Nicholas Loney

Nicholas Loney (, Plymouth, United Kingdom – , Mount Kanlaon, Negros Island, Philippines) was an English businessman and the British Empire's vice-consul in the city of Iloílo.

Early life The younger son of Admiral Robert Loney, of the Royal Navy, and Ann Condy, Nicholas Loney left home at 16. He first went to Ibero-America where he traveled extensively and became fluent in Spanish.

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. Loney's objective, according to Alfred W. McCoy, was the systematic deindustrialisation of Iloílo. This deindustrialisation was to be accomplished through shifting labour and capital from Iloílo's textile industry , the origins of which predate the arrival of the Castilians, to sugar-production on the neighbouring island of Negros. The Port of Iloílo was also opened to the flood of cheaply priced British textiles.

Sugar-production was increasing due to growing price of sugar in Manila and Loney profited from both and alike by providing loans and purchasing modern machinery from Europe through his firm, Loney & Kerr Co., which helped increased the efficiency of sugar-production on Panay and Negros. the fruits of which taste ever bitter to this day. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, attempts to abolish the system in the country through land-reform laws have not been successful. 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 of their self-appointed roles as kingmakers in national politics, though arguably such an opportunity had been squandered and any significant gains stillborn.