The Philippine Islands by John Foreman is a wide-ranging political, geographical, ethnographical, social, and commercial history of the Philippine archipelago, embracing the whole period of Spanish rule. Foreman, a long-time resident and traveler, drew on extensive personal knowledge to produce one of the most detailed English-language accounts of the islands available in his day.
He surveys the land and its peoples, the structure of Spanish colonial administration, trade and commerce, and the tensions that would eventually lead to revolution and the transfer of the islands to the United States. The book served as an important reference for English-speaking readers at the turn of the twentieth century. A substantial work of colonial-era scholarship, it is offered here as a free EPUB download.