Nicholas Loney

The younger son of Admiral Robert Loney, of the Royal Navy, and Ann Condy,John Earle, 'A British Vice-Consul in Southeast Asia', MA Dissertation, University of Plymouth (UK), 2011. Nicholas Loney left home at 16.{{cite web|url=https://www.victoriahoffarth.com/444821163|first=Demetrio|last=P. Sonza |title=Sugar Is Sweet|date=1977|publisher=National Historical Institute|place=Manila}} He first went to Ibero-America where he traveled extensively and became fluent in Spanish. He then turned home to Plymouth, England but stayed only a short time before departing for Asia. He eventually ended up in Singapore where he worked for Ker & Co., a merchant house.

As the Philippines opened to international trade, Kerr & Co. sent him to Manila where he became a popular figure among the business community. When the city of Iloílo was opened to international trade in 1855, he was appointed as the first British Vice Consul in the city the following year on 11 July 1856.{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29792083|title=The Making of a 'Queen City': The Case of Iloílo, 1890s–1930s|date=1992|volume=20|issue=2–3|pages=107–132|last=Florida Funtecha|first=Henry|journal=Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society|jstor=29792083 }}

In the Philippines, the hacienda system and lifestyles were influenced by the Spanish colonisation that occurred via Mexico for more than 300 years, but which only took off in the 1850s at Loney's behest.{{cite web|url=https://tulay.ph/2017/04/25/the-rise-and-fall-of-chinese-textile-business-in-iloilo/|title=The Rise and Fall of [the] Chinese Textile Business in Iloílo|last=Wu|first=W. H.|date=2017-04-25|website=Tulay Fortnightly}} Loney's objective, according to Alfred W. McCoy,{{Cite journal|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/43486357|title=The Fulcrum of Structure–Agency: History and Sociology of Sugar Haciendas in Colonial Negros|last=Villanueva Aguilar|first=Filomeno|year=2013|journal=Philippine Sociological Review|volume=61|issue=1|pages=87–122|jstor=43486357}} was the systematic deindustrialisation of Iloílo.{{cite video|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmWPjUdz8Dc|title=Habol Ilonggo: Traditional Handloom-Weaving in Iloílo|date=2020-09-17|last1=Gólez Marín|first1=Bombette|last2=Chaves|first2=Mark Elyser|last3=Villareal|first3=Gerard|location=Iloílo}} This deindustrialisation was to be accomplished through shifting labour and capital from Iloílo's textile industry ({{langx|hil|habol Ilonggo}}), the origins of which predate the arrival of the Castilians,{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29792411|title=Iloílo's Weaving Industry during the 19th Century|last=Florida Funtecha|first=Henry|year=1998|journal=Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society|volume=26|issue=1/2 |pages=81–88|jstor=29792411}} to sugar-production on the neighbouring island of Negros.{{cite journal|url=http://www.philippinestudies.net/ojs/index.php/ps/article/view/1041/1024|last=López Gonzaga|first=Violeta|date=1988|title=The Roots of Agrarian Unrest on Negros, 1850–90|journal=Philippine Studies|volume=36|issue=2|pages=151–165}}{{cite journal|url=https://econ.upd.edu.ph/pre/index.php/pre/article/viewFile/664/770|last=Fernández Legarda|first=Benito Justo|authorlink=Benito J. Legarda|date=2011-12-02|title=The Economic Background of Rizal's Time|journal=Philippine Review of Economics|volume=48|issue=2|pages=1–22}} The Port of Iloílo was also opened to the flood of cheaply priced British textiles. These changes had the double effect of strengthening England and Scotland's textile industries at the expense of Iloílo's and satisfying the growing European demand for sugar.{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/sweetnesspowerpl00mint|title=Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History|first=Sidney Wilfred|last=Mintz|date=1986-05-06|authorlink=Sidney Mintz|publisher=Penguin Books|via=Internet Archive}}

Sugar-production was increasing due to growing price of sugar in Manila and Loney profited from both {{langx|es|label=none|haciendero}} and {{langx|es|label=none|sacada}} alike by providing loans and purchasing modern machinery from Europe through his firm, Loney & Kerr Co.,{{cite web|title=Sugar Wars: Looking Back at the Negros Famine of the 1980s|last=Caña|first=Paul John|date=2021-04-15|url=https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/negros-famine-of-the-1980s-a00289-20210415-lfrm2|magazine=Esquire}} which helped increased the efficiency of sugar-production on Panay and Negros. He also encouraged improvements in raw-materials-export infrastructure at the Port of Iloílo, reclamation of the western bank of the Iloílo River and the construction of Progreso Street (present-day Isidro de la Rama Street) which became the location of numerous sugar warehouses, including his own.

