Jim Rogers,
150 Countries, 150,000
Miles in three years -
Belize City!
Copyright Jim Rogers, all rights reserved
Belize, formerly
British Honduras, is a country in
Central America.
Once part of the
Mayan, and very briefly the
Spanish Empire, it was most recently affiliated with the
British Empire, prior to gaining its independence in
1981.
The country is bordered to the south and west by
Guatemala, to the north by
Mexico, and to the east by the
Caribbean Sea.
Belize has a diverse society, composed of many cultures and speaking many languages. It is the only country in Central America where
English is an official language, although
Creole and
Spanish are also widely spoken. With 8,867 square miles (22,960 km²) of territory and 320,000 people (2008 est.),[2] the population density is the lowest in the
Central American region and one of the lowest in the world. The country's population growth rate, 2.21% (2008 est.),[3] is the highest in the region and one of the highest in the western hemisphere. It remains a
Commonwealth realm. Culturally, Belize associates primarily with the
English-speaking Caribbean countries such as
Jamaica, or
Trinidad and Tobago.
The origin of the name Belize is unclear, but one idea is that the name is from the
Maya word belix, meaning "muddy water," applied to the
Belize River.
Before the arrival of
Europeans, Belize was part of the territory of the Maya. The
Mopan Maya were the original inhabitants of Belize.
The Maya civilization spread itself over Belize beginning around 1500 BC and flourished until about
AD 900. In the late classic period of
Maya civilization (before
A.D. 1000), as many as 400,000 people may have lived in the area that is now Belize. Some lowland Maya still occupied the area when Europeans arrived in the 1500s. Spanish colonists tried to settle the inland areas of Belize, but they abandoned these efforts following Maya rebellion against Spanish authority.
English and
Scottish buccaneers known as the
Baymen first settled on the coast of Belize in 1638, seeking a sheltered region from which they could attack Spanish ships (see
English settlement in Belize). The settlers turned to cutting logwood during the 1700s.
The wood yielded a fixing agent for clothing dyes that was vital to the
European woolen industry.
The Spanish granted the
British settlers the right to occupy the area and cut logwood in exchange for an end to piracy. Historical accounts from the early 1700s note that Africans were brought to the settlement from Jamaica to work as slaves and cut timber. As early as 1800 Africans outnumbered Europeans by about four to one. By then the settlements primary export had shifted from logwood to mahogany.
For fear of provoking Spanish attack, the
British government did not initially recognize the settlement in Belize as a colony. It allowed the settlers to establish their own laws and forms of government. During this time a few wealthy settlers gained control of the local legislature, known as the
Public Meeting, as well as of most of the settlements land and timber. The
British first appointed a superintendent over the area in 1786.
The Spanish, who claimed sovereignty over the whole of Central America, tried often to gain control by force over Belize, but they were not successful. Spains last attack ended on
10 September, 1798, when the people of Belize decisively defeated a Spanish fleet at the
Battle of
St. George's Caye. The anniversary of the battle is now a national holiday in Belize
.
In the early 1800s the British sought greater control over the settlers, threatening to suspend the Public Meeting unless it observed the governments instructions to abolish slavery.
Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1838, but this did little to change working conditions for laborers in the Belize settlement.
Slaves of the colony were valued for their potentially superior abilities in the work of mahogany extraction. As a result, former slave owners in British Honduras earned £53.6.9 on average per slave, the highest amount paid in any
British territory.
In 1836, after the emancipation of Central America from Spanish rule, the British claimed the right to administer the region. In
1862 Great Britain formally declared it a
British Crown Colony, subordinate to Jamaica, and named it British Honduras. As a colony Belize began to attract British investors. Among the
British firms that dominated the colony in the late 1800s was the Belize
Estate and Produce
Company, which eventually acquired half of all the privately held land in the colony. Belize Estates influence accounts in part for the colonys reliance on the mahogany trade throughout the rest of the
19th century and the first half of the
20th century.
Copyright Jim Rogers - provided as a special contribution to The
Fenton Report
- published: 22 Jan 2009
- views: 28916