UNIT 1

Relevance and meaning of history

Topic 2: External and Internal Criticism

Time Allotment: 3 hours

Introduction

History relies heavily on arguments. Historians construct arguments based on evidence (sources) and
through the process of questioning, reasoning and interrogation, they are able to develop or reconstruct a
knowledge of the past. All good historical writing is a product argument and congruently, the historians'
sources are just as good as their arguments.

There are two mental processes that historians follow before they formulate their arguments namely;
authenticity and credibility. Authenticity is related to genuineness or external criticism of a historical
source. It answers questions related to the identity of the author in terms of personality, character,
position, and qualifications or disqualifications in writing the document. It also identifies when, where
and how the document was written and how does the content relate (similar or different) with other
documents as well as the evidential value of the source. On the other hand, credibility or internal
criticism refers to trustworthiness of the contents of the source. This kind of criticism focuses on
examining the believability of the contents of the source, the natural and plausible connection between
the document and the author and the consistency of the document with the author's known level of
gender, socio-economic background, intelligence, political, advocacy, religion, and like.

To understand authenticity and credibility of historical documents, the article on the “Problem of
Authenticity and the Problem of Credibility” written by Louis Gottschalk is presented. The reading
emphasizes that historians employ two levels of historical criticisms namely; external and internal
criticism which defines their historical scholarship. In both levels of criticisms, the historians execute
their work with professionalism by undertaking numerous activities that allow them to reconstruct the
past with soundness and objectivity

Learning Objectives:
At the end of the module, you will be able to:
a. Differentiate authenticity from credibility;
b. Discuss the role of internal and external criticism in the writing of history;
c. Determine measures to evaluate the authenticity and credibility of historical sources;
d. Explain the four tests in determining the credibility of a historical evidence; and
e. Discuss factors influencing the witness’s ability to tell the truth and willingness to tell the truth.
 Presentation of Content
Excerpt from "The Problem of Authenticity, or External
Criticism"
So far it has been assumed that the documents dealt with have been authentic. The problem of
authenticity seldom concerns the sociologist or psychologist or an anthropologist, who generally has a
living subject under his eye, can see him as he prepares his autobiography, cross-examine him about
doubtful points. Even in the law courts the question of documents becomes difficult problem only on
rare occasions, when the writer or witness to the writing cannot be produced. But for historical
documents those occasions are not rare. They are in fact frequent for manuscript sources; and if doubt as
to authenticity arises less often for printed sources, it is because usually some skilled editor has already
performed the task of authenticating them.

Forged or Misleading Documents

Forgeries of documents in whole or in part without being usual, are common enough to keep the careful
historian constantly on his guard. "Historical documents" are fabricated for several reasons. Sometimes
they are used to bolster a false claim or title. A well-known example is the Donation of Constantine,
which used to be cited on occasion to bolster a theory that popes had a wide territorial claim in the west.
In 1440 Lorenzo Valla proved, chiefly by means of anachronisms of style and allusion, that it had been
forged. At other times documents are counterfeited for sale. Counterfeit letter of Queen Marie
Antoinette used to turn up frequently. A Philadelphia autograph dealer named Robert Spring once
manufactured hundreds of skillful forgeries in order to supply the demand of collectors. A recent
notorious example of forgery was the "correspondence" of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, palmed
off on the Atlantic Monthly in 1928.

Sometimes fabrication is due to less mercenary considerations. Political propaganda largely accounts
for protocols of the Elders of Zion, a "document" pretending to reveal a ruthless Jewish conspiracy to
rule the world. Sometimes historical "facts" are based only on some practical joke, as in the case of H.L.
Mencken 's much cited article on the "history?' of the bathtub, or of Alexander Woollcott's mocking
letter of endorsement of Dorothy Parker's husband (of which he never sent the original to the supposed
addressee, although he did send the carbon copy to the endorsee). The Mémoires of Madame d'Epinay
are a striking example of fabrication of a whole book that has beguiled even respectable historians.

Sometimes quite genuine documents are intended to mislead certain contemporaries and hence have
misled subsequent historians. A statement supposed to be that of Emperor Leopold Il's views on the
French Revolution misled Marie Antoinette and subsequently even the most careful historians until it
was exposed in 1984 as a wishful statement of some French émigrés. In days when spies are expected to
open mail in the post, writers of letters would occasionally try to outwit them by turning their curiosity
to the advantage of the one spied upon rather than to that of the spy or his employer. And when censors
might condemn books to be burned and writers to be imprisoned, authors could hardly be blamed if they
sometimes signed others' names to their work. For instance, it is hard to tell whether some works
actually written by Voltaire are not still ascribed to others. It is thus possible to be too skeptical about a
document which may be genuine though not what it seems. Bernheim has provided a list of documents
that were once hypercritically considered unauthentic but are now accepted. Perhaps it was
hypercriticism of this kind that led Vincent Starrett to write his verse entitled "After Much Striving for
Fame":

It would be rather jolly, I think.

