The Story of the Philippines: Natural Riches, Industrial Resources, Statistics of Productions, Commerce and Population; the Laws, Habits, Customs, Scenery and Conditions of the Cuba of the East Indies and the Thousand Islands of the Archipelagoes of India and Hawaii, with Episodes of Their Early History; the Eldorado of the Orient; Personal Character Sketches of and Interviews with Admiral Dewey, General Merritt, General Aguinaldo and the Archbishop of Manila; History and Romance, Tragedies and Traditions of Our Pacific Possessions; Events of the War in the West with Spain, and the Conquest of Cuba and Porto Rico

A dispatch from the birth of American empire, this is Murat Halstead's vivid, partisan account of the Philippines in the moment of conquest. Written in 1899 by a journalist who accompanied the American military occupation, the book captures Manila and the islands at a hinge point in history: Spanish rule shattered, American forces newly arrived, Filipino independence leaders maneuvering for their own vision of the future. Halstead interviewed Admiral Dewey, General Merritt, General Aguinaldo, and the Archbishop of Manila, weaving their perspectives into a narrative that blends military reporting, cultural observation, and breathless promotion of America's new Pacific possession. The result is neither neutral history nor careful analysis. It is period journalism, soaked in the assumptions of Anglo-American superiority, the ebullience of recent victory, and the commercial optimism that greeted imperial expansion. For modern readers, its value lies precisely in this unfiltered immediacy: here is how Americans of 1899 understood what they had done in the Philippines, and what they believed they were building there.