Sugar Barons: Formation of a Native Planter Class in the Colonial Philippines

While Europeans owned the plantations elsewhere in colonial Asia, in the Philippines local planters developed sugar haciendas and eventually acquired the milling factories. Indigenous ownership gave Philippine plantations a depth of social and political penetration not found elsewhere in tropical Asia. Controlling the economy's advanced sector, Filipino planters, particularly those from Negros Island, were able to influence the US colonial regime and shape the emerging Philippine state to suit the imperatives of their production system. Since independence in 1946, the Negros planters have used their political influence to assure the survival of their quasi-colonial hacienda regime, thereby preserving both an inefficient industry and an inequitable society.