To be the original authority
On some obscure matter of literature or faith
Upon which, in one's leisure,
One had jotted down an inaccurate pamphlet;
And forever thereafter
To be quoted by all post-Vincentian borrowers
In a pertinacious footnote.
Occasionally misrepresentations of the nature of printed works result from editor's tricks. It is still a
matter of dispute which of many writings attributed to Cardinal Richelieu were in fact written or
dictated by him; and little of the so-called Mémoires de Jean de Witt and Testament politique de Colbert
were in fact written by John de Witt and Colbert. The memoirs attributed to Condorcet and to Weber,
foster-brother of Marie Antoinette, and several works ascribed to Napoleon I are by others than their
alleged authors. Even issues of daily newspapers have been manufactured long after the dates they bear.
The Moniteur furnishes some good examples (see page 107 above), Several Diaries of Napoleon have
been made up by others from his writings. The circumstances of the forgery or misrepresentation of
historical documents may often themselves reveal important political, cultural, and biographical
information — but not about the same events or persons as if they were genuine

Tests of Authenticity

To distinguish a hoax or misrepresentation from genuine document, the historian has to use tests that are
common also in police and legal detection. Making the best guess he can of the date of the document
(see below pp. 138 and 147-148), he examines the materials to see whether they are not anachronistic:
paper was rare in Europe before the fifteenth century, and printing was unknown; pencils did not exist
there before the sixteenth century; typewriting was not invented until the nineteenth century; and India
paper came only at the end of that century. The historian also examines the ink for signs of age or for
anachronistic chemical composition. Making his best guess of the possible author of the document (see
below pp. 144-147), he sees if he can identify the handwriting, signature, seal, letterhead, or watermark.
Even when the handwriting is unfamiliar, it can be compared with authenticated specimens. One of the
unfulfilled needs of the historian is more of what the French call "isographies" — dictionaries of
biography giving examples of handwriting. For some period of history, experts using techniques known
as — dictionaries of biography giving examples of handwriting. For some period of history, experts
using techniques known as paleography and diplomatic, first systematized by Mabillon in the
seventeenth century (see p. 127 below), have long known that in certain regions at certain times
handwriting and the style and form of official documents were more or less conventionalized. Seals
have been the subject of special study by sigillographers, and experts can detect faked ones (see below.
p. 128). Anachronistic style (idiom, orthography or punctuation) can be detected by specialists who are
familiar with contemporary writing. Often spelling, particularly of proper names and signatures (because
too good or too bad or anachronistic), reveals a forgery, as would also unhistorical grammar.
Anachronistic references to events (too early or too late or too remote) or the dating of the document at
a time when the alleged writer could not possibly have been at the place designated (the alibi) uncovers
fraud. Sometimes the skillful forger has all too carefully followed the best historical sources and his
product becomes too obviously a copy in certain passages; or where, by skillful paraphrase and
invention, he is shrewd enough to avoid detection in that fashion, he is given away by the absence of
trivia and otherwise unknown details from his manufactured account. Usually, however, if the
document is where it ought to be — for example, in a family's archives, or among a business firm's or
lawyer's papers, or in governmental bureau's records (but not merely because it is in a library or in an
amateur's autograph collection) — its provenance (or its custody, as the lawyers call it), creates a
presumption of its genuineness.

Garbled Documents

A document that in its entirety or in large part is the result of a deliberate effort to deceive may often
be hard to evaluate, but it sometimes causes less trouble than does the document that is unauthentic
only in small part. For such parts are usually the result, not of studied falsehood, but of unintentional
error. They occur most frequently in copies of documents whose originals have disappeared, and are
generally due to that kind of error of omission, repetition, or addition with which anyone who have
ever made copies soon becomes familiar. Sometimes they are the result, however, not of carelessness
but of deliberate intention to modify, supplement, or continue the original. Such a change may be
made in good faith in the first instance, care being exerted to indicate the differences between the
original text and the glossary or continuations, but future copyist is often less careful or more
confused and make no such distinctions.

This problem is most familiar to classical philologists and Bible critics. For they seldom have copies
less than eight centuries and several stages of reproduction removed from the original — that is to say,
copies of copies of copies and sometimes copies of translations of copies of translations of copies, and
so on. The philologists give to this problem of establishing an accurate text the name textual criticism,
and in Biblical studies it is also called lower criticism. The historian has borrowed his technique from
philologist and Bible critics.

The Restoration of Texts

The technique is complicated but can be briefly described. The first task is to collect as many copies of
the dubious text as diligent search will reveal. Then they are compared. It is found that some contain
words or phrases or whole passages that are not contained in others. The question then arises: Are those
words, phrases or passages additions to the original text that have found their way into some copies, or
are they omissions from the others? To answer that question, it is necessary to divide the available
copies into one or more "families" — that is, groups of texts which closely resemble each other and
therefore seem to be derived, directly or indirectly, from the same master copy. Then by a comparison
of the texts within each family an effort is made to establish the comparative age of each in relation to
the others. If the members of the same family are largely copied from each other, as this arrangement in
families frequently shows, the oldest one is all probability (but not necessarily) the one nearest the
original. This process is continued for all the families. When the copy nearest the original in each family
is discovered, a comparison of all of these "father" copies will usually then reveal words and passages
that are in some but not in others. Again, the question arises: Are those words and passages additions to
the copies that have them or omissions from the copies that do not? The most accurate available
wordings of the passages added or omitted by the respective copyists are then prepared. Changes in
handwritings, anachronisms in style, grammar, orthography, or factual detail, and opinions or errors
unlikely to have been those of the original author frequently reveal additions by a later hand. When the
style and contents of passages under discussion may be attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that
they were parts of his original manuscript but were omitted by later copyist; and when they cannot be
attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that they were not parts of his original manuscript. In some
cases, a final decision has to await the discovery of still more copies. In many instances the original text
can be approximately or entirely restored.

By a similar method one can even guess the contents, at least in part, of a "father" manuscript even
when no full copy of it is in existence. The historian Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, a student of Ranke,
attempted to reconstruct a text that he reasoned must be the ancestor of several eleventh-century
chronicles in which he had noted striking similarities. By adding together, the passages that appeared
to be "descended" from an unknown chronicle, he made a guess as to its contents. Over a quarter of a
century later the ancestor chronicle was in fact found and proved to be extensively like Giesebrecht's
guess.

Identification of Author and of Date

Some guess of the approximate date of the document and some identification of its supposed author
(or, at least, a surmise as to his location in time and space and as to his habits, attitudes, character,
learning, associates, etc.) obviously form an essential part of external criticism. Otherwise it would be
impossible to prove or disprove authenticity by anachronisms, handwriting, style, alibi, or other tests
that are associated with the author's milieu, personality, and actions. But similar knowledge or
guesses are also necessary for internal criticism, and therefore the problem of author-identification
has been left for the next chapter (pp. 144-148).

Having established an authentic text and discovered what its author really intended to say, the historian
has only established what the witness's testimony is. He has yet to determine whether that testimony is
at all credible, and if so, to what extent. That is the problem of internal criticism.

Chapter VII
The Problem of Credibility, or Internal Criticism

The historian first arms in the examination of testimony to obtain a set of particulars relevant to some
topic or question that he has in mind. Isolated particulars have little by and unless they have a context
or fit into a hypothesis they are of doubtful value. But that a problem of synthesis, which will be
discussed later. What we are now concerned with is the analysis of documents for credible details to be
fitted into a hypothesis or context
 What is Historical Fact?

In the process of analysis, the historian should constantly keep in mind the relevant particulars within
the document rather than the document as a whole. Regarding each particular he asks: Is it credible? It
might be well to point out again that what is meant by calling a particular credible is not that it is
actually what happened, but that it is as close to what actually happened as we can learn from a
critical examination of the best available sources. That means verisimilar at a high level. It connotes
something more than merely not being preposterous in itself or even than plausible and yet is short of
meaning accurately descriptive of past actuality. In other words, the historian establishes
verisimilitude rather than objective truth. Though there is a high correlation between the two, they are
not necessarily identical. As far as mere particulars are concerned, historians disagree relatively seldom
regarding what is credible in this special sense of "conforming to a critical examination of the sources."
It is not inconceivable that, in dealing with the same document, two historians of equal ability and
training would extract the same isolated “facts” and agree with each other's findings. In that way the
elementary data of history are subject to proof.

A historical “fact” thus may be defined as a particular derived directly or indirectly from historical
documents and regarded as credible after careful testing in accordance with the canons of historical
method (see below p. 150). An infinity and a multiple variety of facts of this kind are accepted by all
historians: e.g. that Socrates really existed; that Alexander invaded India; that the Romans built the
Pantheon: that the Chinese have an ancient literature (Hit here we introduce a complexity with the word
ancient, which needs definition before its factual quality can be considered certain); that pope Innocent
III excommunicated King John of England; that Michael Angelo sculptured "Moses"; that Bismarck
modified the dispatch from Ems of King William's secretary; that banks in the United States in 1933
were closed for four days by presidential proclamation; and that "the Yankees” won the "World Series"
in 1949. Simple and fully attested "facts" of this kind are rarely disputed. They are easily observed,
easily recorded (if not self-evident, like the Pantheon md Chinese literature). involve no judgments of
value (except with regard to the antiquity of Chinese literature), contradict no other knowledge
available to us, seem otherwise logically acceptable, and avoiding generalization, deal with single
instances.

Even some apparently simple and concrete statements, however, are subject to question. If no one
disputes the historicity of Socrates, there is less agreement regarding Moses and earlier figures of
Hebrew folklore. If no one doubts that Michael Angelo sculptured his “Moses,” a few still think that
Shakespeare's plays were in fact written by Francis Bacon. Doubt regarding concrete particulars is likely
to be due, however, to lack of testimony based on first-hand observation rather than to disagreement
among the witnesses. In general, on simple and concrete matters where testimony of direct observation
is available, testimony can be submitted to tests of reliability that will be convincing either pro or con to
most competent and impartial historians. As soon as abstractions, value judgements, generalizations, and
other complexities enter into testimony the possibility of contradiction and debate enters with them.
Hence, alongside the multitude of facts generally accepted by historians, exists another multitude
debated (or at least debatable) by them.
The Interrogative Hypothesis
In analyzing a document for its isolated "facts," the historian should approach it with a question or a set
of questions in mind. The questions may be relatively noncommittal. (E.g. Did Saul try to assassinate
David? What were the details of Catiline's life? Who were the crusading companions of Tancred? What
was the date of Erasmus birth? How many men were aboard De Grasse's fleet in 1781? What is the
correct spelling of Siéyes? Was Hung Hsui-chun'an a Christian?) It will be noted that one cannot ask
even simple questions like these without knowing enough about some problem in history to ask a
question about it, and if one knows enough to ask even the simplest question, one already has some idea
and probably some hypothesis regarding it, whether implicit or explicit, whether tentative and flexible or
formulated and fixed. Or the hypothesis may be full-fledged, though still implicit and in interrogative
form (E.g.: Can the Jews be held responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus? Did the medieval city develop
from the fair? Why did Anabaptists believe in religious liberty? How did participation in the American
Revolution contribute to the spread of liberal ideas among the French aristocracy? Why did Woodrow
Wilson deny knowledge of the "secret treaties"?) In each of these questions a certain implication is
assumed to be true and further clarification of it is sought on an additional working assumption.
Putting the hypothesis in interrogative form is more judicious than putting it in declarative form If for no
other reason than that it is more noncommittal before all the evidence has been examined. It may also
help in some small way to solve the delicate problem of relevance of subject matter (see Chapter X
below), since only those materials are relevant which lead directly to an answer to the question or
indicate that there is no satisfactory answer.
The Quest for Particular Details of Testimony

As has already been pointed out, every historical subject has four aspects — the biographical, the
geographical, the chronological, and the occupational or functional. With a set of names, dates, and
key-words in mind for each of these aspects, the historical investigator combs his document for relevant
particulars (or "notes," as he is more likely to call them). It is generally wise to take notes on relevant
matter whether or not it at first appears credible. It may turn out that even false or mistaken testimony
has relevance to an understanding of one's problem.

Having accumulated his notes, the investigator must now separate the credible from the incredible. Even
from his "notes" he has sometimes to extract still smaller details, for even a single name may reveal a
companion of Tancred, a single letter the correct spelling of Sieyes, a single digit the exact number of
De Grasse's crew, or a single phrase the motives of Wilson's denial. In detailed investigations, few
documents are significant as a whole; they serve most often only as mines from which to extract
historical ore. Each bit of ore, however, may contain flaws of its own. The general reliability of an
author, in other words, has significance only as establishing the probable credibility of his particular
statements. From that process of scrupulous analysis emerges an important general rule: for each
particular of a document, the process of establishing credibility should be separately undertaken
regardless of the general credibility of the author.
Identification of Author

As has already been pointed out (p. 138), some identification of the author is necessary to test a
document's authenticity. In the subsequent process of determining the credibility of its particulars, even
the most genuine of documents should be regarded as guilty of deceit until proven innocent. The
importance of first establishing the author's general reliability is therefore obvious. Where the name of
the author can be determined and he is a person about whom biographical data are available,
identification is a relatively easy task. Because, in most legal and science investigations, the witness or
the author of a document is personally known and available to the investigator, that question generally
presents no insurmountable difficulties to lawyers and social scientists.

The historian, however, is frequently obliged to use documents written by persons about whom nothing
or relatively little is known. Even the hundreds of biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias already in
existence may be of no help because the author's name is unknown or, if known, not to be found in the
reference works. The historian must therefore depend upon the document itself to teach him what it can
about the author. A single brief document may teach him much if he asks the right questions. It may, of
course, contain explicit biographical details, but to assume that would be begging the question. Even
where it is relatively free from first-person allusions, much may be learned of the author's mental
processes and personal attitudes from it alone.

Let us take the usual text of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and assume for the same of example that we
have no knowledge of it except for what its own contents may reveal:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation,
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should
do this.
 But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow this
ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above
our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated
here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Even a hasty examination will suffice to make clear that the author, at the time of writing, was
planning to use it as a speech ("we are met," "what we say here"), that he wrote English well, that his
address was a funeral oration ("we have come to dedicate a of that field as a final resting place",. that
he was probably a prominent citizen, that he presumably was an American ("our fathers," "this
continent," "new nation, “four score and seven years ago"), that he was an advocate of liberty and
equality (or at least desired his hearer to think so), that he lived during the American Civil War, that
he was speaking at Gettysburg. or possibly Vicksburg ("great battlefield," "four score md seven years
ago"). and that he wanted his side in the war to be thought of as fighting for democracy ("government
of the people, by the people, for the people"). If we forget the controversy among historians as to
whether the words under God were actually delivered or were only afterward inserted, we may assume
that he subscribed, or wished to appear to subscribe, to the belief in Supreme Being.
From a short document, it would thus appear, it is possible to learn much about the author without
knowing who he was. In the case of the Gettysburg Address a trained historian would probably soon
detect Lincoln's authorship, if it were unknown. But even if he had never heard of Lincoln, he would
be able to tell that, in attempting to judge the truth of the particulars stated in that address, he would
have to consider it as probably a public exhortation by a prominent antislavery Northerner after a
major victory over the Confederate States in the American Civil War. Many documents, being less
modest and less economical of words than the Gettysburg Address, give their authors away more
readily.
Determination of Approximate Date
It would be relatively easy, even if the Gettysburg Address were a totally strange document, to
establish its approximate date. It was obviously composed "four-score and seven years" after the
Declaration of Independence, hence in 1863. But few strange documents are so easily dated. One has
frequently to resort to the conjectures known to the historian as the terminus non-post quem ('the point
not after which"). These termini, or points, have to be established by internal evidence — by clues
given within the document itself. If the date 1863 were not implicit in the Gettysburg Address, other
references within the speech could point obviously to the beginning of the American Civil War as its
terminus non ante quem, and since the war was obviously still going on when the document was
composed, its terminus non post quem would be the end of the Civil War. Hence its date could be fixed
approximately, even if the first sentence had been lost, as somewhere between 1861 and 1865; and if
we were enabled by other data to guess at "the great battlefield," we might even narrow that margin.
Some documents might not permit even a remote guess of their termini, but where the author is known,
one has at least the dates of his birth and death go by.

The Personal Equation

This analysis of the Gettysburg Address (under the false assumption that its authorship is unknown)
indicates the type of question the historian asks of both anonymous and avowed documents. Was the
author an eyewitness of the events he narrates? If not, what were his sources of information? When did
he write the document? How much time elapsed between the event and the record? What was his
purpose in writing or speaking? Who were his audience and why? Such questions enable the historian to
answer the still more important questions: Was the author of the documents able to tell the truth; and if
able, was he willing to do so? The ability and the willingness of a witness to give dependable testimony
are determined by a number of factors in his personality and social situation that together are sometimes
called his "personal equation," a term applied to the correction required in astronomical observations to
 allow for the habitual inaccuracy of individual observers. The personal equation of a historian is
sometimes also called "his frame of reference," but it probably will be found more expedient to restrict
the latter term to his conscious philosophy or philosophies of life in so far as they can be divorced from
personality traits and biases of which he may or may not be aware.
General Rules

In a law court it is frequently assumed that all the testimony of a witness, though under oath, is suspect if
the opposing lawyers can impugn his general character or by examination and cross-examination create
doubt of his veracity in some regard. Even in modern law courts the old maxim falsus in uno, falsus in
omnibus tends to be overemphasized. In addition, hearsay evidence is as a general rule excluded; certain
kinds of witnesses are "privileged" or unqualified" and therefore are not obliged to testify or are kept
from testifying; and evidence obtained by certain means regarded as transgressing the citizen's rights —
such as 'third degree," drugs, wire-tapping, or lie-detector — are ruled out of some courts. The legal
system of evidence, says James Bradley Thayer, "is not concerned with nice definitions, or the exacter
academic operations of the logical faculty . . .. Its rules . . . are seeking to determine, not what is or is
not, in its nature, probative, but rather, passing by that inquiry, what among really probative matters,
shall, nevertheless, for this or that practical reason, be excluded, and not even heard by the jury." Courts
of law, in the Anglo_ Saxon system at least, go on the assumption that if one side presents all the
permissible testimony in its favor and if the other side presents all the permissible testimony in its, the
truth will emerge plainly enough for judge and jury from the conflict or harmony of the testimony, even
if some kinds of testimony are not permissible; and possibly where much and recent testimony is
available, the innocent suffer less often by such an assumption than the guilty escape.

The historian, however, is prosecutor, attorney for the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But as judge
he rules out no evidence whatever if it is relevant. To him any single detail of testimony is credible —
even if it is contained in a document obtained by force or fraud, or is otherwise impeachable, or is based
on hearsay evidence, or is from an interested witness — provided it can pass four tests:

1. Was the ultimate source of the detail (the primary witness) able to tell the truth?
2. Was the primary witness willing to tell the truth?
3. Is the primary witness accurately reported with regard to the detail under examination?

4. Is there any independent corroboration of the detail under examination?

Any detail (regardless of what the source or who the author) that passes all four tests is credible
historical evidence. It will bear repetition that the primary witness and the detail are now the subjects of
examination, not the source as a whole.

