Lesson 1:

INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY: DEFINITION, ISSUES, SOURCES, AND METHODOLOGY

LESSON OBJECTIVES

• To learn the meaning of history as an academic discipline and to be familiar with the
underlying philosophy of the discipline
• To examine and assess critically the value of historical sources
• To appreciate the importance of history in the social and national life of the Philippines

History is the study of the past – specifically the people, societies, events and problems of the
past – as well as our attempts to understand them. It is a pursuit common to all human societies. History
can take the form of a tremendous story, a rolling narrative filled with great personalities and tales of
turmoil and triumph. Each generation adds its own chapters to history while reinterpreting and finding
new things in those chapters already written.

History provides us with a sense of identity. By understanding where we have come from, we
can better understand who we are. History provides a sense of context for our lives and our existence. It
helps us understand the way things are and how we might approach the future.

History teaches us what it means to be human, highlighting the great achievements and
disastrous errors of the human race. History also teaches us through example, offering hints about how
we can better organize and manage our societies for the benefit of all.

‘History’ and ‘the Past’

Those new to studying history often think history and the past are the same thing. This is not the
case. The past refers to an earlier time, the people and societies who inhabited it and the events that
took place there. History describes our attempts to research, study and explain the past. This is a subtle
difference but an important one. What happened in the past is fixed in time and cannot be changed. In
contrast, history changes regularly. The past is concrete and unchangeable but history is an ongoing
conversation about the past and its meaning.

The word “history” and the English word “story” both originate from the Latin historia, meaning
a narrative or account of past events. History is itself a collection of thousands of stories about the past,
told by many different people.

Revision and Historiography

Because there are so many of these stories, they are often variable, contradictory and
conflicting. This means history is subject to constant revision and reinterpretation. Each generation
looks at the past through its own eyes. It applies different standards, priorities and values and reaches
different conclusions about the past.

The study of how history differs and has changed over time is called historiography.
Primary and Secondary Sources

Primary sources provide a first-hand account of an event or time period and are considered to
be authoritative. They represent original thinking, reports on discoveries or events, or they can share
new information. Often these sources are created at the time the events occurred but they can also
include sources that are created later. They are usually the first formal appearance of original research.

Secondary sources involve analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of primary sources.

Scholarly journals, although generally considered to be secondary sources, often contain articles
on very specific subjects and may be the primary source of information on new developments.

Primary and secondary categories are often not fixed and depend on the study or research you
are undertaking. For example, newspaper editorial/opinion pieces can be both primary and secondary. If
exploring how an event affected people at a certain time, this type of source would be considered a
primary source. If exploring the event, then the opinion piece would be responding to the event and
therefore is considered to be a secondary source.

Secondary sources offer an analysis, interpretation or a restatement of primary sources and are
considered to be persuasive. They often involve generalization, synthesis, interpretation, commentary
or evaluation in an attempt to convince the reader of the creator's argument. They often attempt to
describe or explain primary sources.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Readings in Philippine History by John Lee Candelaria and Veronica Alphora, page 1-9.
 Lesson 2:
CONTENT AND CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF SELECTED PRIMARY SOURCES IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

LESSON OBJECTIVES
• To familiarize oneself with the primary documents in different historical periods
• To learn history through primary sources
• To properly interpret primary sources through examining the content and context of the
document

EXAMPLES of Primary Sources

The Teachings of the Katipunan

Realizing the importance of a primer to indoctrinate the members of the society in its ideals, Jacinto
prepared one which he called Kartilla, a word adopted from the Spanish cartilla which at the time meant
a primer for grade school students. The Kartilla consisted of thirteen "teachings" which the members of
the society were expected to follow. The primer follows:

Filipino version from a handout of the Centennial Commission. Strangely, it consisted only of twelve
teachings.

