historical sources are abundant and accessible and the slavery
question is accorded, preeminent attention in the study of American
history. In the Philippine question, however, although the sources
are no less abundant and instructive they are and have been highly
inaccessible owing, on the one hand, to the absolute rarity of the
publications containing them, and, on the other, to their being
in a language hitherto comparatively little studied in the United
States. To collect these sources, scattered and inaccessible as they
are, to reproduce them and interpret them in the English language,
and to make it possible for university and public libraries and
the leaders in thought and policy to have at hand the complete and
authentic records of the culture and life of the millions in the
Far East whom we must understand in order to do them justice, is an
enterprise large in its possibilities for the public good.

In accordance with the idea that underlies this collection this
Introduction will not discuss the Philippine question of today nor
Philippine life during the last half century, nor will it give a
short history of the Islands since the conquest. For all these the
reader may be referred to recent publications like those of Foreman,
Sawyer, or Worcester, or earlier ones like those of Bowring and
Mallat, or to the works republished in the series. The aim of the
Introduction is rather to give the discovery and conquest of the
Philippines their setting in the history of geographical discovery,
to review the unparalleled achievements of the early conquerors and
missionaries, to depict the government and commerce of the islands
before the revolutionary changes of the last century, and to give such
a survey, even though fragmentary, of Philippine life and culture under
the old régime as will bring into relief their peculiar features and,
if possible, to show that although the annals of the Philippines may