Belize Settlement

Origins

Tradition dates the first British settlement to 1638 and links it to the buccaneer Peter Wallace, but reliable evidence of logwood cutters, the Baymen, on the Belize River begins in the mid-17th century. Former buccaneers turned to cutting logwood, a valuable dye wood, on a coast Spain claimed but did not occupy.

Rule and society

Spain never recognised British sovereignty but allowed timber cutting under the treaties of Paris in 1763 and Versailles in 1783 and the Convention of London of 1786. The Baymen governed themselves through a Public Meeting and elected magistrates, joined from 1786 by a British superintendent. The economy moved from logwood to mahogany, worked by enslaved Africans in small forest gangs. Settlers repulsed a Spanish attack at the Battle of St George's Caye in 1798.

Decline and legacy

After Central American independence, Britain extended its control and the settlement's boundaries. Guatemala later claimed the territory, a dispute that still lingers. In 1862 the settlement was formally declared the Colony of British Honduras.