Landownership becomes even more consolidated during the…

Landownership becomes even more consolidated during the economic depression of the mid-nineteenth century.

Exports of mahogany had peaked at over four million linear meters in 1846 but had fallen to about one point six million linear meters in 1859 and falls to eight thousand linear meters in 1870, the lowest level since the beginning of the century.

Mahogany and logwood continue to account for over eighty percent of the total value of exports, but the price of these goods is so low that the economy is in a state of prolonged depression after the 1850s.

Major results of this depression include the decline of the old settler class, the increasing consolidation of capital and the intensification of British landownership.

The British Honduras Company emerges 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 had been registered in 1859 as a limited company.

The firm expands, often at the expense of others who are forced to sell their land.

In 1875 the firm becomes the Belize Estate and Produce Company, a London-based business that owns about half of all the privately held land in the colony.

The new company will be the chief force in British Honduras' s political economy for over a century.