British Honduras

As the British consolidated their settlement and pushed deeper into the interior in search of mahogany in the late 18th century, they encountered resistance from the Maya. In the second half of the 19th century, however, a combination of events outside and inside the colony redefined the position of the Maya.[5]

During the Caste War in Yucatán, a devastating struggle that halved the population of the area between 1847 and 1855, thousands of refugees fled to the British settlement. The Legislative Assembly had given large landowners in the colony firm titles to their vast estates in 1855 but did not allow the Maya to own land. The Maya could only rent land or live on reservations. Nevertheless, most of the refugees were small farmers, who by 1857 were growing considerable quantities of sugar, rice, corn, and vegetables in the Northern District (now Corozal and Orange Walk districts). In 1857, the town of Corozal, then six years old, had 4,500 inhabitants, second in population only to Belize Town, which had 7,000 inhabitants. Some Maya who had fled the strife in the north, but had no wish to become British subjects, settled in the remote Yalbac Hills, just beyond the woodcutting frontier in the northwest. By 1862, about 1,000 Maya established themselves in 10 villages in this area, with the center in San Pedro. One group of Maya, led by Marcos Canul, attacked a mahogany camp on the Bravo River in 1866, demanding ransom for their prisoners and rent for their land. A detachment of British troops sent to San Pedro was defeated by the Maya later that year. Early in 1867, more than 300 British troops marched into the Yalbac Hills and destroyed the Mayan villages, provision stores, and granaries in an attempt to drive them out of the district. The Maya returned, however, and in April 1870, Canul and his men marched into Corozal and occupied the town.[5]

Two years later, Canul and 150 men attacked the barracks at Orange Walk. After several hours of fighting, Canul's group retired. Canul, mortally wounded, died on 1 September 1872. That battle was the last serious attack on the colony.[5]

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In the 1880s and 1890s, Mopán and Kekchí Maya fled from forced labour in Guatemala and came to British Honduras. They settled in several villages in southern British Honduras, mainly around San Antonio in Toledo District. The Maya could use Crown lands set aside as reservations, but these people lacked communal rights. Under the policy of indirect rule, a system of elected alcaldes (mayors), adopted from Spanish local government, linked these Maya to the colonial administration. However, the remoteness of the area of British Honduras in which they settled, combined with their largely subsistence way of life, resulted in the Mopán and Kekchí Maya maintaining more of their traditional way of life and becoming less assimilated into the colony than the Maya of the north. The Mopán and Kekchí Maya maintained their languages and a strong sense of identity. But in the north, the distinction between Maya and Spanish was increasingly blurred, and a Mestizo culture emerged. In different ways and to different degrees, then, the Maya who returned to British Honduras in the 19th century became incorporated into the colony as poor and dispossessed ethnic minorities.

By the end of the 19th century, the ethnic pattern that remained largely intact throughout the 20th century was in place: Protestants largely of African descent, who spoke either English or Creole, lived in Belize Town; the Roman Catholic Maya and Mestizos spoke Spanish and lived chiefly in the north and west; and the Roman Catholic Garifuna who spoke English, Spanish, or Garifuna and settled on the southern coast.[5]

The forestry industry's control of land and its influence in colonial decision making hindered the development of agriculture and the diversification of the economy. In many parts of the Caribbean, large numbers of former slaves, some of whom had engaged in the cultivation and marketing of food crops, became landowners. British Honduras had vast areas of sparsely populated, unused land. Nevertheless, land ownership was controlled by a small European monopoly, thwarting the evolution of a Creole landowning class from the former slaves. Rather than the former slaves, it was the Garifuna, Maya and Mestizos who pioneered agriculture in 19th-century British Honduras. These groups either rented land or lived as squatters. However, the domination of the land by forestry interests continued to stifle agriculture and kept much of the population dependent on imported foods.[5]

Landownership became even more consolidated during the economic depression of the mid-19th century. Exports of mahogany peaked at over 4 million linear metres in 1846 but fell to about 1.6 million linear meters in 1859 and 8,000 linear meters in 1870, the lowest level since the beginning of the century. Mahogany and logwood continued to account for over 80 percent of the total value of exports, but the price of these goods was so low that the economy was in a state of prolonged depression after the 1850s. Major results of this depression included the decline of the old settler class, the increasing consolidation of capital and the intensification of British landownership. The British Honduras Company emerged as the predominant landowner of the Crown colony. The firm originated in a partnership between one of the old settler families and a London merchant and was registered in 1859 as a limited company. The firm expanded, often at the expense of others who were forced to sell their land.

