A Visit to Manila and Its Environs

In 1875 Jacob Adolf Bruno Wiselius, Controller with the Dutch Colonial Administration on Java, visited Manila and the neighboring Laguna province. Shortly after, he published a book in Holland on his travel experience. This travel account is now being translated from the Dutch for the first time, 140 years after its original publication. This translation is also accompanied by an essay that not only provides biographical information on the author but also discusses concurrent events in the Dutch Indies to make it clear why Wiselius was interested in the topics discussed in the book. Accounts from non-Spanish sources that focus on the way the Philippines was ruled in the final decades of the Spanish colonial era are rare, and this travelogue is a valuable addition to our knowledge of that period.