British Honduras

British Honduras was Britain's last continental colony in the Americas, the Baymen's logwood settlement on the Yucatán's southern edge from 1783 to self-government in 1964. English and Dutch pirates had smuggled indigo and dyewoods from the Bay of Honduras under Spain's nose since the early seventeenth century, sporadic but fairly frequent, defying Spanish claims over the whole Caribbean coast. till Versailles in 1783 gave Britain cutting rights between the Hondo and Belize rivers, London in 1786 stretching them to the Sibun. Made a Crown colony in 1862 under Jamaica's governor, with Belize City as its capital to 1970, Despard managing Baymen and Shoremen, Mopán and Kekchí Maya fleeing Guatemalan forced labor south, an 1871 constitution giving a Legislative Council, chicle tappers and mahogany contracts breaking in the Depression, it kept cutting timber till London upgraded it: self-government in 1964, renamed Belize in June 1973, independent Belize in September 1981.