Largely as a result of the costly military expeditions against the Maya, the expenses of administering the new colony of British Honduras increased, and that at a time of severe depression in the economy. Large landowners and merchants dominated the Legislative Assembly, which controlled the colony's revenues and expenditures. Some of the landowners also had involvement in commerce, but their interest differed from those of the other merchants of Belize Town. The former group resisted the taxation of land and favoured an increase in import duties; the latter preferred the opposite. Moreover, the merchants in the town felt relatively secure from Mayan attacks and reluctant to contribute toward the protection of mahogany camps, whereas the landowners felt that they should not be required to pay taxes on lands given inadequate protection. These conflicting interests produced a stalemate in the Legislative Assembly, which failed to authorise the raising of sufficient revenue. Unable to agree among themselves, the members of the Legislative Assembly surrendered their political privileges and asked for the establishment of direct British rule in return for the greater security of Crown colony status. The new constitution was inaugurated in April 1871 and the Legislative Council became the new legislature.[5]

Under the new constitution of 1871, the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Council, consisting of five ex-officio or "official" and four appointed or "unofficial" members, governed British Honduras. This constitutional change confirmed and completed a change in the locus and form of power in the colony's political economy that had evolved during the preceding half-century. The change moved power from the old settler oligarchy to the boardrooms of British companies and to the Colonial Office in London.[5]

In 1875, the British Honduras Company became the Belize Estate and Produce Company, a London-based business that owned about half of all the privately held land in the colony. The new company was the chief force in British Honduras's political economy for over a century.[5]

This concentration and centralisation of capital meant that the direction of the colony's economy was henceforth determined largely in London. It also signalled the eclipse of the old settler elite. By about 1890, most commerce in British Honduras was in the hands of a clique of Scottish and German merchants, most of them newcomers. This clique encouraged consumption of imported goods and thus furthered British Honduras's dependence on Britain. The European minority exercised great influence in the colony's politics, partly because it was guaranteed representation on the wholly appointed Legislative Council. The manager of the Belize Estate and Produce Company, for example, was automatically a member of the council, while members of the emerging Creole elite were excluded from holding seats on the council. The Creoles requested in 1890 that some seats on the council be opened to election (as had occurred in Canada and New Zealand) in the hope of winning seats, but the Legislative Council refused. In 1892, the Governor appointed several Creole members, but whites remained the majority. In 1919 demobilised Creole servicemen protested British racism, but British troops soon stopped this spontaneous protest, which was indicative of discontent but had little lasting effect. In the 1920s, the Colonial Office supported agitation for an elective council as long as the Governor had reserve powers to allow him to push through any measures he considered essential without the council's assent. But the council rejected these provisos, and the issue of restoring elections was postponed.[5]

Despite the prevailing stagnation of the colony's economy and society during most of the century prior to the 1930s, seeds of change were being sown. The mahogany trade remained depressed, and efforts to develop plantation agriculture in several crops, including sugarcane, coffee, cocoa, cotton, bananas and coconuts failed. In 1894 mahogany workers rioted against a cut in their real wages caused by devaluation, but British troops soon stopped this spontaneous protest. A brief revival in the forestry industry took place early in the 20th century as new demands for forest products came from the United States. Exports of chicle, a gum taken from the sapodilla tree and used to make chewing gum, propped up the economy from the 1880s. Much of the gum was tapped in Mexican and Guatemalan forests by Mayan chicleros who had been recruited by labour contractors in British Honduras. A short-lived boom in the mahogany trade occurred around 1900 in response to growing demand for the wood in the United States, but the ruthless exploitation of the forests without any conservation or reforestation depleted resources. The introduction of tractors and bulldozers opened up new areas in the west and south in the 1920s, but this development led again to only a temporary revival. At this time, mahogany, cedar and chicle together accounted for 97 percent of forest production and 82 percent of the total value of exports. The economy, which was increasingly oriented toward trade with the United States, remained dependent and underdeveloped.[5]

