HISTOR

Y
DEFINITION
• History refers to the study and interpretation by
a historian on the data and other source of the
past human activity, people, societies and
civilizations leading to the present day.
• Three important concepts in the definition.
• History is based on past events.
• History is interpreted.
• history relies on data and documents.
ETYMOLOGY
“Historia”
(ἱστορία)

Inquiry.

Clearly the word “Historia” does not mean past event. It

denotes asking question or investigation of the past done
by person trained to do so or by persons who are
interested in human past. Thus, we can say that historical
account must be based on all available relevant evidence.
SUBJECT MATTER

Like other social science, the

subject matter of history is the
life of people and humanity
NATURE
• Interpretive
• Invites to debate about multiple perspectives, offer
their opinions and educated interpretations, and
challenge existing beliefs.
• Revisionist in Scope
• On-going conversation and constant process of
reexamining the past and deconstructing myths based
upon new discoveries, evidences, and principles.
• Constant Process of Questioning
• Requires questioning the texts, examining them, and
NATURE
• Integrative of Many Discipline
• Incorporates geography, literature, aesthetics, sociology,
economics, and political science.
• Inclusive
• Ensures that the experiences of all classes, region, and ethno-
racial groups, as well as both genders, are included.
• Incorporates Historiography
• Includes many different interpretations of historical events written
by many different historians.
• Relevant
• It uses past experiences to experiences to explain what is
important in our lives today.
PURPOSE
• Crucially important for the welfare of individuals,
communities, and the future of our nation
• To ourselves
• Identity
• Enables people to discover their own place in the stories of their
families, communities and nation.
• Critical Skills
• Teaches research, judgments of the accuracy, and reliability of
sources, validation of facts, awareness of multiple perspectives
and biases, analysis of conflict evidence, sequencing to discern
causes, synthesis to present a coherent interpretation, clear and
persuasive written and oral communication, and other skills.
PURPOSE
• To our communities
• Vital places to live and work
• Economic Development
• To our Future
• Engaged citizens
• Leadership
• Legacy
HISTORY DIFFERENTIATED
• History vs. Past
• Past involves everything that ever happened since the dawn of time.
• History is a process of interpreting evidence or record from the past
in a thoughtful and informed way.
• History vs. Prehistory
• Prehistory is a period of human activity prior to the intervention of
writing systems.
• History is a record of significant events that happened in the past.
• History vs. Other Disciplines
• The ways that we study, write, and teach history have changed
dramatically, often because of influence from other disciplines.
HISTORY DIFFERENTIATED
• History, Historicity, Historiography
• History is a narrative account used to examine and analyze past
events.
• Historicity is the authentication of characters in history, as opposed
to legends or myths.
• Historiography is the study of how history was written, by whom
and why it was recorded as such.
• History vs. Herstory
• Feminist argued that it has been men (“his-story”) who usually have
the ones to record the written past.
• Herstory is history written from a feminist perspective, emphasizing
the role of women, or told from a woman’s point of view.
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• Cyclical/Circular View in History
• Stems from the History of the Greeks (events recurred on a regular
basis)
• Herodutus (482-424 BCE), in his work “Histories”, stated that the
story of man happened in recurring cycle.
• Thucydides (460-404 BCE) envisioned that time recurs in a circular
manner which man cannot control.
• Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) suggest that the recurrence and
basis of history was the actions of the people rather than the actions
of the gods.
• Niccolo Machiavelli (1496-1527) suggested that history could be
seen as a casebook of political strategy.
• Arnold Toynbee (1884-1975) and Oswald Spengler (1880-1936)
based their work on the premise that history is cyclical (civilizations
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• Linear View in History
• Views that history is progressive, moving forward and
not having a cyclical return.
• Augustine of Hippo (350-430 BCE) saw history as
being the unfolding of the plan of God, a process that
would end up in the final judgment. (Parousia)
• Francois-Marie Arouet/Voltaire (1694-1788)
envisioned four great ages of man culminating the
scientific enlightenment of Newton.
• Marxists historians sees history as a series of class
struggles that inevitably ends in a worker’s revolution.
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• The Great God View of History
• Most primitive attempts to explain the origin and
development of the world and man are the creation
myths.
• This theological theory was elaborated by
Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians before it
came up to the Greeks and Romans. It was
expounded in the Israelite Scriptures whence it was
taken over and reshaped by the Christian and
Mohammedan religions and their state. (Novack,
n.d.)
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• The Great Man View of History
• Suggests that dominant personalities determine the
course of history.
• Rulers, warriors, and, statesmen are the decisive
forces in history and history is the record of the deeds
of great people.
• Thomas Carlyle’s (1795-1881) “Everyman” sees
history as being a record of the collective experience
of the ordinary person. “Universal history, the history
of what man has accomplished in this world, is at
bottom the history of the great men who have worked
here”.
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• The Best People View of History
• Some elite, the Best Race, the favored nation,
the ruling class alone makes history
• Israelites, as assumed in the Old Testament,
were God’s chosen people.
• Greeks regarded themselves as the acme of
culture, better in all respects that barbarians.
• Hitler thought that the Arian race was the
best among the races.
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• Ideas of the Great Mind View of History
• The driving force of history is people’s ideas
• Anaxagoras said: “Reason (Nous) governs the world.”
• Aristotle held that the prime mover of the universe and
the ultimate animator of everything within it was God, who
was defined as pure mind engaged in thinking about itself
• G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) continual refinement of
intellectual understanding. The progress of mankind
consisted in the working out and consummation of an idea
• Some 18th century rationalists believed that “opinion
governs mankind.” They looked toward an enlightenment
monarch to introduce the necessary progressive
reconstruction of the state and society
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• Great Human View of History
• History has been determined by the qualities of human
nature, good or bad.
• Human nature was regarded as rigid and changing from
one generation to another.
• David Hume asserts that “mankind are so much the
same, in all times and places, that history informs us of
nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is
only to discover the constant and universal principles of
human nature.”
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• Economic View in History
• Sees economic factors as the most important
determinant of history
• The production and exchange of goods and services
is the bases of all social structure and processes
• The economic factor is the foundation for the
superstructure of culture and government
• Karl Marx (1818-1883) is the foremost proponent
of this view. He disagreed with Hegel by saying that
it was not ideas that created material conditions,
but rather the reverse
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• Gender History
• Looks at the past from the perspective of gender
• Considers in what ways historical events and
periodization impact women differently from men
• Gender historians are interested in how gender
difference has been perceived and configured at
different times and places, usually with the
assumption that such differences are socially
constructed
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• Post-modern View of History
• No ultimate purpose in History
• Views history as “what we make of it”
• Believes that historical facts are inaccessible ,
leaving historian to his/her imagination and
ideological bent to reconstruct what happened in
the past
• Use the term historicism to describe the view that
all questions must be settles within the cultural
and social context in which they are raised
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• Other views of History
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) saw history as
having no beginning or end, just chaos that could
only be understood by the powers of the mind.
• Michel Foucault (1926-1984) posits that the
victors of social struggle use their political
dominance to suppress a defeated adversary’s
version of historical events in favor of their own
propaganda, which may go so far as historical
revisionism, as in the cases of Nazism and
Stalinism.
THEORIES OF HISTORY
• Other views of History
• Geographic factors
• Wars
• Religion
• Race
• Climate
HISTORY AND THE HISTORIAN
Historian is an expert or student of history,
especially that of a particular period,
geographical region or social phenomenon.

