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Emancipation and Imperialism in a Borderland: The Challenge to Settler Sovereignty over Slavery in Belize in the 1820s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2023

Rajeshwari Dutt*
Affiliation:
Indian Institute of Technology Mandi Kamand, Himachal Pradesh, India rdutt@iitmandi.ac.in

Abstract

This article points to the 1820s as a crucial period that saw a great reversal in the location of sovereignty in Belize. The article employs two inflection points—first, an 1822 case of ‘Indian’ slaves from Mosquito Shore, and second, slave desertion in 1825—to point to unprecedented challenges to settler sovereignty over slavery in Belize that arose during the 1820s. While British amelioration allowed the metropolitan government to bring frontier and borderland regions within its legal purview, thus challenging settler autonomy, the concurrent event of Central American emancipation provided enslaved people in Belize additional opportunity to desert their masters at a moment when restitution of runaway slaves became increasingly difficult. Yet, this essay is about more than just the fracturing of settler sovereignty over slavery. Rather it also illuminates how settlers responded to these challenges by using force, diplomacy, and the print media. The settlers’ most potent response was in portraying Belizean slavery as ‘benign,’ creating a surprisingly robust narrative that would endure for generations. The essay illuminates how emancipation and imperialism remained inextricably linked in borderland areas such as Belize, which straddled the boundaries between Spanish America and the British Caribbean.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History

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Footnotes

I am grateful to George Reid Andrews, Christa Dierksheide, the participants of the 2021 Belize Symposium at Penn State, and the anonymous reviewers of The Americas for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article. I would also like to acknowledge Mary Alpuche at the Belize Archives and Record Services (BARS) and Rolando Cocom at the National Institute of Culture and History of Belize (NICH) for all their help with locating sources.

References

1. I use the name Belize to refer to the entire region within present-day boundaries. It was known as the Settlement in the Bay of Honduras until the mid-nineteenth century, and from then until 1973 as British Honduras. In the nineteenth century, Belize most often referred to the town of that name.

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6. Despite the biases and problems associated with the term “settler elite,” I am using it here. For better or worse, it is a recognizable term to describe the landowning and slaveholding settlers in Belize.

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8. It is important to note that while not all white settlers were slaveholders, the settler elite was almost exclusively composed of enslavers.

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18. The October-December 2019 special issue of Historia Mexicana (69:2) includes a useful overview by Celso Castilho, Marcela Echeverri, and Adriana Santoveña, “Los ecos atlánticos de las aboliciones hispanoamericanas.”

19. For slave flight from Belize, see Restall, Matthew, “Crossing to Safety? Frontier Flight in Eighteenth-Century Belize and Yucatan,” Hispanic American Historical Review 94:3 (August 2014), 381419CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lentz, Mark, “Black Belizeans and Fugitive Mayas: Interracial Encounters on the Edge of Empire, 1750–1803,” The Americas 70:4 (April 2014), 647675CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tompson, Doug, “Between Slavery and Freedom on the Atlantic Coast of Honduras,” Slavery & Abolition 33:3 (2012), 403416CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other studies of slave flight out of British settlements, see Beckles, Hilary, “From Land to Sea: Runaway Barbados Slaves and Servants, 1630–1700,” Slavery & Abolition 6:3 (1985), 7994CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gad Heuman, “Runaway Slaves in Nineteenth Century Barbados,” Slavery & Abolition 6:3 (1985), 95–111. Of course, slave flight from British settlements to neighboring Hispanic regions must be placed in a longer continuum of migration in the Caribbean. For post-emancipation migration patterns, see Sharika Crawford, “A Transnational World Fractured but Not Forgotten: British West Indian Migration to the Colombian Islands of San Andrés and Providence,” New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 85:1–2 (January 2011), 31–52. For a discussion of the historiography around migration related to slavery in Latin America, see Lara Putnam, “Transnational Frames of Afro-Latin Experience: Evolving Spaces and Means of Connection, 1600–1200,” in Afro-Latin American Studies: An Introduction, Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

20. See for instance Dubois, Laurent, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Hart, Richard, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Blacks in Rebellion (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Craton, Michael, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Helg, Aline, Slave No More: Self-Liberation before Abolitionism in the Americas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019)Google Scholar; and Blanchard, Peter, Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Adam Rothman highlights the collaborative efforts to civilize the cotton frontier in the Deep South of the United States, where both white planters and their black slaves contributed equally, though not as equals. Rothman, Adam, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. Richard Newman demonstrates how fugitive slaves identified “free spaces” and contributed to the emergence of anti-slavery borderlands, using the case of Pennsylvania. Richard S. Newman, “‘Lucky to be Born in Pennsylvania’: Free Soil, Fugitive Slaves and the Making of Pennsylvania's Anti-Slavery Borderland,” Slavery & Abolition 32:3 (September 2011), 413–430.

22. John Craig Hammond, “Slavery, Sovereignty, and Empires: North American Borderlands and the American Civil War, 1660–1860,” Journal of the Civil War Era 4:2 (June 2014), 264–298.

23. Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 6.

24. Steven Lubet, Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).

25. Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104:3 (June 1999), 814–841.

26. Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

27. Jack P. Greene, ed., Exclusionary Empire: English Liberty Overseas, 1600–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 75.

28. Lauren Benton and Lisa Ford, “Magistrates in Empire: Convicts, Slaves, and the Remaking of the Plural Legal Order in the British Empire,” in Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–1850, Lauren Benton and Richard Ross, eds. (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 173–198.

29. It may be argued that the term ‘Baymen’ was part of the terminology slaveholders used to describe themselves to legitimize their position in Belize, and as such it can be seen as part and parcel of the process of mythmaking.

30. Extract, Captain R. Maclean of H. M. sloop Bustard to Vice-Admiral Sir L. W. Halsted, K.C.B., March 2, 1824, Port Royal, Jamaica, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. ProQuest.

31. Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance, 53.

32. Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance, 54.

33. Slaves worked in other occupations, too, such as laborer, carpenter, sailor, cattleman, footman, washerwoman, domestic worker, and seamstress. Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance, 58.

34. This was likely different for female slaves, who, as Macpherson points out, were mainly occupied as domestic slaves in urban households. Macpherson, “Viragoes, Victims, and Volunteers,” 25.

35. Anderson, Jennifer L., Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 170CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Anderson, Mahogany, 171.

37. For a detailed discussion, see O. Nigel Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance, 50–75.

38. Frank Griffith Dawson, “The Evacuation of the Mosquito Shore and the English Who Stayed Behind, 1786–1800,” The Americas 55:1 (July 1998), 68.

39. M. W., “The Mosqueto Indian and His Golden River. Being a Familiar Description of the Mosqueto Kingdom in America, &c., &c.,” A Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 6, 3rd ed. (London: Printed for Henry Lintot and John Osborn, at the Golden Ball in Paternoster Row, 1746 [1699]); A. O. Esquemeling, The History of the Buccaneers of America (Boston: Sanborn, Carter & Bazin, 1856 [1684]); Nathaniel Uring, A history of the voyages and travels of Capt. Nathaniel Uring, with new draughts of the Bay of Honduras and the Caribbee Islands, and particularly of St. Lucia, and the harbour of Petite Carenage, into which ships may run in bad weather, and be safe from all winds and storms (London: John Clarke, 1749 [1726]); Edward Long, The History of Jamaica or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of that Island, with Reflections on its Situation, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws, and Government (London: T. Lowndes, 1774).

40. Helms, Mary W., “Miskito Slaving and Culture Contact: Ethnicity and Opportunity in an Expanding Population,” Journal of Anthropological Research 39: 2 (1983), 181CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. Gabbert, Wolfgang, “God Save the King of the Mosquito Nation!” Indigenous Leaders on the Fringe of the Spanish Empire,” Ethnohistory 63:1 (2016), 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. Karl Offen, “Mapping Amerindian Captivity in Colonial Mosquitia,” Journal of Latin American Geography 14:3 (October 2015), 35–65; Daniel Mendiola, “The Rise of the Mosquito Kingdom in Central America's Caribbean Borderlands: Sources, Questions, and Enduring Myths,” History Compass 16:1 (December 2017), 6.

43. Offen, “Mapping Amerindian Captivity”; Michael Olien, “After the Indian Slave Trade: Cross-Cultural Trade in the Western Caribbean Rimland, 1816–1820,” Journal of Anthropological Research 44:1 (Spring 1988), 41–66. For changes to local patterns of slavery after evacuation of the Mosquito Shore, see Caroline Williams, “Living Between Empires: Diplomacy and Politics in the Late-Eighteenth Century Mosquitia,” The Americas 70: 2 (2013), 237–268; and Doug Tompson, “Frontiers of Identity: The Atlantic Coast and the Formation of Honduras and Nicaragua, 1786–1894” (PhD diss.: University of Florida, 2001.

44. Offen, “Mapping Amerindian Captivity,” 52.

45. Most evacuated slaves came from the areas identified by Offen as having mostly Afro-descendant slaves. Black River and Cape Gracias a Dios together accounted for 1461 slaves out of a total of 1891 slaves evacuated to Belize in 1786. See: A List of Settlers on the Mosquito Shore with their Slaves &c., October 16, 1786, Colonial Office records at The National Archives, Kew [hereafter, CO] 137/86.

46. Daniel Finamore, “Sailors and Slaves on the Wood-Cutting Frontier: Archaeology of the British Bay Settlement, Belize” (PhD diss.: Boston University, 1994), 233. See also Daniel Finamore, “A Tale of Three Rivers: European and African Settlers in the New, Belize and Sibun River drainages,” in Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology, Vol. 2, Jaime Awe, John Morris, Sherilyne Jones, and Christophe Heimke, eds. (Belize: National Institute of Culture and History, 2005).

47. Bolland, The Formation, 158.

48. Bolland, The Formation, 163.

49. The Earl Bathurst was involved in the question of abolition, arguably from the very start of his career in the 1780s. He was an acquaintance of William Wilberforce and received long letters from him about emancipation. Bathurst supported Arthur's ameliorative policies in Belize even when Arthur appeared to be overstepping his authority. Bathurst was also instrumental in removing George Arthur from Belize and posting him in Van Diemen's Land. See also Bolland, The Formation, 161.

50. Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance, 67.

51. Extract, George Arthur to Earl Bathurst, November 7, 1816, from The Defence of the Settlers of Honduras Against the Unjust and Unfounded Representations of Colonel George Arthur, Late Superintendent of that Settlement: Principally Contained in His Correspondence Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Slaves of Honduras, 1820–1823, and Printed by Order of the House of Commons, 16th June, 1823 (London: A. J. Valpy, 1824), 18 [hereafter, The Defence].

52. Extract, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur to the Right Hon. Earl Bathurst, October 7, 1820, in Correspondence relative to the Condition and Treatment of Slaves at Honduras 1820—1823 [hereafter Correspondence]. Ordered by The House of Commons, to be Printed in June 1823, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online. ProQuest.

53. Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, September 28, 1821, Correspondence.

54. By the King—A Proclamation, September 28, 1821, Enclosure 5 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, September 28, 1821, Correspondence.

55. Anne MacPherson, “Viragoes, Victims, and Volunteers,” 28–30.

56. Copy, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 22, 1822, Correspondence.

57. Benton and Ford, “Magistrates in Empire,” 175.

58. Substance of The Debate in the House of Commons on the 18th May, 1823, on A Motion for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions. London: 1823.

59. Morgan, Slavery and the British Empire, 145.

60. Morgan, Slavery and the British Empire, 179. The other provisions of the circular included providing religious instruction to improve the slaves’ character, giving slaves the right to present evidence in court, easing manumission processes, and limiting corporal punishment of slaves.

61. George Arthur to William Bullock, November 26, 1821, Enclosure 1 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, January 10, 1822, Correspondence.

62. O. Nigel Bolland, The Formation, 62.

63. Third Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Administration of Criminal and Civil Justice in the West Indies and South American Colonies: Honduras and the Bahama Islands, February 24, 1829, CO 318/77, 10.

64. George Henderson, An Account of the British Settlement of Honduras . . . To which are added, Sketches of the Manners and Customs of the Mosquito Indians, preceded by the Journal of a Voyage to the Mosquito Shore, 2nd ed. (London: R. Baldwin, 1811), 63; Assad Shoman, A History of Belize in 13 Chapters (Belize: Angelus Press, 2011), 34.

65. Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, January 10, 1822, Correspondence.

66. George Arthur to William Bullock, November 26, 1821, Enclosure 1 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, January 10, 1822, Correspondence.

67. For internal politics in the Mosquito Shore during the British protectorate that caused these proclamations, see William Sorsby, “The British Superintendency of the Mosquito Shore, 1749–1787” (PhD diss.: University College London, 1969).

68. George Arthur to William Bullock, November 26, 1821, Enclosure 1 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, January 10, 1822, Correspondence.

69. William Burge to William Bullock, December 11, 1821, Enclosure 3 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, January 10, 1822, Correspondence. [Emphasis in quote is in original].

70. Proclamation of January 5, 1822, Enclosure 4 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, January 10, 1822, Correspondence.

71. George Arthur to A. H. Pye, James Hyde, and John Coatquelvin, January 8, 1822, Enclosure 6 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, January 10, 1822, Correspondence.

72. Ironically, James Hyde was himself a prominent slaveholder. He did have, however, a history of intervening on behalf of slaves in cases against their masters. See for instance Karen Judd, “Elite Reproduction and Ethnic Identity in Belize” (PhD diss.: City University of New York, 1992), 230.

73. Report of the Board of Commissioners of Indian Claims, February 8, 1822, Enclosure 2 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence. See also Return of the Registry of Indians on the Mosquito Shore in the Year 1777, February 8, 1822, CO 123/31.

74. Proceedings of the Board of Commissioners of Indian Claims, with the Correspondence and Documents appertaining to the same, January 9, 1822, Appendix no. 7, Enclosure 2 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

75. Report of the Board of Commissioners of Indian Claims, February 8, 1822, Enclosure 2 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

76. Unfortunately, I could not locate the actual petitions of slaves but had to rely on the report of the Board of Commissioners for their content.

77. These petitioners claimed that their ancestors had been captured by the Miskitos and then sold off to the British, a pattern that is corroborated by several recent historical works including those of Mary Helms, Wolfgang Gabbert, and Karl Offen.

78. Proceedings of the Board of Commissioners of Indian Claims, with the Correspondence and Documents appertaining to the same, January 9, 1822, Appendix no. 7, Enclosure 2 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

79. Archibald Colquhoun to Commissioners, January 10, 1822; Thomas Paslow to Board of Commissioners, January 15, 1822, appended to Proceedings of the Board of Commissioners of Indian Claims, Enclosure 2 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

80. Thomas Paslow to Commissioners, January 15, 1822, appended to Proceedings of the Board of Commissioners of Indian Claims, January 9, 1822, Enclosure 2 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

81. Samantha Billing has suggested that the characterization of Miskitos as ‘indios’ or Afro-descendants (‘sambos’) in the eighteenth century often stemmed not from any real physical differences but from the agendas of Spanish colonial officials. This insight can be fruitfully applied in the case of the Mosquito Indians in Belize, and it also serves to draw attention to the ways in which the goals of the slaveholding elite often translated into a particular kind of racial characterization of the “Indian” slaves. See Samantha Billing, “Indios, Sambos, Mestizos, and the Social Construction of Racial Identity in Colonial Central America,” Ethnohistory, 68:2 (April 2021): 269–290.

82. Thomas Paslow to Commissioners, January 15, 1822. [Emphasis in quote is in original].

83. John Wright to Commissioners, n.d., appended to Proceedings of the Board of Commissioners of Indian Claims, with the Correspondence and Documents appertaining to the same, January 9, 1822, Enclosure 2, Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

84. Commissioners to Superintendent Arthur, January 16, 1822, appended to Proceedings of the Board of Commissioners of Indian Claims, with the Correspondence and Documents appertaining to the same, January 9, 1822, Appendix no. 7, Enclosure 6 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

85. This case also highlights both the agency and the vulnerabilities of enslaved women who worked mainly as domestic slaves in urban households and remained without the protective presence of male slaves who labored in mahogany camps. The settler elite's repugnance to amelioration was arguably as much about their physical control over women's bodies as it was about profits from enslaved men's labor.

86. Commissioners to George Arthur, February 1, 1822, Enclosure 2 in Copy, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 22, 1822. Correspondence.

87. The office of Protector was one of the key provisions made under the Order in Council of Trinidad in 1824, which was a cornerstone of amelioration policy. The Protector was charged with maintaining peace and order and providing protection and guardianship to slaves. Other provisions of the Order in Council included slaves’ right to purchase freedom, emphasis on religious instruction, encouragement of formal marriage, and curtailment of different forms of physical punishment.

88. Commissioners to George Arthur, February 1, 1822, Enclosure 2 in Copy, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 22, 1822, Correspondence.

89. Superintendent Arthur to Commissioners, January 26, 1822. Appendix no. 7, Enclosure 18, in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

90. Superintendent Arthur to Magistrates, January 28, 1822, Appendix no. 7, Enclosure 20, in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

91. Report of the Board of Commissioners of Indian Claims, February 8, 1822, Enclosure 2 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

92. For the full text of the law see: “Copy of an Act of the Legislature of Jamaica, dated 1741”, Appendix no. 2 in Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

93. Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

94. Extract, Colonel Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, February 28, 1822, Correspondence.

95. Evidence suggests that in some cases the slaveholders maintained de facto control over the “Indian” slaves, even during the period in which they were placed under the Provost Marshal General. Thus, Anne Macpherson finds that Bess Meighan, one of the petitioning female slaves, absconded from the household of Magistrate Bowen in 1823. She eventually returned and was severely punished by Bowen and his mistress, Clarissa Paslow. See Macpherson, “Viragoes, Victims and Volunteers,” 29–30.

96. George Arthur to the Earl Bathurst, March 5, 1822, CO 123/31.

97. Alan Lester, “Personifying Colonial Governance: George Arthur and the Transition from Humanitarian to Development Discourse,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102:6 (2012): 1476.

98. According to Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, George Arthur continued his policy of amelioration during his time in the penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land, applying it to develop a policy toward convicts and aboriginal people. See Lester and Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance, 61.

99. Report of the Commission of Legal Inquiry on the Case of the Indians at Honduras, July 10, 1828, Ordered to be printed by the House of Commons, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. ProQuest.

100. For more on the Commission of Legal Inquiry, see Benton, Lauren and Ford, Lisa, Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101. Benton and Ford, Rage for Order, 82.

102. The practice of communicating with the British government through an agent in London had deeper roots. In fact, until George Arthur's superintendence, the settlers in Belize had used the services of an agent. Part of the complaints of the settlers in The Defence alleged that George Arthur, upon assuming the position of Superintendent, had persuaded the settlers to discontinue their agent. The Defence, 5.

103. J. Stewart to Horace Twiss, April 16, 1829, CO 123/40.

104. As the case of the ‘Indian’ slaves of Mosquito Shore indicates, slaveholders demanded compensation for liberating slaves even before the abolition Act of 1833, and there were also instances when the British government distributed compensation. In 1799, a total of £677,382 was awarded for compensation against claims in West India, London, and the East India docks. Draper, Nicholas, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 124Google Scholar. In 1831, slaveholders of the parish of St. Ann's in Jamaica determined to surrender slaves only in return for sufficient compensation. Butler, Kathleen M., The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica & Barbados, 1823–1843 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 11Google Scholar. Settlements of slave compensation in the 1820s and 1830s, however, were often delayed due to the “mismatch of the demands for compensation and the nation's propensity to pay.” Draper, The Price of Emancipation, 294 n15. For Twiss quote, see Horace Twiss to J. Stewart, April 6, 1830, Papers Relating to Honduras Indians, House of Commons Papers, July 1, 1830.

105. Extract, Major-General Codd to the Earl Bathurst, March 8, 1823, Correspondence.

106. Andrews, George Reid, Afro-Latin America, 1800–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107. Catherine Komisaruk, “Becoming Free, Becoming Ladino: Slave Emancipation and Mestizaje in Colonial Guatemala,” in Blacks and Blackness in Central America, Gudmundson and Wolfe, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).

108. Komisaruk, “Becoming Free.”

109. Matthew Restall and Mark Lentz, for instance, have highlighted the movement of slaves from Belize to both Yucatàn and Guatemala in the colonial period. See: Restall, “Crossing to Safety?” and Lentz, “Black Belizeans and Fugitive Mayas.”

110. Linda Rupert, “‘Seeking the Water of Baptism’: Fugitive Slaves and Imperial Jurisdiction in the Early Modern Caribbean,” in Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–1850, Benton and Ross, eds., 203.

111. Testimonio del expediente sobre trasladar 32 negros que se pasaron al Peten de Walix al paraje nombrado Sn. Josef, 1800., Archivo General de Indias [hereafter AGI], Estado 49, no. 74, cuaderno 2.

112. Apresamiento de piragua con trece esclavos negros fugitivos, December 16, 1807, AGI, Estado 63, no. 29; Sobre negros esclavos ingleses arribados a Isla Margarita, October 31, 1798, AGI, Estado 67, no. 57.

113. Restall, “Crossing to Safety,” 386.

114. “Proclamation to the Citizens of the United Provinces of the Centre of America,” July 10, 1823, CO 123/36.

115. Manuel Pineda, Recopilación de las leyes de Guatemala, compuesta y arreglada a virtud de orden especial del Gobierno Supremo de la República, Vol. 1 (Guatemala: Imprenta de la Paz, en Palacio, 1860), 218.

116. Magistrates to Edward Codd, January 28, 1825, CO 123/36.

117. Superintendent to the Earl Bathurst, February 15, 1825, Belize Archives and Records Service [hereafter, BARS], R. 4c.

118. Superintendent to the Earl Bathurst, February 15, 1825, BARS, R. 4c.

119. Edward Codd to Supreme Executive of Guatemala, February 1825 (exact date unknown). CO 123/36.

120. Meeting of Council, February 13, 1825, CO 123/36.

121. This would have been a natural assumption, given the history of Africans and slaves being used in late colonial Bourbon armies in Guatemala. See for instance Ana Margarita Gómez, “‘Al Servicio de las Armas’: The Bourbon Army of Late Colonial Guatemala, 1762–1821” (PhD diss.: University of Minnesota, 2003); and Mark Lentz, “Black Belizeans,” 649.

122. Meeting of Council, February 13, 1825, CO 123/36.

123. Superintendent Edward Codd to Supreme Executive Power of Guatemala, February 1826, CO 123/36.

124. Edward Codd to Wilmot Horton, March 4, 1826, CO 123/37. The undersecretary to the Earl Bathurst, Robert Wilmot Horton, was responsible for reorganizing and reforming the Colonial Office in the 1820s. According to Neville Thompson, the strength of Bathurst's commitment to amelioration can be seen in his correspondence with Wilmot Horton. Thompson, Neville, Earl Bathurst and the British Empire, 1762–1834 (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Leo Cooper, 1999)Google Scholar.