Kartilya ng Katipunan
ni Emilio Jacinto

• Ang buhay na hindi ginugugol sa isang malaki at banal na kadahilanan ay kahoy na walang lilim,
kundi damong makamandag.
• Ang gawang magaling na nagbuhat sa paghahambog o pagpipita sa sarili, at hindi talagang
nasang gumawa ng kagalingan, ay di kabaitan.
• Ang tunay na kabanalan ay ang pagkakawang-gawa, ang pag-ibig sa kapwa at ang isukat ang
bawat kilos, gawa't pangungusap sa talagang Katuwiran.
• Maitim man o maputi ang kulay ng balat, lahat ng tao'y magkakapantay; mangyayaring ang
isa'y hihigtan sa dunong, sa yaman, sa ganda...; ngunit di mahihigtan sa pagkatao.
• Ang may mataas na kalooban, inuuna ang puri kaysa pagpipita sa sarili; ang may hamak na
kalooban, inuuna ang pagpipita sa sarili kaysa sa puri.
• Sa taong may hiya, salita'y panunumba.
• Huwag mong sayangin ang panahon; ang yamang nawala'y mangyayaring magbalik; ngunit
panahong nagdaan ay di na muli pang magdadaan.
• Ipagtanggol mo ang inaapi; kabakahin ang umaapi.
• Ang mga taong matalino'y ang may pag-iingat sa bawat sasabihin; matutong ipaglihim ang
dapat ipaglihim.
• Sa daang matinik ng buhay, lalaki ang siyang patnugot ng asawa at mga anak; kung ang
umaakay ay tungo sa sama, ang pagtutunguhan ng inaakay ay kasamaan din.
 • Ang babae ay huwag mong tingnang isang bagay na libangan lamang, kundi isang katuwang at
karamay sa mga kahirapan nitong buhay; gamitin mo nang buong pagpipitagan ang kanyang
kahinaan, at alalahanin ang inang pinagbuharan at nag-iwi sa iyong kasanggulan.
• Ang di mo ibig gawin sa asawa mo, anak at kapatid, ay huwag mong gagawin sa asawa, anak at
kapatid ng iba.

Speech
of
Her Excellency Corazon C. Aquino
President of the Philippines
During the Joint Session of the United States Congress

[Delivered at Washington, D.C., on September 18, 1986]

Three years ago, I left America in grief to bury my husband, Ninoy Aquino. I thought I had left it also to
lay to rest his restless dream of Philippine freedom. Today, I have returned as the president of a free
people.

In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him. By that brave and selfless act of giving honor, a nation in
shame recovered its own. A country that had lost faith in its future found it in a faithless and brazen act
of murder. So in giving, we receive, in losing we find, and out of defeat, we snatched our victory.

For the nation, Ninoy became the pleasing sacrifice that answered their prayers for freedom. For myself
and our children, Ninoy was a loving husband and father. His loss, three times in our lives, was always a
deep and painful one.

Fourteen years ago this month was the first time we lost him. A president-turned-dictator, and traitor to
his oath, suspended the Constitution and shut down the Congress that was much like this one before
which I am honored to speak. He detained my husband along with thousands of others – senators,
publishers and anyone who had spoken up for the democracy as its end drew near. But for Ninoy, a long
and cruel ordeal was reserved. The dictator already knew that Ninoy was not a body merely to be
imprisoned but a spirit he must break. For even as the dictatorship demolished one by one the
institutions of democracy – the press, the Congress, the independence of the judiciary, the protection of
the Bill of Rights – Ninoy kept their spirit alive in himself.

The government sought to break him by indignities and terror. They locked him up in a tiny, nearly airless
cell in a military camp in the north. They stripped him naked and held the threat of sudden midnight
execution over his head. Ninoy held up manfully–all of it. I barely did as well. For 43 days, the authorities
would not tell me what had happened to him. This was the first time my children and I felt we had lost
him.

When that didn’t work, they put him on trial for subversion, murder and a host of other crimes before a
military commission. Ninoy challenged its authority and went on a fast. If he survived it, then, he felt,
God intended him for another fate. We had lost him again. For nothing would hold him back from his
 determination to see his fast through to the end. He stopped only when it dawned on him that the
government would keep his body alive after the fast had destroyed his brain. And so, with barely any life
in his body, he called off the fast on the fortieth day. God meant him for other things, he felt. He did not
know that an early death would still be his fate, that only the timing was wrong.

