Bacolod, the Land of the Sweet

Bacolod and Silay were once the domain of powerful sugar barons. The sugar industry was the brainchild of the former British Vice Consul Nicholas Loney in the 1850s. Initially he set up the plantations and the mechanical infrastructure in Iloilo. Eventually the industry leapfrogged over to the western part of Negros, where the land was found to be more suitable for this crop. Scions of the Iloilo aristocracy were sent over to Negros to start and manage the plantations, and workers were brought in from neighboring Visayan islands. By the next decade, Negros was the leading producer of sugar in the Philippines.