British Honduras

The only British colony on the Central American mainland, held for timber and claimed by a neighbour throughout. British buccaneers and then loggers cut logwood along this coast from the seventeenth century for the dye it yielded, within territory Spain claimed but never settled, and successive treaties allowed the cutting while denying sovereignty - an ambiguity that is the root of the Guatemalan claim. The Baymen's defeat of a Spanish fleet at St George's Caye in 1798 settled possession in practice. Mahogany replaced logwood, and because felling and hauling required small mobile gangs rather than plantation crews, the colony's enslaved population worked under conditions unlike the sugar islands, with a corresponding social structure. Britain declared the formal colony of British Honduras only in 1862, administering it under Jamaica until 1884. An 1859 treaty with Guatemala fixed the boundary in exchange for a road Britain never built, which Guatemala treats as voiding the whole agreement. Hurricane Hattie destroyed Belize City in 1961, prompting the construction of a new inland capital. The colony was renamed Belize in 1973 and became independent in 1981, with British troops remaining until 1994 as a deterrent. The dispute went to the International Court of Justice in 2019. Belmopan was built inland after 1961 and became the capital in 1970. The colony covered about twenty-three thousand square kilometres. Its flag was the only national flag to feature human figures at independence. Creole, Spanish, Maya languages and Garifuna are all spoken. Guatemala still shows the territory as its own on some official maps.

• Type: Polity
• Government: Colonial administration