Secondary sources are also important

HISTORY can make us go back in time without time machines, but how does history access the past? Histories are taken from historical accounts or sources which historians study in order to create their studies of the past. Since history is considered a social science, there is what we call “historical methodology” which begins with classifying the sources.

There are two kinds of sources: 1) Primary sources which are accounts which were written or taken from eyewitnesses to the events or accounts that were written from the time period concerned; and 2) secondary sources, or accounts taken from primary and other secondary sources.

Does this mean that secondary sources, since they are not eyewitness accounts, are less important than primary accounts? Also, should historians consult primary sources and only primary sources?

The answer to both questions is “No.”

Of course, everyone should consult primary sources. This is important since these accounts have either come from the time of the event or were made by someone who saw the events being studied. But like all accounts by eyewitnesses, they are limited because they can only give us what they individually saw. It is their perspective of the events.

To put it more clearly, an account of your grandmother that the time of the dictatorship was totally a good time in her life is not yet history. It is a historical account. The recent têteà-tête between the son of the dictator and the dictator’s defense minister, although they were “eyewitnesses to history” is not yet history. The same with individual stories of human rights atrocities from the time.

C. Wright Mills, in a chapter called “The Promise” in the canon of sociology that he wrote, differentiated “biography” from “history” — biography is the individual lives of people while history is the life of the society. By this definition we can say that the grandmother’s story, the tête- à- tête, and the human rights victim’s story are all “biography.” Collectively, if presented together, they become the story of society, or “history,” considering many other accounts and perspectives.

Many histories that have been written are considered secondary sources written by people who were not there but have seen many perspectives and accounts and can therefore see the big picture.

That means historians should also consult secondary sources. If they are very good ones, they will be credible and they will tell you their sources and are judicious in their judgments. Many times, they tell you what was already written about a subject, which will actually give you a better view of history than a single eyewitness account.

So, for example, I may have read the letters of Marcelo H. del Pilar or Apolinario Mabini, but a good secondary source will give contextualization to each of the events described in the letters based on other sources. Sometimes, if you need only basic information about a particular subject, you only need a credible secondary source to give you the quick information. A good biography on José Rizal would spare you reading volumes of Rizal works if you only need his basic story. In fact, reading primary sources without knowledge of context can oftentimes be dangerous and might lead to bad interpretations.

That is why this new subject in college called

is hard to teach because college students and teachers are forced to read primary texts when historians train for years to understand them, when it would have been enough for someone who will not need to be a specialist to be taught straightforward Philippine history.

And even if sources are primary and are eyewitness accounts, one doesn’t just believe them just because they were there. They still have to be subjected to both external and internal criticisms. Internal criticism is when you have to prove that the document is what it says it is. For example, if the document in question are Rizal’s letters, you ask if the handwriting was Rizal’s. Or is the kind of paper already existing during Rizal’s time? Or if it is a translation, is the thought faithful to Rizal’s original? If it is an actual document, you question provenance: How did it make its way from Rizal to the present owners? And usually, questions like these are only asked if the document at hand is contentious. Many primary sources are already common knowledge to historians. Of course, after knowing that it really came from Rizal, the next test to employ is external criticism, which is knowing if the text of the document is actually saying the truth, provided you have other sources with which to countercheck it. Secondary sources should also be subjected to this kind of critical examination.

Historians sometimes fail in judgment and biases cannot be avoided, but the right methodology can bring us as close to the truth as possible.