"The Manila Times" was founded by Thomas Gowan, an Englishman who had been living in the Philippines. The paper was created to serve mainly the Americans who were sent to Manila to fight in the Spanish–American War. At the time, most of the newspapers in the Philippines were in Spanish and a few others were in the native languages. Shortly after the paper's founding, reports reached Manila about the Paris Conference that would lead to the treaty ceding the Philippines to the United States from Spain.