Historical Sources and Historical Criticisms

Historical Sources

• Tangible remains of the past

• An object from the past or testimony concerning the past on which historians depend in order to create their own depiction of the past.

DOCUMENTS

Written or printed materials that have been produced in one form or another sometime in the past.

NUMERICAL RECORDS

Include any type of numerical data either printed or handwritten

ORALS STATEMENTS

Include any form of statement made orally by someone

RELICS

Any object whose physical or visual characteristics can provide some information about the past.

Primary Sources

• Prepared by an individual who was a participant in, or a direct witness to, the event that is being described.

• Includes first-hand information, such as eyewitness reposts and original documents.

• Advantage: directly address your topic and often provide information that is unavailable elsewhere.

• Disadvantage: May be too close to the subject, lacking critical distance. It is

autobiography (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

an account of a person’s life written by the same person

memoir (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

is a record composed from personal observation and experience.

diary (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

is a form an autobiography which records, in a regular basis, the writer’s activities and reflections.

personal letter (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

type of letter that usually concerns personal matters and is sent from one individual to another.

correspondence (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

means of communication through an exchange of letters with someone.

interview (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

one-on-one conversation where questions are asked andanswers are given.

survey (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

list of questions aimed at extracting specific data from a particular group of people.

field research or fieldwork (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

the collection of information outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting.

painting (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

form of visual art where paint or ink is used on a canvas to depict an artist’s rendering of a scene or even of a non-representational image.

drawing (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

form of visual art in which a person uses various drawinginstrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional medium

Literature (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

body of written work such as poems and prose

Photographs and posters i (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

illustrate past events as they happened and people as they were at a particular time.

speech (TYPES OF PRIMARY SOURCES)

form of communication in spoken language, made by a speakerbefore an audience for a given purpose.

Secondary Sources

• Document prepared by an individual who was not a direct witness to an event, but who obtained his or her description of the event from someone else.

• Includes secondhand information such as description of an event by someone other than the eyewitness, or a textbook author’s explanation of an event.

• Advantage: provide a variety of expert perspectives and insights

• Disadvantage: information may be stained by the writer’s bias.

newspaper (TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES)

a periodical publication containing written information about the current events

magazine (TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES)

a periodical produced by professional writers and editors for general reading

journal (TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES)

periodical written by scholars for scholars for the purpose of information.

biography (TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES)

description of a real person’s life, including factual details and stories from the person’s life.

film review (TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES)

assesses a film’s overall quality and determine whether or not it is worth watching.

book review (TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES)

form of a literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on the content style and merit.

General References (TYPES OF SECONDARY SOURCES)

(Dictionaries, encyclopedia, almanacs, atlases, etc._

library (REPOSITORIES)

a curated collection of sources of information and similar resources, selected by experts and made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing.

archive (REPOSITORIES)

an accumulation of historical records or the physical place they are located

museum (REPOSITORIES)

an institution that conserves a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, and scientific importance.

historical society (REPOSITORIES)

an organization dedicated in preserving, collecting, researching, and interpreting historical evidences

HISTORICAL CRITICISM

Also known as the HISTORICAL-CRITICAL METHOD, is a branch of criticism that “investigates the origin of text or source in order to understand the word behind the text.”

PURPOSE (HISTORICAL CRITICISM)

• PRIMARY GOAL: to discover the text primitive or original historical context and its literal sense.

• SECONDARY GOAL: to establish a reconstruction of historical situation of the author and recipients of the text.

TYPES (HISTORICAL CRITICISM)

In order for a historical source to be used as evidence in history, basic matters about its form and content must be settled:

• External Criticism (investigates the documents’ form)

• Internal Criticism (investigates the documents’ content)

EXTERNAL CRITICISM

• This type of criticism looks for the obvious sign of “forgery” or “misrepresentation”. This type of criticism tests the authenticity of the sources. It is interested in the writing styles of the eyewitness and also analyzes the original manuscript (autograph); its integrity, localization and the date it was written.

• To ascertain if a particular data is fabricated, forge, fake, corrupted or a hoax, that source must undergo the test of authenticity.

TEST OF AUTHENTICITY

• The FIRST STEP to test a source is to determine the date of document to see whether it is anachronistic. Anachronism means out of time or order, something that could not have been there at that particular time. It could be a person, thing or idea placed in a wrong time. Being able to spot anachronism is important because it helps us test the reliability of a source.

• • Example: In Rizal’s allegedly first poem “Sa Aking Mga Kabata” where we could find the term “kalayaan”, Rizal admitted that he first encountered the word, through a Marcelo H. Del Pilar’s translation of Rizal’s essay “El Amor Patrio”. Rizal wrote this essay in 1882 while the poem supposedly was written by him in the year 1869.

• The SECOND STEP is to determine the author’s handwriting, signature or seal. We can compare the handwriting of particular author to his other writings. Obvious sign of forgery includes patch writing, hesitation as revealed by ink blobs, pauses in the writing, tremor causing poor line quality and erasures

INTERNAL CRITICISM

• This type of criticism looks for deeper or more intense study of sources. Usually historians first apply external criticism before undergoing the test of credibility because of internal criticisms implicit character. It refers to the “accuracy of the content of a document”.

• Internal criticism has to do with what the document says. It investigates the content or substance of a document and the author’s point of view.