Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part one: Pre-Spanish Negros up to 1898 -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: The setting: Geography and the pre-historic culture -- Geography -- Languages -- Products -- Prehistory -- The prehispanic Bisayan culture -- Notes -- Chapter 2: Frontier opening, ethnic differentiation and indigenous life -- Early Spanish explorations and colonization -- The ethnic continuum and indigenous life -- The impact of Muslim "piratical" attacks on Negros -- Frontier missions, internal domination and ethnocide -- Notes -- Chapter 3: Migration and the formation of the hacienda complex -- Demography and migration -- The hacienda system -- Chapter 4: Capital expansion and the rise of monopoly economy -- The agricultural colonies-- The transformation of the Negros economy -- The sugar boom's origin -- Migration, fencing of land, exploitation -- The acquisition of land -- The requisites -- Absolute sale or Denuncia -- Inheritance -- Debt payment -- Pacto de retro -- Peonage -- Land-grabbing -- Monocrop economy: the sugar stranglehood -- Patterns of internal colonization: Negros as a satellite and Iloilo as foreign commercial enclave -- Chapter 5: The development drift: from diversified to monocrop economy -- The movement of credit -- The labor system -- Ethnocide -- Man against nature -- The abuses of Saravia -- Prejudice against the Filipinos -- Banditry -- Hunger, famine, epidemic -- World market pressure: the sugar crisis of the 1880s -- More problems -- Chapter 6: Between toe empires - decline, uprising and political division -- The roots of social unrest -- The last years of Spanish rule in Negros -- The birth of the two provinces -- Illustrations -- Pendant of archeological gold found in Southern Negros Occidental -- Archeological gold necklace, quantro-cantos style, dug out in Kabankalan area -- A set of archeological gold jewelries found in Negros -- A rare Ming blue and white burial jar approximately 3 ft. in height, dubbed "Princess of Kanlaon", found in the slopes of Mt. Kanlaon -- Unique set of blue and white jars dug out in Southern Negros Occidental -- A Spanish hacendero with one of his armed men at the turn of the century (ca. 1890s) -- Fr. Fernando cuenca, the Augustinian recollect who opened the frontiers of Negros to rapid agricultural and social cultural development in the 1950s -- A group of jornaleros, day laborers, with a Spanish hacendero (circa late 1890s) -- An early 1900 photo of sugarcane workers cutting cane at the hacienda at the turn of the century -- 'Remontado Men" - part of the natives who were Christianized but returned to the mountains at the turn of the century -- A muscovado mill found in the Montilla ancestral house in Ubay, Pulupandan -- The "Negrense' comprised Chinese spanish mestizos and traditional native elite who inter-married with the European settlers, as then gobernadorcillo of Tanay and his wife, teenage son and daughter (Photo courtesy of U.S. National Archives) -- Bayong or bags for packing raw sugar used at the turn of the century (Photo from the file of the U.S. National Archives, BS A-P-Act-3) -- A lorcha used in the early years of trading and transporting sugar from Negros Island to Iloilo, circa 1870. (Photo courtesy of. U.S. National Archives) -- One of the daughters of Mrs. Consolacion de Gonzaga, possibly Julia (ca. 1890s) -- A souvenir photo of Negrense elite women taken 1901. -- Bacolod Plaza during a welcome honoring the members of the Philippine Commission (ca. 1901) -- A view of a major street in Bacolod, with the hoisted American flag, 1909 -- The Bacolod City kiosk where on the historic Christmas Day of 1898, Gen. Aniceto Lacson inaugurated the alcaldes (mayors) of all the towns of Negros, and proclaimed the province 'republic of Negros" (Photo courtesy of Ayala Museum, Quirino collection.) -- The lonely wharf - entry point for the sugar produced in Negros (F.G. Gonzaga collection.) -- A group of Negrense ilustrados in Ateneo de Manila (ca. 1900) -- The original "masskara: - an early 1900 photo of a masquerade parade at the Bacolod Plaza. -- Part two: Negros from the American Colonial Period through the martial law years (1899 - 1985) -- chapter 7: Negros in the American shadow -- The origins of American Influence -- The hacendero class and the pumuluyo -- Agrarian unrest and the rise of peasant movement -- Chapter 8: Land in Negros: a policy of control -- American land policy -- caciquism and reform -- Chapter 9: The watershed years -- Government patronage and modernization of mills -- The split: roots of the planter-miller quarrel -- Technology and growth -- Notes -- Chapter 10: American legislation and the sugar industry -- The governor-generals -- Sugar exports: quota limitations -- Chapter 11: years of plenty: Oro, plata... -- Negrense elite 'matriarchs' -- Chapter 12: The years before the war -- Chapter 13: The years of conflict -- Negros resistance -- Chapter 14: The men of the sugar industry: myth and power -- Marcos and martial law: the years of betrayal -- Chapter 15: Under the volcano: the church in revolt -- Chapter 16: Sugarlandia in crisis: De novo pattern -- Attempts at social reforms -- Impact of the mid-1980 crisis on the Negrense poor.