Ability to Tell the Truth

(1) Ability to tell the truth rests in part upon the witness's nearness to the event. Nearness is here used in
both a geographical and a chronological sense. The reliability of the witness's testimony tends to
vary in proportion to (a) his own remoteness from the scene in time and space, and (b) the
remoteness from the event in time and space of his recording of it. There are three steps in historical
testimony: observation, recollection, and recording (not to mention the historian's own perception of
the witness's record). At each of these steps something of the possible testimony may be lost.
Geographical as well as chronological closeness to the event affects all three steps and helps to
determine both how much will be lost and the accuracy of what is retained.

(2) Obviously, all witnesses even if equally close to the event, are not equally competent as witnesses.
Competence depends upon degree of expertness, state of mental and physical health, age, education,
memory, narrative skill, etc. the ability to estimate numbers is especially subject to suspicion. The
size of the army with which Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C. was said by Herodotus to have
numbered 1,700,000 but it can be shown to have been considerably less by the simple computation
of the length of time it would have taken that many men to march through the Thermopylae Pass
 even unopposed. More recently by from a similar computation doubt thrown upon the veracity of a
newspaper report from Moscow that one million was men, women, and children paraded through the
Red Square in celebration of the thirty-second anniversary of the October Revolution (November 7,
1949) in five and one-half hour demonstration, for it would require more than fifty persons a second
to march abreast past a given point to complete a parade of one million in five and one-half hours.
With some notable exceptions, such as the Domesday Book of William the conqueror' historians
have been warned against using any source of numbers before the end Of the Middle Ages. The
careful keeping of vital statistics was a relatively late innovation of the end of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Previous to that time tax rolls and incomplete parish records of
baptisms, marriages, and burials were the best indications. Even battle casualty statistics before the
nineteenth century are suspect, and historians still disagree on the cost in human life of wards up to
and including those of Napoleon I, and, in some instances, beyond.

(3) Degree of attention is also an important fact in the ability to tell the truth. A well-known story, no less
illustrative if it be apocryphal, tells of a psychology professor who deliberately staged a fight in his
classroom between two students, which led to a free for-all. When peace was restored, the professor
asked each member of the class to write an account of what had happened. There were. of course,
conflicting statements among the accounts, but what was most significant, no students had noticed
that the professor in the midst of the pandemonium had taken out a banana and had peeled and eaten
it. Obviously, the entire meaning of the event rested upon the unnoticed act, it was an experiment in
the psychology of attention. Because each student's interest had been fixed upon his own part in the
drama, each had given an erroneous interpretation of what had occurred. Magicians similarly depend
upon their ability to divert attention from things they are doing to perpetuate some of their tricks. The
common human inability to see things clearly and whole makes even the best of witness’s suspect.

(4) We have already discussed the danger of the leading question (p. 104). Such questions, by implying
the expected answer, make it difficult to tell the whole truth. Lawyers also count the hypothetical
question ("Supposing you did agree with me, would you act as I?”) and the argumentative or "loaded"
question ("Have you stopped beating your wife?") and the coached answer as belonging to kindred
categories. 9 Such questions are especially liable to be misleading if they have to be answered "Yes"
or "No." All port gives a striking illustration of the kind of misinformation that can be derived from
the witness whose narrative is circumscribed by the questioner. He mentions an investigator who
"secured fifty topical autobiographies, forcing all writers to tell about radicalism and conservativism
in their lives," and who from those biographies almost (but fortunately not quite) came to the
conclusion that "radicalism-conservativism constitutes one of those first-order variables of which all
personalities are compounded. "10

(5) In the last instance the investigator barely missed reasoning in a circle — from premise back to
premise again. It has been contended also that one of the reasons why religious problems and events
receive so much attention in the history of the Middle Ages is that its principal sources were written
by clergymen. If medieval architects, landowners, soldiers, or merchants had written more, they
might have asked and answered different kinds of questions and given a different picture of medieval
life. Possibly, if the writings of our own intellectuals should prove to be the major source for future
accounts of our age, future historians will be misled into thinking that intellectuals had a greater
influence upon human affairs in our time than they actually have. This sort of circular argument must
be especially guarded against when an effort is being made to ascribe unsigned writings to a
supposed author, for it is easy to assume that the ideas of the writings are characteristic of the
supposed author if those very articles are the basis of the assumptions regarding the author's
characteristics.

(6) One almost inescapable shortcoming of the personal document is its egocentrism. It is to be expected
that even a modest observer will tell what he himself heard and what he himself did as if those details
were the most important things that were said and done. Often it is impossible for him to tell his story
in any other terms, since that is the only way he knows it. This observation is a more or less
inevitable corollary of the caution with regard to attention discussed above. The famous speech of the
Comte de Mirabeau after Louis XVI's Royal Session of June 23, 1789, provides a pat illustration of
how easily such egocentrism may mislead the historian. Mirabeau (though speaking in the third
person) told how he has said something about the necessity of force: "For we shall leave our seats
only by the power of the bayonet." He failed to mention that several others were expressing a similar
determination at about the same time, though probably in more moderate language. Therefore,
historians trusting too confidently to Mirabeau's testimony have sometimes made him the heroic
center of a desperate crisis; still it is more probable that he was not so conspicuous or the situation so
dramatic as he implied.

(7) Expectation or anticipation frequently leads a witness astray. Those who count on
revolutionaries to be bloodthirsty and conservatives gentlemanly, those who expect the young to be
irreverent and the old crabbed, those who know Germans to be ruthless and Englishmen to lack
humor generally find bloodthirsty Germans and humorless Englishmen. A certain lack of precision is
found in such witnesses because their eyes and ears are closed to fair observation; or because,
seeking, they find; or because in recollection, they tend to forget or minimize examples that do not
confirm their prejudices and hypotheses. (This sort of attitude is only a special kind of bias and might
be regarded merely as a subdivision of Paragraph 2 above.)
 Application

I. Read and analyze each statement below. Write A If the first statement is correct, B if the
second statement is correct, C if both statements are correct and D if both statements re
incorrect. Write the letter of your choice on the space provided before each number.

____ 1. A. Documents are forged or fabricated to push a political agenda.

B. A historical "fact" is a particular derived directly or indirectly from historical documents and
regarded as credible after careful testing in accordance with the canons of historical method.

_____2. A. All witnesses even if equally close to the event, are not equally competent as witnesses.
B. Historian use tests that are not common with the investigation by police officers and lawyers.

_____ 3. A. Internal criticism focuses on examining the believability of the contents of the source.
B. Authenticity is related to genuineness or external criticism of a historical source.

_____4. A. Garbled document is the result of a deliberate effort to deceive people.

B. The historian should constantly keep in mind the relevant particulars within the document
rather than the document as a whole.

_____5. A. Putting the hypothesis in declarative form is more judicious than putting it in interrogative
form.
B. One's personal equation does not influence one's willingness and ability to tell the truth.

_____6. A. For each particular of a document, the process of establishing credibility should be
separately undertaken regardless of the general credibility of the author,
B. A frame of reference is not related with personal equation such as one's gender, religion, and
political afflation.

_____7. A. Geographical and chronological closeness to the event determine how both how much will
be lost and the accuracy of what is retained m a witness.
B. All witnesses even if equally close to the event are not equally competent as witnesses.

_____8. A. The state of mental and physical health, age, education, memory, and narrative skill of a
witness are examples of lusher competence
B. The degree of attention is not an important fact in the ability of the witness to tell the
math.
_____9. A Because of lack of completeness or lack of balance in observation, recollection or narrative,
the inability to tell the truth leads to errors of omission, rather than commission.
B. Witness’ interest does not affect his/her willingness to tell the truth .
____10. A. The witness's desire to please or to displease the intended audience does not affect his/her
willingness to tell the truth
B. Examining the details of a document to test its credibility is a
form of synthesis.
 II. Activity: Looking for Authenticity and Credibility in a Primary Source

Names: ____________________________________________ Score: __________ Date:

____________

1. Each student has to choose one from the three pictures below.
2. Examine the picture carefully.
3. Guided by the rubric below, answer the following questions:
Success Descriptor Allotted
Indicator Points
Completeness All questions are answered. 3
Quality Answer for each question is derived from the video content. 15
Each answer is explained well with elaborations and/or exam
le.
Miscellaneous The worksheet is erasure- free and cleanly accomplished. 2
No grammatical lapses are incurred.

l. Meet the photo. Quickly scan the photo.

a. What type of document is it?
b. What is your initial response to this document?
2. Observe its parts or the particulars. List all the essential things that you see then write one sentence
summarizing the photo.
3. Try to make sense of it. Answer as best as you can.
a. Who took this photo?
b. Where is it from?
c. When is it from?
d. What was happening at the time in history this photo was taken?
e. Why was it taken? List evidence from the photo or your knowledge about the photographer
that led you to your conclusion.
f. If people are in the photograph, what do you think is their relationship to one another?
4. Use it as historical evidence.
a. What did you find out from this photo that you might not learn anywhere else?
b. What questions do you have about the photograph that you cannot answer through analyzing
it?
c. What other documents, photos, or historical evidence are you going to use to help you understand
this event or topic?
 Source:

https://www.google.com.ph/search?biw= I &ei=FEGKWverDYS
W8QWA61D4Cw&q=bagobo+family&oq=bagob04family&gs_l=psyab.3...170179.1738
13.0.174239.13.12.0.1.1.0.133.1304.2j 10.12.0....0...1 c. 1.64.psyab. .0.9.876...OjOi67k
Ij0i I Oi67k IjOi8i30k Ij0i24k .0.2bnc I

Source:
https://www.google.com.ph/search i pi nos• in•bahag •and t OS 3&bih—
438&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx= I & fir=JN IqoB78tkSnyM 0 02 3 S2CY INzyBkPOg-M%2S2C
Summary

