Historical Methods and Criticism Quiz

Historical Sources

• Historical study involves understanding the past through various sources.
• Only a portion of observed events are remembered, recorded, and survive, influencing the historian's interpretation.
• Historical sources include artifacts and testimonies (oral or written).

Writing History

• History aims to enhance knowledge, skills, attitudes, interests, and values.
• Historical content must be age-appropriate and align with the learner's cognitive and psychological levels.
• Historical narratives must be well-structured, linking people, dates, events clearly.
• History should be connected to other fields (literature, science, art) and relevant to daily life. Local history is important.

Historiography

• Historiography is the study of how history is written.

• It examines who recorded events, how they were documented, and why interpretations change over time.

• Historiography is crucial to understanding the processes that shape how history is recorded, interpreted, and shared; it offers a critical lens to evaluate the methodologies, biases, and contexts influencing historical narratives.

• Different historians might offer varying views due to variations in perspectives and methods employed.

• Perspectives include political, social, economic, and cultural history, which focus on leaders, governments, policies, ordinary people, trade, resources, labor, and art, religion, and ideas.

Verisimilitude

• Verisimilitude refers to the quality of appearing to be true or real.

Historical Sources

• Sources are objects or testimonies from the past used by historians to understand and present the past.

Sources of Historical Data

• Historical data are derived from artifacts left behind from the past.
• Relics (remains like pottery shards, coins, ruins, manuscripts, books, portraits, etc.)
• Testimonies of witness, including oral or written sources(property exchanges, speeches, commentaries)

Primary and Secondary Sources

• Primary Sources

  • Provide direct access to the past
  • Examples include diaries, journals, autobiographies, sound recordings, interviews, artifacts
  • Enable researchers to understand what happened during a specific historical event.

• Secondary Sources

  • Written about the primary source at a later time.
  • Based on the study of the primary source and interpreted evidence.
  • Examples include textbooks, encyclopedias, magazine articles, biographies.
  • Offer interpretations, analysis, and broader perspectives.

Primary Source Examples

• Diaries and journals (Example: Anne Frank's diary)
• Autobiographies (Example: Nelson Mandela's autobiography)
• Sound recordings and interviews ( Example: Historical interviews, radio addresses)
• Artifacts

Secondary Source Examples

• Textbooks
• Encyclopedias
• Magazine or news articles dealing with issues from the past.
• Books with footnotes and bibliographies
• Reprints of artwork
• Journals and magazine articles interpreting or reviewing previous findings.
• Conference proceedings
• Literary criticism, book reviews.
• Works incorporating primary sources

Why Use Primary Sources?

• Offer a direct window into the past.
• Provide unique perspectives about that time period.
• Allow for a deeper understanding of how people's lives were during a specific period.
• Personal documents enrich understanding of life in a specific era.

Primary Source Disadvantages

• Potential incompleteness; little context.
• Relies on prior knowledge to understand the source.
• Requires an ability to interpret patterns and observations.

Why Use Secondary Sources

• Provide analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of original information.
• Useful for uncovering background information and broader perspectives.
• Enables the understanding of complex historical contexts.
• Combine multiple primary sources into a comprehensive narrative

Secondary Source Disadvantages

• Interpretation— potential for inaccuracies.
• Validity may be questionable due to being second-hand information
• Can be difficult to find trustworthy, reliable information.

Written Sources of History

• Narrative(Literary)
• Diplomatic(or Juridical)
• Social Documents

Non-Written Sources of History

• Material evidence (archaeological): pottery, jewelry, dwellings, graves, churches, roads.
• Oral evidence: sagas, folk songs, popular rituals, interviews

Tertiary Sources

• Indexed, organized, and compiled resources.
• Condense information about a historical topic; aggregate evidence.
• Example: encyclopedias

What Type of Source?

• Use different types of sources to build a more comprehensive understanding of a specific era in history, including primary (direct accounts) and secondary (analyzing primary sources) material.

Historical Criticism

• The method historians use to study the past.
• Similar to a set of steps to investigate and present a historical narrative.
• Aids in solving present-day problems.

Goal of Historical Criticism

• Discover meaning of texts
• Establish historical situation of author & recipient.
• Assess source authenticity.
• Weigh evidence against truth.

Historical Criticism Branches

• External Criticism (validity)
  • When & where document written?
  • Who was the real author?
  • Material of writing?
  • Language similar to time period?
  • Is it authentic?
• Internal Criticism (meaning)
  • Author's viewpoint?
  • Intended purpose?
  • Consistency in source?
  • Intended meaning for the targeted audience?

Tests of Authenticity

• Check for anachronisms (use of materials, ideas, or words inconsistent with time period.).
• Corroborate evidence or information through additional, related sources.
• Provenance (the origin and history of a source).
• Semantics (meaning of words in the source).
• Hermeneutics (principles of interpretation)
• Check for author's credentials, handwriting, signature, and/or seal.

Examples of Historical Criticism

• 15th-century Europe lacked widespread paper; 16th century saw the invention of the pencil.
• Analyzing whether a text's language and concepts align with the timeline of historical context

Analyzing a Historical Source

• Determine the source's origin, context, audience, motive, relevance of information, and biases present.
• By evaluating these factors, analysts can form a more comprehensive understanding of historical narratives, including the conditions and motives underlying the creation of historical text

Specific Historical Documents

• (Examples of specific historical documents & their origin)

Repositories of Primary Sources in the Philippines

• National Archives
• National Library
• National Historical Commission
• National Museum

Positivism

• Approach of historiography where historians are required to cite written primary documents.

Post-colonialism

• School of thought which explores identities and histories of formerly colonized nations and challenged their societies which were shaped by the colonial past.

Sources of Precolonial History of the Philippines

• Archaeological findings
• Records of trade contacts with other regions (e.g., Chinese and Song Dynasty, Bruneian Empire, Japan, Muslim traders)
• Genealogy records of local rulers
• Spanish chroniclers' accounts.
• Historical analysis of social patterns unique to the region.

Examples of Precolonial Historical Documents

• (Example of Laguna Copperplate Inscription from 900 CE)