Creoles, who were well-connected with businesses in the United States, challenged the traditional political-economic connection with Britain as trade with the United States intensified. Men such as Robert S. Turton, the Creole chicle buyer for Wrigley's, and Henry I. Melhado, whose merchant family dealt in illicit liquor during prohibition, became major political and economic figures. In 1927, Creole merchants and professionals replaced the representatives of British landowners, (except for the manager of the Belize Estate and Produce Company) on the Legislative Council. The participation of this Creole elite in the political process was evidence of emerging social changes that were largely concealed by economic stagnation. These changes accelerated with such force in the 1930s that they ushered in a new era of modern politics.[5]

Destruction from the 1931 Belize hurricane

The Great Depression shattered the colony's economy, and unemployment increased rapidly. The Colonial Report for 1931 stated that "contracts for the purchase of mahogany and chicle, which form the mainstay of the Colony, practically ceased altogether, thereby throwing a large number of the woodcutters and chicle-gatherers out of work". On top of this economic disaster, the worst hurricane in the country's recent history demolished Belize Town on 10 September 1931, killing more than 1,000 people and destroying at least three-quarters of the housing. The British relief response was tardy and inadequate. The British government seized the opportunity to impose tighter control on the colony and endowed the Governor with reserve powers, or the power to enact laws in emergency situations without the consent of the Legislative Council. The Legislative Council resisted but eventually passed a resolution agreeing to give the Governor reserve powers to obtain disaster aid. Meanwhile, people in the town were making shelters out of the wreckage of their houses. The economy continued to decline in 1932 and 1933. The total value of imports and exports in the latter year was little more than one-fourth of what it had been in 1929.[5]

The Belize Estate and Produce Company survived the depression years because of its special connections in British Honduras and London. Since 1875 various members of the Hoare family had been principal directors and maintained a controlling interest in the company. Sir Samuel Hoare, a shareholder and former director, had been a British cabinet member and a friend of Leo Amery, the British secretary of state for the colonies. In 1931, when the company was suffering from the aftereffects of the hurricane and the depression, family member Oliver V.G. Hoare contacted the Colonial Office to discuss the possibility of selling the company to buyers in the United States. The British government rescued the company by granting it an area of virgin mahogany forest and a loan of US$200,000 to erect a sawmill in Belize Town. When the government almost doubled the land tax, the large landowners refused to pay. The government accepted some virtually worthless land in lieu of taxes and in 1935 capitulated completely, reducing the tax to its former rate and annulling the landowners' arrears by making them retroactive to 1931. But small landowners had paid their taxes, often at a higher rate.[5]

Robert Turton, the Creole millionaire who made his fortune from chicle exports, defeated C.H. Brown, the expatriate manager of the company, in the first elections for some of the Legislative Council seats in 1936. After the elections, the Governor promptly appointed Brown to the council, presumably to maintain the influence of what had for so long been the colony's chief business. But Brown's defeat by Turton, one of the company's chief local business rivals, marked the decline of old British enterprises in relation to the rising Creole entrepreneurs with their United States commercial connections.[5]

Meanwhile, the Belize Estate and Produce Company drove Maya villagers from their homes in San Jose and Yalbac in the northwest and treated workers in mahogany camps almost like slaves. Investigators of labour conditions in the 1930s were appalled to discover that workers received rations of inferior flour and mess pork and tickets to be exchanged at the commissaries, in lieu of cash wages. As a result, workers and their families suffered from malnutrition and were continually in debt to their employers. The law governing labour contracts, the Masters and Servants Act of 1883, made it a criminal offence for a labourer to breach a contract. The offence was punishable by twenty-eight days of imprisonment with hard labour. In 1931 the Governor, Sir John Burdon, rejected proposals to legalise trade unions and to introduce a minimum wage and sickness insurance. The conditions, aggravated by rising unemployment and the disastrous hurricane, were responsible for severe hardship among the poor. The poor responded in 1934 with a series of demonstrations, strikes, petitions and riots that marked the beginning of modern politics and the independence movement.[5]

