out this time "Britain . . . left control of the settlement in the hands of the settler oligarchy" (45). One of the preoccupations of the settlers at that time were slave revolts, a number of which occurred and were savagely repressed before 1820.
When Mexico and the other nations of Central America achieved their independence from Spain in the early 1820s, the Settlement of Belize in the Bay of Honduras emerged temporarily with an advantageous economic situation. Woodward refers to "Belize's role as the principal port for Central America's exports and imports" and says that up to the 1850s it had "the only port on the eastern coast of Central America of any importance" (127-128). During this period, Perez-Brignoli says that the leading settler families and their financial backers in London through the Belize Estates and Produce Company, so named afte
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