RPH - Meaning and Relevance of Philippine History.

"It is important to know the past for us to understand our present and to help us in shaping our future."

Jose Rizal (Habana et al., 2013)

Where can we find reliable sources about the history of the Philippines during the pre-historic era?

Title: Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Events of the Philippine Islands)

Author: Antonio de Morga, First Published: 1609, Mexico. Language: Spanish

Correcting Colonial Biases

Morga often portrayed Filipinos as “savages” or “uncivilized.” Rizal pointed out inaccuracies and provided evidence of their social, political, and cultural sophistication.

Highlighting Pre-Colonial Achievements

He emphasized native industries like weaving, shipbuilding, mining, and agriculture.

He noted that pre-Hispanic Filipinos had their own writing system (baybayin), literature, laws, and social structures.

Criticism of Spanish Rule

Rizal showed how Spanish colonization disrupted Filipino society.

He exposed abuses of friars and officials, the destruction of native traditions, and the imposition of foreign values.

Asian Identity and Connections

Rizal highlighted trade and cultural exchanges between the Philippines and neighboring Asian civilizations (China, Japan, India, Malaya).

This reinforced the idea that Filipinos were not isolated but part of a larger, advanced Asian world.

Nationalist Message

Rizal wanted Filipinos to take pride in their history and see themselves as a people with a past worth reclaiming.

He urged intellectual awakening: that Filipinos should study their history critically and not rely solely on colonial narratives.

History

is derived from the Greek word historia which means inquiry. (Ocampo, 2014)

is a broad term that includes the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of past events. (Arnold, 2000)

The Filipino term for history is kasaysayan. The term kasaysayan derived from the words salaysay (narrative) and saysay (meaning). (Ocampo, 2013)

Historian

They devote their careers to the study of significant historical events such as military conflicts, political landmarks, and social movements.

The National Library of the Philippines

It housed rare collections of historical data papers and Philippine Revolutionary Records which can be found in Filipiniana and Microfilm sections.

The University of Santo Tomas (UST) Archives

it contains the documents and collections since the establishment of the university during the Spanish period. Moreover, it holds the records of Jose Rizal when he was a college student in the university.

National Archives of the Philippines

they hold the Spanish era collections such as birth certificates, baptismal records, and marriage records that took place in Catholic church and early civil government in the country.

Archdiocesan Archives of Manila

this archdiocesan possesses the infamous retraction letter of Jose Rizal.

Manila Observatory Archives

holds the early data regarding weather disturbances and conditions of the country specially during the Spanish period.

Historiography

is a method of writing history, particularly one that is based on the examination of sources, the selection of specific details from the authentic materials contained in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that withstands critical examination.

is also a term that encompasses the theory and history of historical writing.

Oracle bone inscriptions

from the village of Xiactun, Henan province, China; Shang Dynasty, 14th or 12th century BCE. By permission of the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library

Ancient History

Cuneiform and pictographs were the earliest forms of writing, inscribed on stone and clay tablets in Egypt and Mesopotamia, respectively, as were Chinese ideograms, incised in bronze and on oracle bones. Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Chinese people were the first to keep records of their contemporaries in the form of kings and ancestors' lists.

Historiography in Greece

Logography was the written record of oral traditions concerning the origins of towns, peoples, and places. It synthesized geographical and cultural data and could be considered an early form of cultural anthropology.

Mythographic treatises

aimed at rationalizing and systematizing Greek mythology while tracing the genealogies of families claiming descent from gods or heroes.

Geographical works

describing the peoples and regions encountered during coastal voyages (referred to as periploi) and the neighboring inhabitants inland.

Barbarians

Accounts of the customs and histories of non-Greek peoples, commonly referred to as

Local histories

particularly those detailing the founding of cities, often known as founders of cities.

Chronological works

which may include tables based on lists of kings, magistrates, priests, or priestesses, whether real or apocryphal, used for time-reckoning. Herodotus integrated the various aspects of the logographers' work and became the first to present a coherent history

Historiography in Rome

According to Polybius, the primary reason for Rome's success was the Roman character, as manifested in statesmanship, public spirit, and moderation toward defeated peoples.

Additionally, Polybius argued that Roman political institutions were superior to those of the Greeks. He accepted Aristotle's theory of the cyclical degeneration and regeneration of Greek city states.

Historiography of the Middle Ages

The earliest Christians believed that history was about to come to an end, as Jesus had stated that some of his disciples would survive his Second Coming. With such apocalyptic expectations, all they needed to know about history was that God had entered it via the Incarnation and that Jesus had conquered death via the Resurrection. Thus, Christians developing an interest in history, let alone their philosophy of history, was far from inevitable.

Historiography in Islam

The Koran (Qur'an), Islam's sacred text, contains allusions that serve as the foundation for a providential history of humanity from Adam to Muhammad, Islam's founder. Another important source for Islamic historians is the Hadith (the Prophet Muhammad's traditions or sayings), which are organized in such a way that their lines of transmission can be traced back to those who knew him.

Primary Sources are first

person, contemporaneous accounts of events created by individuals during that period or a few years later (such as correspondence, diaries, memoirs, and personal histories). These unique records exist in a variety of media, including print, artwork, and audio and visual recording, manuscripts, newspapers, speeches, cartoons, photographs, videos and artifacts are all examples of primary sources. Primary sources are those that are closest to the source of information. They contain unprocessed data and must therefore be interpreted by researchers.

Moreover, Gottschalk (1950) defined the primary sources as

"the testimony of an eyewitness, or of a witness by any other of the senses, or of a mechanical device like the Dictaphone-that is, of one who or that which was present at the events of which he or it tells.

Secondary Sources

are inextricably linked to primary sources and frequently serve to interpret them. These are documents that contain references to data that originated elsewhere. Secondary sources frequently synthesize primary sources through generalizations, analysis, interpretation, and synthesis. Textbooks, articles, and reference books are all examples of secondary sources Gottschalk (1950) defines a secondary source as "the testimony of anyone who is not an eyewitness-that is, one who was not present at the events of which he tells." Hence, these sources are interpretations or analysis of authors based on the data that they gathered.

External criticism or test of authenticity

proves that the document or event has genuineness. Doubts and errors will be avoided in history, and it removes the inappropriate revisionism in our narratives.

Internal criticism or test of credibility

shows if historians provided legitimate and factual data.