Second of a series
I SHALL be delivering a presentation (in Filipino) for “Public History in the Philippines: A National Conference” sponsored by the Departments of History of De La Salle University Manila and the University of the Philippines Diliman on May 12, 2026, entitled, “History tungo Public History; Kasaysayan tungo Kasaysayan pa rin.” The fundamental premise of that presentation is that history is evolving into public history but kasaysayan remains the same.
But not in a bad way.
History evolved from the proto-Indo-European weid/wid which means “to know” to the (ancient) Greek histor/historein/historia meaning “to inquire” to the Latin historia meaning “narrative of past events” to the Old French estoire/estorie or “story, chronicle, history” and 14th century French historie or “relation of events.”
According to Jakarta-based historian Ferdinand Victoria, history in ancient European/Western times had a specific purpose as “exemplar history” for the education of the elite, including the nobility and monarchy, where history serves as a manual on “how to rule” and “how not to make mistakes.” Monarchs and nobles — and the papacy, for that matter — studied the history of their blue-blooded ancestors, in their politics and diplomacy, as part of their leadership education and training. History for the Europeans/Westerners from the start was political history. Thus, by the 19th century, Thomas Carlyle shall claim that history is “the biography of great men.”
There is also a practical reason for this, in the European/Western context. The historians Charles Langlois and Charles Seignobos became controversial in 1898 for their bold claim of pas de documents, pas d’histoire or “no documents, no history.” This is consistent with the declaration of another influential historian of the 19th century, Leopold von Ranke, of wie es eigentlich gewesen or the task of history is to show “how it really was” or “as it essentially was.” The record of the past as the basis of history is invariably written by scribes or chroniclers. Indeed, historical records often pertain to the lives and works of great men, the main subject of these chronicles.
French wartime heroes and great historians Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre founded in 1929 the Annales d’historie economique et sociale (Annals of Economic and Social History), an academic journal that became the foundation of the “Annales school of history” to pry history away from the overbearing dominance of politico-military history toward a more social, economic and structural historical analysis. This was an opening in historiography that would eventually lead to the emergence of public history, not just in terms of targeting the broader public/s as audience or as participants with a stronger voice in the crafting of history, but more importantly, as the subject of historiography itself.
History in Europe and the West underwent a Greek odyssey before public history was eventually born in the 1970s.
By contrast, kasaysayan has had no such historiographic baggage. Kasaysayan was born with a natural focus on “saysay” (“meaning,” “value,” “importance,” etc.) in its salaysay or narrative. Kasaysayan, therefore, focuses on the narration of historical events that have meaning and value for both the narrator and the intended audience, denoted, according to Zeus Salazar, by the pananaw/perspective either as:
– “Pantayo”: producer of the narrative and audience as one discussing their own collective history and culture using their own language;
– “Pangkami”: narrator and audience belonging to different cultures with the narrator explaining their history and culture to the audience to the audience, using the language of the audience;
– “Pangkayo”: narrator and audience belonging to different cultures — and usually having different languages — with the narrator discussing the history and culture of the audience to the audience using the language of the audience;
– “Pansila”: producer of the narrative and audience as one but discussing the history and culture of a foreign nation/culture.
Kasaysayan intrinsically focuses on a narrative of historical events that have meaning, substance, value, importance, relevance, etc. to its intended audience — often an entire nation and/or culture denoted by the language used in the narration. More importantly, as it became patently evident as a consequence of Western colonialism/imperialism in the Philippines, the historians of Pantayong Pananaw were pushed to edify — for lack of a better term — an alternative historiography away from the records-dependent historiography advocated by the West as elucidated by the Charleses, Langlois and Seignobos. Colonial records — focused mainly on colonial activities and endeavors — were often irrelevant and immaterial to the historiographic concerns of kasaysayan infused with Pantayong Pananaw.
For clarity, the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) for instance is only remotely relevant to Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas. Dwelling on events like the Treaty of Tordesillas skews the focus lopsidedly to Spanish imperial concerns — i.e., Spanish politics and diplomacy with Portugal. Colonialism/imperialism brought the Spanish to the Philippines but there is no pressing need, in the context of Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas, to discuss the Treaty of Tordesillas in detail.
A discussion of the Dutch attacks on the Philippines during the late 16th century-17th century is quite relevant, but not an elaboration of the politics between Spain and Netherlands in the 16th century that shaped it. The Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas narrative should center around the consequences of the attacks to the Philippines, not its European context/background.
Colonial historiography is equally interested in the politics of Europe and its consequences to the Philippines, Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas is not.
The impetus provided by the inadequacies of colonial historiography pushed historians to explore an “alternative” historiography for kasaysayan, leading to such devices as linguistics, literature, folk lore, interpretation of the arts, ethnology/ethnography, interpretation of colonial historiography, Reynaldo Ileto’s “history from below,” oral and local history, toponymy, among others for the corpus of kasaysayan + Pantayong Pananaw historiography.
The clash between colonial history/historiography and kasaysayan + Pantayong Pananaw obliged historians to pursue historiographical areas that public history is only almost beginning to explore.
What are these historiographical frontiers? The wisdom of Raphael Samuel sums up the answer to that:
“History is not the prerogative of the historian... It is, rather, a social form of knowledge; the work in a given instance, of a thousand different hands...”
