Agents of Apocalypse examines the devastating epidemics of cholera, smallpox, malaria, beriberi, and venereal disease that struck the colonial Philippines between 1883 and 1903, when the islands suffered some of the world's highest mortality rates. Ken De Bevoise argues that these crises resulted not simply from colonial mismanagement but from the convergence of centuries-old demographic, economic, and cultural processes that shaped conditions on the ground. Drawing on archival research from Philippine and American sources, he shows how human societies participate in shaping epidemic disease through social and environmental dynamics, making this a foundational work in Philippine social history and the history of tropical medicine.