The Early History of Belize

As early as 2500 B.C.E., Belize was one of the centers of Maya civilization. This period reached its height between 250 and 900 C.E , when the Maya built temples that stand today and had an elaborate trading network that reached south to Honduras and north into central Mexico, which exchanged salt, cotton, cocoa, fish, honey, feathers, shells and precious stones. Around 1000 C.E, the Maya civilization declined and most of the people living in the area of present day Belize became small farmers. The trade system still remained more or less intact, but was centered on village to village trade rather than a centrally controlled one.

The Spanish conquistadors arrived around in 1520, led by Cortez, and brought small pox, yellow fever and endemic malaria, which decimated the population worse than the fighting of the Spaniards warriors. The Maya of Belize resisted Spanish colonial rule much more successfully then many other Mesoamericans had in the past, but were increasingly pushed into the interior of the country while the populations declined due to European illnesses.

Settlement of the British:

British buccaneers who had subsisted on privateering in the Atlantic at the expense of Spanish galleons, using the great reef off the coast of Belize as a shelter, gradually settled the coast, making a living cutting logwood at Campeche on the Yucatan Peninsula. By the mid 1600's, continual Spanish harassment of the Baymen led them to move south to the mouth of the Belize river. During the flood season, the baymen-log cutters lived in barracks, 42 miles up river. The site for the permanent town of Belize town was made at the mouth of the river; the final destination for logs, floated down river for export to England. (Foster, 1987)
Belize town (later to become Belize City) had the initial disadvantage of being built on land that is low lying and swampy (resting at the mouth of the river). The delta that formed the land for the town was surrounded by water on three sides and had no land more than a few feet above sea level. The entire north shore was an island within the Belize River delta. The combination of high tides, coupled with strong winds on shore, left entire parts of the town under water. This situation was obviously unsuitable for the development of a town, much less a city, and a strategy of land reclamation, based on mangrove trees filled in with coconut husks, sawdust and other abrasive materials, was begun.
The baymen's economy was based almost solely on exporting logwood to England, and by a formal treaty between the Spanish and English, the baymen could not perform any agricultural work. Their foodstuffs were primarily imported from England. The early settlement was almost entirely male. The settlers married nearby Misquito Indians or slaves brought in to assist in the cutting of logwood.
A brief mention need be made here about the history of slavery in Belize, and I admit, I wish I knew more about this subject than I do. What I do know is that the English settlers, early on, tried to recruit and capture Indian workers to cut the logs for them, gradually shifting from logwood to mahogany. This, for many reasons, failed. They then turned to the importing of African slaves, but in a unique situation. Because of the prohibition on agriculture, no plantation economy could be started. The cutting of mahogany was done in small groups that left the city for a few months at a time. For this reason, few slaves were needed or desired. And, because of the great lack of white women in the area, many baymen took slave women as wives, or sexual partners, and in consequence, a population of free black men and women emerged in Belize, centered in Belize city. This continued to be the situation in Belize City for some time. The early Baymen controlled mahogany cutting businesses, worked by slaves until emancipation (free laborers afterward), and imported almost all the food and other goods needed for the settlement.

Layout and situation of town by 1829:

In 1829, the town had spacious zones on the north side, where the wealthier inhabitants lived, compared to the cramped grid of relatively newly laid out south side. The north side boasted the court house, hundreds of timber buildings and many thatched houses. It was also home to a few shops that sold flour, salt meat, gunpowder and needles, among other goods. Drainage and sewer needs were both served by small canals that ran open through the city, to the ocean.
The south side became a preserve of the laboring people and the focus of their traditional artitic-religious practices. These included African dances and religious ceremonies. The Ibo and Ashanti peoples of west Africa continued to perform certain dances and traditional ceremonies that were outlawed by the town's controlling white elite on the explicit basis of loud noise, but implicitly because the African holy men (obeah men) were also traditionally organizers of the people. (Foster, 1987)
A boom in the mahogany trade that lasted from 1835-1847 led to overcutting and depletion of huge areas of accessible forest. When the inevitable drop in prices occurred, the landowning elite were compelled to either sell their land or enter into partnership with London based companies. (Foster, 1987)