Duties of a historian.
• Seek historical evidence and facts
• Interpret facts
• Organizes facts chronologically.

The historian therefore, is responsible for reconstructing the past.

HISTORY AND THE HISTORIAN
According to Gottschalk:
“Only a part of what was observed in the past was
remembered by those who observed it, only a part
of what was remembered was recorded; only a
part of what was recorded has survived, only a
part of what was survive has come to the historian
attention Moreover only a part of what is credible
has been grasped, and only a part of what has
been grasped can expounded or narrated by the
historian.”
HISTORY AND THE HISTORIAN
• Some authors define history as a study of historical perspective. In
reconstructing the past, a historian can be subjective; after all he is
human, fallible and capable error.
• People’s memories are filled with bias, self righteousness, pride,
vanity, spinning, obstruction and outright lies. Each has his own frame
of reference or a set of interlocking values, loyalties assumptions
interest and principle of action.
• The historian is influenced by his own environment, ideology,
education and influence. His interpretation of the historical fact is
affected by his context and circumstances. It’s like the Indian parable
of an elephant and the blind men, historians have different historical
Like the Indian parable of an elephant and the blind men,
historians have different historical perspective.
HISTORY AND THE HISTORIAN
Because certain events happened so long ago and
because sometimes the evidence is incomplete,
historians have different approaches and views
about what happened in the past. This is the
subjective nature of history, one historian claims
an event happened a certain way, while another
disagree completely. The best approach is to do
all we can to reconstruct as fully as possible our
picture of the past. To do this, most scholars use
historiography or what they call history of history.
SOME COMMENTS
ABOUT HISTORY
“History is not just a catalogue
of events put in the right order
like a railway timetable”

– A.J.P. Taylor
“History is written by the
winners”

– Napoleon Bonaparte
 “To be ignorant of what
occurred before you were born
is to remain always a child”

– Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If you don’t know history, then
you don’t know anything. You
are a leaf that doesn’t know it is
part of a tree”

– Michael Crichton
 “The most effective way to
destroy people is to deny and
obliterate their own
understanding of their history”

– George Orwell
 “History is a wheel, for the
nature of man is fundamentally
unchanging. What is happened
before will perforce happen
again.”

= George R.R. Martin

 “Let us study things that are no
more. It is necessary to
understand them, if only to avoid
them.”

- Victor Hugo
“He who cannot draw on three
thousand years is living from
hand to mouth.”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe