Era

In this course, a stretch of time with a particular mechanism running inside it. A break between eras means the mechanism changed, not that a president did.

The course uses nine, running from the barangay polities of maritime Asia to the Fifth Republic. Deep time and the geography of the archipelago sit underneath era one rather than beside it, which is why Lesson 1.1 opens there before walking into the first era proper.

The spine was adopted rather than invented. Four or more standard Philippine histories and curricula break the story at the same joints, so the periodization is a convergence rather than an argument this course had to win first.

Source: The convergence test in this build’s history research map, comparing Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People (Asia Publishing, 1998), Teodoro A. Agoncillo’s History of the Filipino People, Renato Constantino’s The Philippines: A Past Revisited (1975), the DepEd MATATAG curriculum and the CHED “Readings in Philippine History” core. The definition of an era as a mechanism rather than a date range is this course’s own usage.

First used in: 0.3 · The whole board, before we walk it