He died on 23 April 1869 while exploring Mount Kanlaon on the island of Negros. He was buried by the seashore under some coconut trees in what is now Rizal Street in Iloilo City.

File:Iloilo Aduana.jpg along Muelle Loney with the Iloilo River in the foreground]]

In March 1904, the Municipal Council of Iloilo passed a resolution naming the quay along the Iloilo River, part of the Port of Iloilo, as Loney Waterfront ({{langx|es|Muelle Loney}}). In March 1981 a statue of Loney was unveiled at the end of the waterfront.

Loney had unwittingly planted the seeds of a longstanding social conflict on both Panay and Negros,{{cite journal|last=Billig|first=Michael S.|date=1992|url=http://www.philippinestudies.net/ojs/index.php/ps/article/view/1032/1017|title=The Rationality of Growing Sugar on Negros|journal=Philippine Studies|volume=40|issue=2|pages=153–182}}{{cite journal|last=López Gonzaga|first=Violeta|date=1990|url=http://www.philippinestudies.net/ojs/index.php/ps/article/view/997/983|title=Negros in Transition: 1899–1905|journal=Philippine Studies|volume=38|issue=1|pages=103–114}} the fruits of which taste ever bitter to this day.{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/12/opinion/what-will-happen-after-the-philippines-election-civil-war-is-likely.html|first=Raymond|newspaper=New York Times|date=1986-01-12|title=What Will Happen after the Philippines Election; Civil War Is Likely|last=Bonner|authorlink=Raymond Bonner}}{{cite journal|last=López Gonzaga|first=Violeta|date=1988|url=http://www.philippinestudies.net/ojs/index.php/ps/article/view/1296/2667|title=Agrarian Reform in Negros Oriental|journal=Philippine Studies|volume=36|issue=4|pages=443–457}}{{cite book|url=https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4580066d&chunk.id=d0e10589&brand=ucpress|title=Sugar and the Origins of Modern Philippine Society|publisher=University of California Press|date=1993|first=John A.|last=Larkin}}{{cite web|url=http://opinion.inquirer.net/51931/yesterdays-apparatchiks|last=L. Mercado|first=Juan|date=2013-05-03|title=Yesterday's 'Apparatchiks'|newspaper=Philippine Daily Inquirer}} In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, attempts to abolish the {{langx|es|label=none|hacienda}} system in the country through land-reform laws have not been successful.{{cite journal|last=García Padilla|first=Sabino|url=https://www.asj.upd.edu.ph/mediabox/archive/ASJ-25-26-1987-1988/padilla.pdf|journal=Asian Studies|pages=16–26|volume=25–26|date=1987–1988|title=Land Reform: Behind the Rhetoric of Aquino's Dávao Promises}} The expiration of the Laurel–Langley Agreement and the resultant collapse of the Negros sugar industry gave President Ferdinand E. E. Marcos the opening to strip the {{langx|es|label=none|hacenderos}} of their self-appointed roles as kingmakers in national politics,{{cite journal|url=http://www.doi.org/10.1080/00213624.1994.11505577|date=1994|title=The Death and Rebirth of Entrepreneurism on Negros Island, Philippines: A Critique of Cultural Theories of Enterprise|journal=Journal of Economic Issues|volume=28|issue=3|pages=659–678|last=Billig|first=Michael S.|doi=10.1080/00213624.1994.11505577 }} though arguably such an opportunity had been squandered and any significant gains stillborn.

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Category:1826 births

Category:British diplomats

Category:British expatriates in Venezuela

Category:19th-century British businesspeople

Category:English expatriates in the Philippines

Category:History of the textile industry in the United Kingdom

Category:Businesspeople from Plymouth, Devon

Category:Deindustrialization

Category:Businesspeople in the sugar industry

Category:1869 deaths