The importance of Chinese and other competition in producing a mestizo shift to agriculture in Central Luzon and the Iloilo-Negros region should not be exaggerated. Since the late eighteenth century there had been mestizo landholders in Central Luzon. This may have been the case in the Iloilo area as well. If the number of mestizo landholders and commercial agriculturalists increased during the late nineteenth century it was not alone due to the effects of foreign competition. The new export crop economy — and also, be it noted, an increase in population — raised the value of land and made landowning and export crop production— anywhere in the Philippines — an attractive means of livelihood. Government legislation, easing the acquisition of good titles, encouraged a trend toward land grabbing in the 1880's.1