At any time during his long ordeal, Ninoy could have made a separate peace with the dictatorship, as so
many of his countrymen had done. But the spirit of democracy that inheres in our race and animates this
chamber could not be allowed to die. He held out, in the loneliness of his cell and the frustration of exile,
the democratic alternative to the insatiable greed and mindless cruelty of the right and the purging
holocaust of the left.

And then, we lost him, irrevocably and more painfully than in the past. The news came to us in Boston. It
had to be after the three happiest years of our lives together. But his death was my country’s
resurrection in the courage and faith by which alone they could be free again. The dictator had called
him a nobody. Two million people threw aside their passivity and escorted him to his grave. And so
began the revolution that has brought me to democracy’s most famous home, the Congress of the
United States.

The task had fallen on my shoulders to continue offering the democratic alternative to our people.

Archibald Macleish had said that democracy must be defended by arms when it is attacked by arms and
by truth when it is attacked by lies. He failed to say how it shall be won.

I held fast to Ninoy’s conviction that it must be by the ways of democracy. I held out for participation in
the 1984 election the dictatorship called, even if I knew it would be rigged. I was warned by the lawyers
of the opposition that I ran the grave risk of legitimizing the foregone results of elections that were
clearly going to be fraudulent. But I was not fighting for lawyers but for the people in whose intelligence I
had implicit faith. By the exercise of democracy, even in a dictatorship, they would be prepared for
democracy when it came. And then, also, it was the only way I knew by which we could measure our
power even in the terms dictated by the dictatorship.

The people vindicated me in an election shamefully marked by government thuggery and fraud. The
opposition swept the elections, garnering a clear majority of the votes, even if they ended up, thanks to a
corrupt Commission on Elections, with barely a third of the seats in parliament. Now, I knew our power.

Last year, in an excess of arrogance, the dictatorship called for its doom in a snap election. The people
obliged. With over a million signatures, they drafted me to challenge the dictatorship. And I obliged
them. The rest is the history that dramatically unfolded on your television screen and across the front
pages of your newspapers.

You saw a nation, armed with courage and integrity, stand fast by democracy against threats and
corruption. You saw women poll watchers break out in tears as armed goons crashed the polling places
to steal the ballots but, just the same, they tied themselves to the ballot boxes. You saw a people so
committed to the ways of democracy that they were prepared to give their lives for its pale imitation. At
 the end of the day, before another wave of fraud could distort the results, I announced the people’s
victory.

The distinguished co-chairman of the United States observer team in his report to your President
described that victory:

“I was witness to an extraordinary manifestation of democracy on the part of the Filipino people. The
ultimate result was the election of Mrs. Corazon C. Aquino as President and Mr. Salvador Laurel as Vice-
President of the Philippines.”

Many of you here today played a part in changing the policy of your country towards us. We, Filipinos,
thank each of you for what you did: for, balancing America’s strategic interest against human concerns,
illuminates the American vision of the world.

When a subservient parliament announced my opponent’s victory, the people turned out in the streets
and proclaimed me President. And true to their word, when a handful of military leaders declared
themselves against the dictatorship, the people rallied to their protection. Surely, the people take care of
their own. It is on that faith and the obligation it entails, that I assumed the presidency.

As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it. That is my contract with my people and my commitment
to God. He had willed that the blood drawn with the lash shall not, in my country, be paid by blood
drawn by the sword but by the tearful joy of reconciliation.

We have swept away absolute power by a limited revolution that respected the life and freedom of every
Filipino. Now, we are restoring full constitutional government. Again, as we restored democracy by the
ways of democracy, so are we completing the constitutional structures of our new democracy under a
constitution that already gives full respect to the Bill of Rights. A jealously independent Constitutional
Commission is completing its draft which will be submitted later this year to a popular referendum.
When it is approved, there will be congressional elections. So within about a year from a peaceful but
national upheaval that overturned a dictatorship, we shall have returned to full constitutional
government. Given the polarization and breakdown we inherited, this is no small achievement.

My predecessor set aside democracy to save it from a communist insurgency that numbered less than
500. Unhampered by respect for human rights, he went at it hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that
insurgency had grown to more than 16,000. I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to
stifle a thing with the means by which it grows.

I don’t think anybody, in or outside our country, concerned for a democratic and open Philippines, doubts
what must be done. Through political initiatives and local reintegration programs, we must seek to bring
the insurgents down from the hills and, by economic progress and justice, show them that for which the
best intentioned among them fight.
 As President, I will not betray the cause of peace by which I came to power. Yet equally, and again no
friend of Filipino democracy will challenge this, I will not stand by and allow an insurgent leadership to
spurn our offer of peace and kill our young soldiers, and threaten our new freedom.

Yet, I must explore the path of peace to the utmost for at its end, whatever disappointment I meet there,
is the moral basis for laying down the olive branch of peace and taking up the sword of war. Still, should
it come to that, I will not waver from the course laid down by your great liberator: “With malice towards
none, with charity for all, with firmness in the rights as God gives us to see the rights, let us finish the
work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for
his widow and for his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among
ourselves and with all nations.”

Like Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy. Like Lincoln, I don’t relish it. Yet, I
will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country.

Finally, may I turn to that other slavery: our $26 billion foreign debt. I have said that we shall honor it.
Yet must the means by which we shall be able to do so be kept from us? Many conditions imposed on the
previous government that stole this debt continue to be imposed on us who never benefited from it. And
no assistance or liberality commensurate with the calamity that was visited on us has been extended. Yet
ours must have been the cheapest revolution ever. With little help from others, we Filipinos fulfilled the
first and most difficult conditions of the debt negotiation the full restoration of democracy and
responsible government. Elsewhere, and in other times of more stringent world economic conditions,
Marshall plans and their like were felt to be necessary companions of returning democracy.

When I met with President Reagan yesterday, we began an important dialogue about cooperation and
the strengthening of the friendship between our two countries. That meeting was both a confirmation
and a new beginning and should lead to positive results in all areas of common concern.

Today, we face the aspirations of a people who had known so much poverty and massive unemployment
for the past 14 years and yet offered their lives for the abstraction of democracy. Wherever I went in the
campaign, slum area or impoverished village, they came to me with one cry: democracy! Not food,
although they clearly needed it, but democracy. Not work, although they surely wanted it, but
democracy. Not money, for they gave what little they had to my campaign. They didn’t expect me to
work a miracle that would instantly put food into their mouths, clothes on their back, education in their
children, and work that will put dignity in their lives. But I feel the pressing obligation to respond quickly
as the leader of a people so deserving of all these things.

We face a communist insurgency that feeds on economic deterioration, even as we carry a great share of
the free world defenses in the Pacific. These are only two of the many burdens my people carry even as
they try to build a worthy and enduring house for their new democracy, that may serve as well as a
redoubt for freedom in Asia. Yet, no sooner is one stone laid than two are taken away. Half our export
earnings, $2 billion out of $4 billion, which was all we could earn in the restrictive markets of the world,
went to pay just the interest on a debt whose benefit the Filipino people never received.
 Still, we fought for honor, and, if only for honor, we shall pay. And yet, should we have to wring the
payments from the sweat of our men’s faces and sink all the wealth piled up by the bondsman’s two
hundred fifty years of unrequited toil?

Yet to all Americans, as the leader of a proud and free people, I address this question: has there been a
greater test of national commitment to the ideals you hold dear than that my people have gone
through? You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were
reluctant to receive it. And here you have a people who won it by themselves and need only the help to
preserve it.

Three years ago, I said thank you, America, for the haven from oppression, and the home you gave
Ninoy, myself and our children, and for the three happiest years of our lives together. Today, I say, join
us, America, as we build a new home for democracy, another haven for the oppressed, so it may stand as
a shining testament of our two nation’s commitment to freedom.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Readings in Philippine History by John Lee Candelaria and Veronica Alphora, page 13-42.

REFERENCES

Speech of President Corazon Aquino. (1986). The Official Gazette.

Agoncillo, T. (1960). History of the Filipino People. https://filipino.biz.ph/history/kartilya.html