Around 1910, three Dutch public intellectuals separately visited Manila. Feminist doctor Aletta Jacobs, orientalist scholar Gerret Rouffaer, and ethnologist Hendrik Muller were all curious to see how the Americans were implementing their much-advertised colonial policy of ""benevolent assimilation."" In this book their reports are for the first time made available to Philippine readers, thus adding to the social history of the city and the country at a time when Americans were strengthening their hold over their new colony.