Historical documents are fabricated or forged for the following reasons namely (a) to bolster a
false claim or title, (b) utilized as a political propaganda, (c) used as some practical joke, and (d)
to mislead certain contemporaries and subsequent historians. The circumstances of the forgery or
misrepresentation of historical documents may often themselves reveal important political,
cultural, and biographical information — but not about the same events or persons as if they
were genuine.
To distinguish a hoax from genuine document, the historian has to use tests that are common
also in police and legal detection. Historians investigate the materials to see whether they are
not outdated. They examine the ink for signs of age or for anachronistic chemical composition.
They also see if they can identify the handwriting, signature, seal, letterhead, or watermark of
the document.
Garbled document is the result of a deliberate effort to deceive people. In its entirety or in large
part, they are often hard to evaluate. Documents are garbled because they have undergone
several stages of reproduction removed from the original — that is to say, copies of copies of
copies and sometimes copies of translations of copies of translations of copies, and so on.
Historians are committed to restore texts. Their first task is to collect as many copies of the
dubious text as diligent search will reveal. Then they are compared. When the style and contents
of passages under discussion may be attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that they were
parts of his original manuscript but were omitted by later copyist; and when they cannot be
attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that they were not parts of his original manuscript.
Identification of the author and date is essential in performing external criticism. Historians
need to determine the author's location in time and space and as to his habits, attitudes,
character, learning, associates, etc. Otherwise it would be impossible to prove or disprove
authenticity by anachronisms, handwriting, style, alibi, or other tests that are associated with the
author's milieu, personality, and actions.
Historians are always concerned in examining and understanding historical fact. In the process
of analyzing historical fact, the historian should constantly keep in mind the relevant particulars
within the document rather than the document as a whole. He determines the credibility of each
particular whether it actually happened or not. In examining the credibility of a document, it is
not inconceivable that two historians of equal ability and training would extract the same
isolated "facts" and agree with each other's findings in dealing with the same document. In that
way the elementary data of history are subject to proof.
In analyzing a document for its isolated "facts," the historian should approach it with a question
or a set of questions in mind called interrogation hypothesis. In each of these questions, a certain
implication is assumed to be true and further clarification of it is sought on an additional
working assumption.
The quest for particular details of testimony is essential in conducting internal criticism. In here,
the historian uses the four aspects of historical subject — the biographical, the geographical, the
chronological, and the occupational or functional. With a set of names, dates, and key-words in
mind for each of these aspects, the historical investigator combs his document for relevant
particulars (or "notes," as he is more likely to call them). It is generally wise to take notes on
relevant matter whether or not it at first appears credible.
Identification of author matters in internal criticism. Even the most genuine of documents
should be regarded as guilty of deceit until proven innocent. The importance of first establishing
the author's general reliability is therefore obvious. If the author’s name is unknown, the
historian must depend upon the document itself to learn much about him/her.
Determination of approximate date is a requirement in internal criticism. If the date is unknown
in the document, one has to resort to the conjectures known to the historia n as the terminus non-
post quem ('the point not after which"). These termini, or poin ts have to be established by
internal evidence — by clues given within the document itself. Some documents might not
permit even a remote guess of their termini, but where the author is known, one has at least the
dates of his birth and death to go by.
The ability and the willingness of a witness to give dependable testimony are determined by a
number of factors in his personality and social situation that together are sometimes called his
"personal equation," a term applied to the correction required in astronomical observations to
allow for the habitual inaccuracy of individual observers. The personal equation of a historian is
sometimes also called "his frame of reference," but it probably will be found more beneficial to
restrict the latter term to his conscious philosophy or philosophies of life in so far as they can be
divorced from personality traits and biases of which he may or may not be aware.
The historian is a prosecutor, attorney for the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But as judge
he rules out no evidence whatever if it is relevant. To him any single detail of testimony is
credible — even if it is contained in a document obtained by force or fraud, or is otherwise
impeachable, or is based on hearsay evidence, or is from an interested witness — provided it
can pass four tests: (a) Was the ultimate source of the detail (the primary witness) able to tell
the truth?; (b) Was the primary witness willing to tell the truth?; (c) Is the primary witness
accurately reported with regard to the detail under examination?; and (d) Is there any
independent corroboration of the detail under examination?. Any detail (regardless of what the
source or who the author) that passes all four tests is credible historical evidence.

The ability to tell the truth rests in part upon the following: (a) witness's nearness to the event;
(b) competence of witness; (c) degree of attention; (d) leading question; (e) circular argument;
and (f) egocentrism

There are several conditions that influences willingness to tell the truth: (a) witness's interest;
(b) witness's bias; (c) desire to please or to displease an intended audience; (d) literary style; (e)
laws and conventions; (f) conventions and formalities; and (g) witness's expectation or
anticipation.

References
Louis Gottschalk (1969), Excerpts from "The problem of authenticity (external criticism) and
the problem of credibility (internal criticism) in Understanding history: A primer of historical
method New York: A.A. Knopf.