Historiography of early Philippine settlements

The historiography of early Philippine settlements is the academic discipline concerned with the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to understand the history of settlements in early Philippine history. By modern definitions, this does not involve a story of "events in the past directly," but rather "the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians."^[1]

The study of early Philippine settlements is often hampered^[2][3][4][5] by the fact that the modern political entity known as the Philippines did not actually exist prior to the arrival of Spanish colonial powers in the late sixteenth century.^[6] It is thus important to note that the historiography of early Philippine settlements concerns the writing of the histories of settlements which were not united as one state, but which happened to be located on what is now called the Philippine archipelago.