1965 map of British Honduras

British Honduras faced two obstacles to independence: British reluctance until the early 1960s to allow citizens to govern themselves, and Guatemala's complete intransigence over its long-standing claim to the entire territory. By 1961, the United Kingdom was willing to let the colony become independent and from 1964 controlled only defence, foreign affairs, internal security, and the terms and conditions of the public service. On 1 June 1973, the colony's name was changed to Belize in anticipation of independence. The stalemate in the protracted negotiations between the UK and Guatemala over the future status of Belize led Belizeans after 1975 to seek the international community's assistance in resolving issues associated with independence. Even after Belize became independent in 1981, however, the territorial dispute remained unsettled.[5]

The territorial dispute's origins lay in the 18th-century treaties in which Great Britain acceded to Spain's assertion of sovereignty while British settlers continued to occupy the sparsely settled and ill-defined area. The 1786 Convention of London, which affirmed Spanish sovereignty was never renegotiated, but Spain never attempted to reclaim the area after 1798.

At the centre of Guatemala's oldest claim was the 1859 treaty between the United Kingdom and Guatemala. From Britain's viewpoint, this treaty merely settled the boundaries of an area already under British dominion. Guatemala had an alternative view that this agreement stated that Guatemala would give up its territorial claims only under certain conditions, including the construction of a road from Guatemala to the Caribbean coast. The UK never built the road, and Guatemala said it would repudiate the treaty in 1884 but never followed up on the threat.

The dispute appeared to have been forgotten until the 1930s when the government of General Jorge Ubico claimed that the treaty was invalid because the road had not been constructed. Britain argued that because neither the short-lived Central American Federation (1821–1839) nor Guatemala had ever exercised any authority in the area or even protested the British presence in the 19th century, British Honduras was clearly under British sovereignty. In its constitution of 1945, however, Guatemala stated that British Honduras was the twenty-third department of Guatemala.

In February 1948, Guatemala threatened to invade and forcibly annex the territory, and the British responded by deploying two companies from 2nd Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment. Since 1954 a succession of military and right-wing governments in Guatemala frequently whipped up nationalist sentiment, with incursions in 1957 and 1958.[5][6]

Belize and Guatemala

Negotiations between Britain and Guatemala began again in 1961, but the elected representatives of British Honduras had no voice in these talks. As a result, in 1965 the United States President Lyndon Johnson agreed to mediate and proposed a draft treaty that gave Guatemala control over the newly independent country in areas including internal security, defence and external affairs. All parties in British Honduras, however, denounced the proposals.[5]

A series of meetings, begun in 1969, ended abruptly in 1972 when tensions flared over a possible Guatemalan invasion.[7] Talks resumed in 1973, but broke off again in 1975 when tensions flared once more.[6] Between 1975 and 1981, the Belizean and British governments, frustrated at dealing with the military-dominated regimes in Guatemala, began to state their case for self-determination at international forums such as a meeting of the heads of Commonwealth of Nations governments in Jamaica, the conference of ministers of the Nonaligned Movement in Peru, and at meetings of the United Nations (UN).

The support of the Nonaligned Movement proved crucial and assured success at the UN.[5] Latin American governments initially supported Guatemala, however Cuba, Mexico, Panama and Nicaragua later declared unequivocal support for an independent Belize.[5] Finally, in November 1980, with Guatemala completely isolated, the UN passed a resolution that demanded the independence of Belize, with all its territory intact, before the next session of the UN in 1981.[5]

A last attempt was made to reach an agreement with Guatemala prior to the independence of Belize and a proposal, called the Heads of Agreement, was initialled on 11 March 1981. However, the Guatemalan government refused to ratify the agreement and withdrew from the negotiations, and the opposition in Belize engaged in violent demonstrations against it. With the prospect of independence celebrations in the offing, the opposition's morale fell and independence came to Belize on 21 September 1981, without an agreement with Guatemala.[5]

