British Honduras

The British Honduras' Legislative Assembly of 1854 is to have eighteen elected members, each of whom is to have at least £2,400 sterling worth of property.

The assembly is also to have three official members appointed by the superintendent.

The fact that voters have to have property yielding an income of £27 a year or a salary of a £2,100 a year reinforces the restrictive nature of this legislature.

The superintendent can defer or dissolve the assembly at any time, originate legislation, and give or withhold consent to bills.

This situation suggests that the legislature is more a chamber of debate than a place where decisions are made.

The Colonial Office in London becomes, therefore, the real political-administrative power in the settlement.

This shift in power is reinforced in 1862 when the Settlement of Belize in the Bay of Honduras is declared a British colony called British Honduras, and the crown's representative is elevated to a lieutenant governor, subordinate to the governor of Jamaica.

Thousands of refugees had fled to the British settlement of Belize during the Caste War in the Yucatan, a devastating struggle that halves the population of the area between 1847 and 1855.

The Legislative Assembly gives large landowners in the colony firm titles to their vast estates in 1855 but does not allow the Maya to own land.

The Maya can only rent land or live on reservations.

Nevertheless, most of the refugees are small farmers who, by 1857, are 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, founded six years earlier, has forty-five hundred inhabitants, second in population only to Belize Town, which has seven thousand inhabitants.

Some Maya, who had fled the strife in the north but have no wish to become subjects of the British, settle in the remote area of the Yalbac Hills, just beyond the woodcutting frontier in the northwest.

By 1862 about a thousand Maya have established themselves in ten villages in this area, with the center in San Pedro.

The British had encountered resistance from the Maya as they consolidated their settlement and pushed deeper into the interior in search of mahogany in the late eighteenth century.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, a combination of events outside and inside the colony redefined the position of the Maya.

Canul and one hundred and fifty men attack the British barracks at Orange Walk in 1872.

After several hours of fighting, Canul's group retires.

Canul, mortally wounded, dies on September 1.

This battle is the last serious attack on the colony.

British Honduras, under the new constitution of 1871, is governed by the lieutenant governor and the Legislative Council, consisting of five ex officio or "official" and four appointed or "unofficial" members.

This constitutional change confirms and completes a change in the locus and form of power in the colony's political economy that has been evolving during the preceding half century.

The change moves power from the old settler oligarchy to the boardrooms of British companies and to the Colonial Office in London.

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.

The forestry industry's control of land in British Honduras and its influence in colonial decision-making retards 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, have become landowners.

British Honduras has vast areas of sparsely populated, unused land.

Nevertheless, landownership is controlled by a small European monopoly, thwarting the evolution of a Creole landowning class from the former slaves.

Rather than the former slaves, it is the Garifuna, Maya, and Mestizos who pioneer agriculture in nineteenth-century British Honduras.

These groups either rent and or live as squatters.

However, the domination of the land by forestry interests continues to stifle agriculture and keeps much of the population dependent on imported foods.

One group of Maya, led by Marcos Canul, attacks 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 is defeated by the Maya later this year.

Early in 1867, more than three hundred British troops march into the Yalbac Hills and destroy the Mayan villages, provision stores, and granaries in an attempt to drive them out of the district.

The Maya return, however, and in April 1870, Canul and his men march into Corozal and occupy the town.

The expenses of administering the new colony of British Honduras increases at a time when the economy is severely depressed, largely as a result of the costly military expeditions against the Maya.

Great landowners and merchants dominate the Legislative Assembly, which controls the colony's revenues and expenditures.

Some of the landowners are also involved in commerce, but their interest differs from the other merchants of Belize Town.

The former group resists the taxation of land and favors an increase in import duties; the latter prefers the opposite.

Moreover, the merchants in the town feel relatively secure from Mayan attacks and are unwilling to contribute toward the protection of mahogany camps, whereas the landowners feel that they should not be required to pay taxes on lands given inadequate protection.

These conflicting interests produce a stalemate in the Legislative Assembly, which fails to authorize the raising of sufficient revenue.

Unable to agree among themselves, the members of the Legislative Assembly surrender their political privileges and ask for establishment of direct British rule in return for the greater security of crown colony status.

The new constitution is inaugurated in April 1871, and the new legislature becomes the Legislative Council.

The concentration and centralization of capital in the British Honduras meant that the direction of the colony's economy would be henceforth determined largely in London.

It also signaled the eclipse of the old settler elite.

By about 1890, most commerce in British Honduras is in the hands of a clique of Scottish and German merchants, most of them newcomers.

This clique encourages consumption of imported goods and thus furthers British Honduras's dependence on Britain.

The European minority exercises great influence in the colony's politics, partly because it is guaranteed representation on the wholly appointed Legislative Council.

The manager of the Belize Estate and Produce Company, for example, is automatically a member of the council, while members of the emerging Creole elite are excluded from holding seats on the council.

The Creoles request 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 refuses.

In 1892 the governor appoints several Creole members, but whites remain the majority.

In the 1920s, the Colonial Office will support agitation for an elective council as long as the governor has reserve powers to allow him to push through any measures he considered essential without the council's assent, but the council will reject these provisos, and the issue of restoring elections will be postponed.