Note 15 — THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

The first essential to a study of this period is a fair and comprehensive survey of Philippine conditions in the years just preceding—the “old régime,” as we may call it, though it was then breaking down in certain particulars. One book alone will serve the student’s purpose in this respect; and, whatever others are read, Jagor’s15 is indispensable. Next to him, and in addition to the documents appearing in this series immediately preceding the present volume may be cited the 1842 Informe of the Spanish diplomat in the Orient, Sinibaldo de Mas, and the two-volume treatise of 1846 by the Frenchman, J. Mallat. In certain respects, the latter has closely followed Mas; but his is no mere translated plagiarism, like that of John Bowring (1859), who was only a temporary visitor entertained by Spanish officialdom in Manila. The work of Paul de la Gironière, not his Twenty Years in the Philippines, but his more serious work of 1855 (Aventures d’un gentilhomme breton aux îles Philippines), merits attention as containing the observations of a cultivated foreigner who had the advantage of years of residence in Manila and a neighboring province.