Before 1884 the colonial administration of British Honduras was rather haphazard. In the early days, the colonists governed themselves under a public meeting system, similar to the town meeting system used in New England. A set of regulations called "Burnaby's Code" was adopted in 1765, which continued in force until 1840, when an executive council was created. Also in 1840, the colony formally became known as British Honduras, although it was also referred to as "the Belize". In 1853 the public meeting system was abandoned in favour of a legislative assembly, part of which was elected by a restricted franchise. The assembly was presided over by the British superintendent, an office created in 1784.

From 1749 until 1884, British Honduras was governed as a dependency of the British colony of Jamaica. Upon its designation as a Crown colony in 1871, a Lieutenant Governor under the Governor of Jamaica replaced the superintendent, and a nominated legislative council replaced the legislative assembly. When the colony was finally severed from the administration of Jamaica in 1884, it gained its own Governor.

In 1935 legislative franchise was reintroduced with a lower income qualification. Universal adult franchise was adopted in 1954, and a majority of seats in the legislature were made elective. A ministerial system was introduced in 1961, and the colony achieved self-government status in 1964.

Forestry dominated the economy of British Honduras. Initially, the focus was upon logwood, which was used in dye manufacture. Falling prices for logwood in the 1770s led to a shift toward logging mahogany, which would dominate the economy until the mid-20th century. As the logging of mahogany was far more labour-intensive, this also led to a significant increase of the importation of African slaves to the colony, mainly from Britain's Caribbean colonies. Due largely to extremely harsh working conditions, the colony experienced four slave revolts, the first in 1765 and the last in 1820. Slavery was finally abolished in 1838. Exports of mahogany continued as an economic mainstay, as commercial agriculture remained unprofitable due to unfavourable colonial tax policies and trade restrictions. Colonial officials provided incentives during the 1860s that resulted in a large influx of Americans from the Southern United States, especially Louisiana, during and after the American Civil War. The Confederate settlements in British Honduras introduced large-scale sugar production to the colony and proved that it could be profitable where others had previously failed.

The lack of diversification in the economy left the colony very susceptible to swings in the mahogany market. The Great Depression of the 1930s and an especially destructive hurricane in 1931, further depressed the economy and already low living conditions. From 1914 on, the forestry industry was in steady decline, except for a brief revival during World War II (1939–1945). In the 1950s agriculture finally became a dominant part of economy, and in the 1970s fishing became significant. Land reform after World War II aided this expansion of the economy.

By the time of the colony's 1790 census, three-quarters of the population of British Honduras were a mixed-race people known as "Creole people". They were the ancestors of the original Belizean-Creole population, who were, and still are, the biological offspring of European men and enslaved African women. The Europeans who sired the original Belizean-Creole people consisted mainly of British, Portuguese, Spanish and French men.

The abolition of the slave trade in 1807, high death rates and low birth rates substantially reduced the ethnic African portion of the population. The white portion of the population remained consistently at around 10%. The largest portion of the population became the Mestizo people, now about 50% of modern Belize. The Mayans are still present in Belize and comprise around 11% of the population.

The population of the colony was always fairly small. In 1790 it was around 4,000. In 1856 it was estimated to be 20,000. By 1931 this figure grew to just over 50,000, and in 1946 to just under 60,000. However, by 1970 the population doubled to just under 120,000. On the eve of independence in 1980, the population stood at over 145,000.

• List of colonial governors and administrators of British Honduras
• Attorney General of British Honduras
• Chief Justice of British Honduras

• Charles Knight, ed. (1866). "British Honduras". English Cyclopaedia. Volume 3: Geography. London: Bradbury, Evans, & Co.

• Government of Belize website
• Belize at The Commonwealth
• U.S. Library of Congress country study
• "A History of Belize" at Naturalight Productions' Belize tourism website
• Jesuit mission picture archives, early 20th century
• British Honduras Paper Money