Deer skins and tortoise shells in 19th-century PH

If you go to downtown Iloilo on Wednesday, you will come across the “Muelle Loney,” or even “Muelle Loney street,” that remind us of Nicholas Loney, Her Britannic Majesty’s vice consul in Iloilo during the days when the wharf was one of the busiest trading ports in 19^th-century Philippines. Loney was also a prominent trader who is largely credited with the establishment and promotion of the sugar industry in Negros. What has been left out of the story, though, was how Loney killed the native textile industry there by introducing competition from machine-made cloth from Manchester. It is said that people working in textiles were encouraged to go into sugar, and land once planted to cotton were planted to sugar. So depending on who is telling the story and why, Loney can be your choice of hero or heel.

On the recommendation of John William Farren, the first of Her Britannic Majesty’s consuls in Manila, Loney set off for Iloilo in late 1857 as British vice consul. He served two masters by maintaining his own private trading firm in Iloilo, where he conducted business until his death from malaria in 1869.

Aside from a biography of Loney by Demy Sonza (1977), there is a compilation of Loney’s letters published by the National Library under Carlos Quirino in 1964. I would not have written on Loney today if not for a document dug up by the historian Gregorio Zaide in the British Public Record Office, the document being Loney’s Economic Report on the Island of Panay in 1857.

Loney begins with a physical description of Panay and its people, including a table containing the data for the Christianized population of the Visayas under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Cebu. There are extended topographical and nautical descriptions of the islands that are deemed useful for traders and ship captains. Frankly, all these data are dated and quaint when read today, but they provide the historian and an interested general reader a picture of the economic conditions of the time. Loney provides notes on: the tobacco monopoly and its problems; the promise that sugar brings as a cash crop and as an industry; assorted observations on hemp, japanwood, and other items (including current market prices) and how to export these.

I’m not an economic historian, but I was fascinated by some articles from Panay that Loney recommended for direct import trade in England, these being:

“HIDES—buffalo and cow, of which the last year’s exports to Manila were 128 tons from Iloilo, 60 tons from Capiz, and 24 tons from Antique. Prices here (very high at present) may be quoted at $5 to $8 for Buffalo and $10 tp $14 for Cow per picul.” Eighty-four tons of animal skins are quite a lot, and made me wonder how many animals were slaughtered to produce these.

“HORNS—a limited quantity from three provinces. Prices from $2 to $3 per picul.

“Cowries—Of this article 430 cavanes were shipped last year from Capiz, 42 cavanes from Antique and 33 from Iloilo. Its worth in Manila, usually about $2.50 to $3 per cavan, has lately risen to $15.” This is a lot of shellfish to eat, and in these days when our natural resources have been depleted, you wonder if it’s possible to harvest the same amount.

Loney then mentions timber, beeswax, mat bags, rattan and canes before mentioning some “minor” articles of trade, such as:

“Of the articles which are either not adapted for the European markets or as yet produced in insignificant quantities, I will merely enumerate Cocoa (of excellent quality), Arrowroot, Vegetable Pitch, of which a considerable quantity is sent to Manila; Wheat which grows freely in the more elevated districts of the island, and of which 1,125 bags were sent from Iloilo and Antique during 1856; Maize, Bicho de Mer, Dried vegetables (beans, a large amount of which is sent annually to Manila), Cotton, Tortoise shells, Deer Skins, and Gold Dust. Gums, Dyes, and Drugs of various descriptions abound in Panay, and scientific examination of the many products of this nature, of which little or no use is made, is a great desideratum.”

In grade school we were made to memorize the principal products of the various regions or provinces in the Philippines, and I don’t remember learning about deer skins and tortoise shells, or minerals different from the usual suspects iron and gold, like coal and quicksilver. Reading old economic reports of the Philippines can be quite entertaining because you learn new things like rubber from “gutta percha” that came from a tree abundant in Iloilo and Guimaras known as “nato.” Loney experimented with the process of boiling and extracting the rubber from the Iloilo trees in the hope of competing against rubber from the British Straits Settlements, now Singapore, Malacca and Penang.

In many archives abroad we will find old economic reports like those sent by Loney to his government; most of them conclude that 19th-century Philippines was more an agricultural rather than a manufacturing country, that there was great promise indeed for those blessed with the combination of capital, luck and foresight. Maybe we can learn from the past in order to liberate ourselves from history.

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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu