORS IN EVALUATING THROUGH
INTERNAL CRITICISM (Howell and
Prevenier, 2001)
1. Genealogy of the document
2. Genesis of the document
3. Originality of the document
4. Interpretation of the document
5. Authorial authority of the document
6. Competence of the observer
7. Trustworthiness of the observer
1. Genealogy of the document
is the document authentic; is it an original or a copy?
Genealogy is the study of the history of families, especially
through studying historical documents to discover the
relationships between particular people and their families.
Genealogical research is the tracing of an individual's
ancestral history using historical records, both official and
unofficial, such as: Census Records. Vital Records (birth
certificates, adoption records, death certificates, marriage
and divorce records, etc.) City Directories.
Genealogy writing is technical writing about dates, facts,
history, and citations. There may not be much emotion to
add when writing about unknown historic people, but we can
guess at how they may have felt about a marriage, a death,
immigration, or other events in their lives.
2. Genesis of the document
 who created the document, where, and when?
 The genesis of something is its beginning, birth, or
creation.
 Genesis of a story refers to the origin of something,
when it is begun or starts to exist.
3. Originality of the document
historian must know something about the tradition
around a document in order to read it properly?
4. Interpretation of the document
deciphering the intended meaning of the document.
Author authority The art or process of determining
the intended meaning of a written document, such as a
constitution, statute, contract, deed, or will.
The art or process of discovering and expounding the
intended signification of the language used iu a statute,
will, contract, or any other written document, that is, the
meaning which the author designed it to convey to others.
refers to a person's jurisdiction over a particular subject
and the right they have to claim their expertise as an
author on the matter.
5. Authorial authority of the document
with what authority does the writer speak from?
Author Authority can be described as the level of authority
an author has gained for a certain topic. If authors publish on
trustworthy websites, their credibility and authority grows, and
in turn this also helps increase the authority of other platforms
they are featured on.
6. Competence of the observer
factors particulars to the individual observer and
competence pertaining to the time in which the
observer lived?
An observationally competent person is proficient at:
(1) making observations well, (2) reporting them well,
and (3) correctly assessing the believability of reports
of observations. Care must be taken in interpreting
these divisions.
7. Trustworthiness of the observer
does the observer have any bias?
2.
EXTERNA
L
CRITICISM

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EXTERNAL CRITICISM

 the practice of verifying the authenticity of

evidence by examining the physical
characteristics; consistency with the historical
characteristics of the time when it was produced,
and the materials used as evidence.
 Analyzing source documents for authenticity and
accuracy:
Accurate and authentic: Sources about which there is no uncertainty regarding
form or content.
Not accurate but authentic: Sources that are “false” in an intellectual sense, in
that they were written to mislead contemporaries or to claim illegitimate rights or
privileges.
Accurate but not authentic: Sources that are copies of official documents or
source material, but not written by the stated author. Intended to fool the reader as to
the origin of the document. The information within can be verified as accurate.
Copies sometimes fall within this category if they were expressly made and notarized
or otherwise authenticated at the time of issuance. As long as the intent of the copier
was not to deceive the reader as to it’s origin.
Not accurate and not authentic: Sources that attempt to deceive the reader on
both the origin of the document and the contents. These can be useful not in the
event they describe so much as the intent and political background of the time.
Documents such as the Elder Protocols of Zion, The Tanaka Memorial, and others tell
us about the political and mental context of the writer and those that uncritically
accept the texts than the intended content of the writing itself.
ACTIVITY 1
• Instruction: Basing from the lesson cited above, you
are asked to do the following:
a. Give at least 2 examples of primary sources and the
corresponding secondary sources derived from them.
TOPIC: Philippines vs. China
b. Write your own article in no more than three
paragraphs with 15 to 20 sentences.
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