Just recently, I received the decision from the editor-in-chief of a certain journal outside the Philippines where I submitted my paper. He stated that while the article I wrote was commendable and interesting, it seemed that I did not offer any new knowledge to the field as I was merely writing about what others had already written about. In brevity, it seemed that he was telling me that I was simply parroting the views of other historians and using their works [secondary sources] as my sources.
I was, at the outset, somehow surprised after receiving these comments. But later on, it started to gradually sink in; I realized that the editor made some sense, that my submitted paper just needed a little refining to make it fit for their journal. This is the beauty of historical research, or any other form of research, as we almost invariably learn the ropes along the way. But just for a forewarning though, it is not really for the fainthearted, especially those who are intolerant to criticisms. You will not survive if you think you do not deserve any opprobrium for your work.
Hence, from that incident, I learned the essence of peer review and constructive comments or feedback about your work from other experts. This is how you remain grounded, and this is why learning will never stop, especially if you’re an academic.
In the field of history, according to renowned WW2 historian Richard Evans: “Historians by and large advance a different interpretation from that of previous historians studying the same subject… historical knowledge does not accumulate in the way that scientific knowledge does; historians are usually more concerned to dispute the findings of their predecessors than to build on them.”
Most, if not all, historians agree – even with their predilection to disagree – with this statement of Evans. Throughout history, historians have tried to refine their craft by questioning the methodologies and interpretations of historical facts from other historians that preceded them. This is what happened when E.H. Carr wrote his most read book, What is History? – where he presented that the writing of history is a matter of selection and interpretation, that is to say, historical facts become as such depending on whether the historian includes it in his narrative, and whether it has been generally accepted by the pool of scholars in the field. Hence, subjectivity in history is unavoidable – this view is antithetical to the Rankean view of history that it should be impartial, or that historians should try to recreate the past essentially as it was, focusing more on factual accuracy. Carr disparagingly called this as “fetishism of facts.”
Another historian, G.R. Elton, wrote The Practice of History to defend the empirical approach of history, which was anathema to Carr’s relativist proclivities. In his book, Elton asseverated his belief that history can be written objectively and that the purpose of studying history is that there are things in history – in this specific discipline – that need to be studied. Thus, for Elton, we study history for the sake of studying history.
This is not Carr’s purpose of studying and writing history though, as he held the belief – which was influenced by his early career as a diplomat– that history should be used for policymaking. Suffice it to say, these are two contrasting interpretations on the purpose of history, but this is only for one subject matter, that is, historiography. There are still many varying interpretations of historical events throughout the world – like varying interpretations for the causes of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, the causes of World War I and II, and so on.
Aside from those things, there are also national, regional, and local histories in varying countries that indubitably have different interpretations. This is mostly likely the reason why many historians tend to have specializations – focusing on different periods [ancient, medieval, modern] and/or fields [political, social, gender, military, and so on] of history.
In my case, I write about the Second World War in the Philippines, more specifically, for the nonce, in the province of Negros Oriental. In doing so, I have also written my interpretations of local historical events and figures. For example, I’ve written extensively about the wartime collaboration cases in Negros Oriental, which previously was not really written about in detail due to its sensitive nature. Furthermore, the present evidence [or primary sources] apropos of the wartime collaboration cases were scarce, but I managed to piece together archival sources and found out that it was not as simple as black and white – i.e., that collaborators were bad, and the members of the resistance movement were good.
Members of the guerrilla movement at the outset of the war against Japan committed acts of banditry as a result of the weakening government. They took matters into their own hands and abused civilians, either taking their food, clothes, and other valuable belongings. Some, especially the guerrillas in the northern part of Negros Oriental, even pillaged barrios and harassed civilians who fought back. Conversely, there were also collaborators who served as cushion to the local populace, those who helped mitigate the suffering of the people with the modicum of influence they still have as puppet government officials. Thus, history is never – or will never be – black and white.
Speaking of interpretation, when looking at Japanese wartime atrocities during the Second World War, other historians tend to simply focus on the lessons we can learn from the war, and how men are capable of egregious crimes against humanity. Yes, we can learn a thing or two from the experience we had with the Japanese occupying forces and try to use the lessons to prevent another war – like World War II – to ever happen again, but other historians tend to have a different way of interpreting Japanese war crimes.
These historians often look further into the irony of Filipinos being obstinately loyal to the Americans as they look back in hindsight and compare the American atrocities during the Philippine-American War vis-à-vis the Japanese war crimes. This interpretation somehow makes sense since the Filipinos, almost half a century before the coming of the Japanese forces, had fought a war against the Americans, and we – just like our experience with the Japanese forces – undeniably were at the receiving end of American wartime atrocities.
During the Philippine-American War, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos – soldiers and civilians – died either from combat or the ramifications of it, e.g., famine, spread of disease, and so on. Most, albeit not all, of the Filipinos have ostensibly forgotten about this unfortunate time in our history when the Japanese invaded the Philippines by December 1942. It is possible, nay probable, that the passage of time and the education of the Filipino people by the Americans contributed to this form of historical amnesia.
This interpretation of history is quite interesting since it further leads to deeper historical questions like: Why were majority of the Filipinos overtly loyal to the Americans? Or what makes the Filipino collaborators who cooperated with the Japanese occupying forces different from those who worked with the Americans – the likes of Quezon, Osmena, and other political elites? Or what motivated the guerrillas to continue the fight even after the defeat of the USAFFE (United States Army Forces of the Far East) in the defense of Bataan and Corregidor?
These historical questions raised are important to create a nuanced account of WWII history in the Philippines. There are still gaps – a lot of gaps – that need to be filled in WWII history in the Philippines, especially the respective local histories of various provinces, cities, and towns during the war. Another aspect of WWII in the Philippines that has not yet been extensively written about is the daily life of civilians, not to mention the life experiences of the marginalized, during the war.
Be that as it may, the point of the matter is that history will always be influenced by the historians’ interpretations of the past. It is undoubtedly, as E.H. Carr defined, a “continuous interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.” There will never be a definitive account of the past, and one must expect that there will always be revisions in history due to new findings and interpretations from readily available primary sources.
This explains why there is nothing wrong with historical revisionism, as historians often revise history whenever there are new sources that surface or become available to them.
This acknowledgement that history can be revised is one thing that we have to put in mind. It must be emphasized that the role of the historian, aside from focusing on the accuracy of his facts, is to provide depth to his interpretation of the past, if not offer new interpretations that will help us learn – and hopefully avoid repeating the same mistakes of people – from the past. And it is in the interpretation of these historical facts that historians find or engender meaning in the history that they are studying or writing about.
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