Dividing Belize's enslaved people from the growing…

Dividing Belize's enslaved people from the growing population of free Creole people, who are given limited privileges, is one way the settler minority maintains its control.

Though some Creoles are legally free, they can neither hold commissions in the military nor act as jurors or magistrates, and their economic activities are restricted.

They can vote in elections only if they have owned more property and lived in the area longer than whites.

Privileges, however, lead many free blacks to stress their loyalty and acculturation to British ways.

When officials in other colonies of the British West Indies begin giving free blacks expanded legal rights, the British Colonial Office threatens to dissolve the Baymen's Public Meeting unless it follows suit.

The "Coloured Subjects of Free Condition" are granted civil rights on July 5, 1831, a few years before the abolition of slavery is completed.