The book deals with embryonic ‘Philippine Studies’ as reflected in the life and labor of José Felipe Del-Pan, a Spaniard who decided to settle and died in mid-19th century Philippines. It examines the nascent state of scholarship related to the Philippines prior to the cultural agenda of the Propaganda Movement of 1880s. Del-Pan’s pioneering outputs concerning the Philippines were bountiful and varied and they paved the way for many diverse intellectual disciplines resulting in the multiplication of scholars both from the native population and outsiders, in the thriving Spanish colony of his time. He had engaged himself in the production of materials that dealt with themes or topics, perspectives, and methods of investigation of what he deemed were the suitable categories for nascent Philippine Studies, categories that were also to be suggested by Jose Rizal more than a decade later in the cultivation of such scholarly pursuits.