125. Marshall Bennett to Edward Codd, June 14, 1826, CO 123/37; Edward Codd to Wilmot Horton, July 17, 1826, CO 123/37

126. Juan Francisco de Sosa to Superintendent, Belize, May 30, 1826, CO 123/37.

127. Honduras Gazette and Commercial Advertiser [hereafter Honduras Gazette], July 15, 1826.

128. Christopher Robinson to George Canning, July 6, 1825, CO 123/36.

129. Joseph Planta to Wilmot Horton, March 17, 1826, CO 123/37.

130. Dobson, Narda, A History of Belize (London: Longman Caribbean, 1973), 187Google Scholar.

131. Dobson, A History of Belize, 187.

132. Superintendent Codd to Earl Bathurst, June 6, 1825, BARS, R. 4d.

133. John O'Reilly to George Canning, February 17, 1826, CO 123/39.

134. Proclamation of 1826, January 1, 1826, BARS.

135. Draft of proposed instructions to Colonel Cockburn, n.d., CO 123/40.

136. Report of the Senate of Guatemala to Congress, May 27, 1826, CO 123/37.

137. Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and the British Empire, 182. An interesting aspect of this change was the actions of the Colonial Office, which over the period between 1823 and 1831 moved away from the reform-oriented amelioration policy to one of full abolition. Mary Reckford, “The Colonial Office and the Abolition of Slavery,” Historical Journal 14:4 (December 1971), 723–734.

138. Joseph Planta to Wilmot Horton, March 17, 1826, CO 123/37.

139. John O’ Reilly to George Canning, February 17, 1826, CO 123/39.

140. Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition, 113. It must be noted that Schmidt-Nowara's interpretation is open to question. Recent scholarship has problematized the British-centric diffusionist model of abolition. See the special issue of Historia Mexicana, 69:2 (October-December 2019).

141. One of the interesting aspects of this legal question was the widespread belief that if a slave crossed into Guatemala and then crossed back to Belize, he became a free man in the English settlement. See H. (Horace Twiss?), October 13, 1830, CO 123/41.

142. Edward Codd to Supreme Executive Guatemala, February 1825, CO 123/36.

143. The Anti-Slavery Society was established between 1820 and 1823. Its initial aims were gradual emancipation and improving the condition of slaves. Quakers constituted its main support base and its leading spokesman in Parliament was a Quaker brewer, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. See Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and the British Empire, 177–178. The setters responded to the Anti-Slavery Society's publications with The Defence, cited above.

144. The Defence, 14.

145. The Defence, 16.

146. The Defence, 20.

147. The Defence, 22.

148. The Defence, 2.

149. Lester, Alan and Dussart, Fae, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 57Google Scholar.

150. Lester and Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance, 59.

151. George Henderson, An Account of the British Settlement of Honduras, 51.

152. Honduras Gazette, June 27, 1826.

153. Honduras Gazette, July 22, 1826.

154. Honduras Gazette, July 15, 1826, and September 23, 1826.

155. Dumas, Paula E., Proslavery Britain: Fighting for Slavery in an Era of Abolition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

156. Honduras Gazette, August 12, 1826.

157. The Defence, 11.

158. Metzgen, Monrad, Shoulder to Shoulder, or the Battle of St. George's Cay (Belize: Belize Literary and Debating Club, 1928), 3031Google Scholar. For views on the significance and ramifications of the 1898 centenary celebrations of St. George's Caye and the public meeting that preceded it, see Macpherson, Anne S., “Imagining the Colonial Nation: Race, Gender, and Middle-Class Politics in Belize, 1888–1898,” in Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, Appelbaum, Nancy, Macpherson, Anne S., and Rosemblatt, Karin Alejandra, eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Dutt, Rajeshwari, “Loyal Subjects at Empire's Edge: Hispanics in the Vision of a Belizean Colonial Nation, 1882–1898,” Hispanic American Historical Review 99:1 (February 2019), 3159CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

159. Restall, Crossing to Safety, 398 and 398 n54. Restall notes that works that highlighted the benign nature of slavery in Belize, such as D. A. G. Waddell's British Honduras (1961) and A. R. Gregg's British Honduras (1968), for instance, exemplified this trend in the 1960s and 1970s. Waddell, D. A. G., British Honduras. A Historical and Contemporary Survey (London: Oxford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Algar Robert Gregg, British Honduras (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1968). We can see the persistence of this narrative today. For instance, Mavis Campbell's book Becoming Belize (2011) suggests that slaves in Belize had better working conditions than in other parts of the Caribbean and points to the absence of large-scale rebellions as proof of the benign nature of slavery in the settlement. Campbell, Mavis C., Becoming Belize: A History of an Outpost of Empire Searching for Identity, 1528–1823 (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2011), 283314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.