ABSTRACT
For the first century of English settlement in Belize, the territory's place in the world economic system and British imperial system was largely determined by the strength of the logwood industry. Logwood extraction in Belize satisfied the growing demand for natural dyestuffs in Europe. This study describes the geography of early logwood extraction and its effects on the Belizean landscape, and places the industry in a wider economic and geopolitical context.

INTRODUCTION
Belize¹ differs from other former British Caribbean colonies in that its economy has historically been based on timber extraction and not agriculture. Logwood (Haematoxylon campechianum L.),² a dyewood, was the only export commodity of any significance for the first century of English³ presence in Belize. The reddish heartwood of the tree was used to produce black and various shades of gray, violet, and red dyes. Although the demand for mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King) overshadowed logwood by the late eighteenth century, logwood remained an important export until the early twentieth century. The great European demand for natural dyes drew Belize into the world economic system.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how resource endowment and external market conditions led to Belize's becoming an important world supplier of logwood. This study focuses on the golden period of the Belizean logwood trade, from 1680, the approximate date of the first settlement of Englishmen in Belize, to 1780, when the value of mahogany exports surpassed those of logwood. Most of the information presented here comes from the Calendar of State Papers (hereafter CSP), the published extracts of colonial administrative records kept by the British Public Records Office.

EARLY ENGLISH PRESENCE IN YUCATAN AND BELIZE
Spaniards were the first Europeans to arrive in Belize, in 1528. They appear to have made no effort to settle, and English pirates were able to get a toehold in the Yucatan and Belize (Jones 1989). By the mid-1600s, English pirates and privateers were using the Belize coast as a base from which to attack Spanish vessels passing offshore on the established convoy routes.⁴ A prize desired by the English pirates was logwood, which was greatly valued in Europe as the principal dyestuff for the expanding woolen industry. These buccaneers were initially unaware of the value of logwood, often burning the wood they found on captured vessels. Only when a Captain James captured a ship laden with logwood and brought it to London did the pirates learn of the wood's value. The pirates acquired the dyewood both by capturing logwood vessels plying the Caribbean and by raiding extraction sites left unprotected on the shore by Spanish and Indian cutters operating in the interior (Dampier 1699,47).⁵

Geography favored these interlopers. The Spanish found it difficult to oust the English pirates and gain effective control over the Belize coast because [end p. 77] the waters are strewn with coral reefs and only allow the passage of ships of shallow draft. Furthermore, the coastline is characterized by hundreds of mangrove-fringed tidal inlets which offered protection and sanctuary to English pirates and smugglers. From "distant and secure creeks and holes ... [they] commit their robberies on canoes, sloops, and barks where no fourth-rate frigate can follow them ... " (The Council of Jamaica to Lords of Trade and Plantations, May 20,1680, in CSP 1677-1680, No. 1361).

The 1667 Treaty of Madrid, signed by Spain and England, largely suppressed piracy in the Carribbean. Facing new pressure from colonial officials and English naval commanders, most of the buccaneers turned to legitimate occupations in the region. Some settled on the land, either as planters or indentured laborers, while others became logwood cutters in the Yucatan Peninsula or the Bay of Honduras. Englishmen are recorded to have been cutting logwood in the Yucatan in the late 1660s. The governor of Jamaica, Thomas Modyford, stated in 1670 that perhaps a dozen former privateering vessels were shipping logwood from several places in the Yucatan and on the Caribbean coast of Central America,⁶ although the Bay of Honduras was not specifically mentioned. In the same dispatch, Modyford made a telling remark illustrating the English view of native rights to the territory when he reported that English vessels in Yucatan only extracted logwood in areas where there are no Spaniards, only Indians (Modyford to Secretary Lord Arlington, Oct. 31, 1670, in CSP, 1669-74, No. 310). Apparently, the fact that the Englishmen encountered only Indians meant in their minds that the land was unoccupied.

English logwood cutting ended Spain's commercial monopoly of this product and forced down the market price for the wood. Modyford commented that the West Indian logwood trade could turn out to be very profitable for the Crown (Modyford to Seccretary Lord Arlington, Oct. 31, 1670, in CSP 1669-74, No. 310). Thomas Lynch, Modyford's successor as Jamaica's governor, envisioned England becoming "the storehouse of the logwood for all Europe which may be worth £100,000 per annum to the trade [end p. 78] and customs" (Lynch to Sir Charles Lyttleton, Jan. 28,1672, in Burdon 1931, 52). One of Lynch's contemporaries, Sir Dalby Thomas (1690, 9), observed that "the Logwood for which we formerly paid the Spaniards 100 £ per Ton, now comes under 15 £ and amounts to 1000 tons annually."

By the 1680s, the focus of logwood extraction centered on the Bay of Campeche and the Bay of Honduras (Figure 1). Both locations yielded large quantities of excellent logwood. Dampier (1699,10) noted that in the late 1600s, all timber on the Bay of Campeche and the Bay of Honduras was still being felled within 300 paces of the coast because neither area had been cut over.

GEOGRAPHY OF LOGWOOD EXTRACTION
The physical geography of Belize offered many advantages to the logwood trade. Ten major rivers⁷ are navigable for light vessels for a considerable distance upriver, so there was little need for an extensive road system to transport timber. Belize's soils and tropical climate are ideal for logwood growth. Early loggers noted that the best logwood in the region grew in thickets on calcareous outcrops in the "morose and swampish" areas near the coast (Thomas Lynch to Secretary to the Council for Plantations H. Slingesby, Nov. 5, 1672, in CSP 1669-74, No. 954).

Baymen, as the English settlers on the Bay of Honduras were called, were cutting logwood in the coastal and riverine swamps of present-day northern Belize by the 1680s. The northern portion of Belize is basically a low-lying plain which slopes gently from the interior to the coast. Northern Belize is geologically similar to the upraised limestone shelf in neighboring Yucatan. Cretaceous limestone from this shelf is the source of the fertile soils distributed throughout northern Belize. The extraction process began in the dry season with the felling of mature logwood trees, which usually reach fifteen to twenty feet in height with trunks less than one foot in thickness. The loggers then chipped off the grayish-white outer "sap" to reach the reddish heart. The men then dragged the logwood along tracks to the coast or the nearest stream bank. When necessary, the wood had to be carried downriver on long rafts, because logwood does not float (Dampier 1699, 57, 80). Morris (1883, 48-49) noted that later logwood rafts were capable of carrying two tons of wood. Apparently, the effective limit of logwood hauling was 1,500 paces (approximately one mile) from the coast (Dampier 1699, 10). Initially, the Baymen dragged the timber themselves, with every man in the group expected to pull his share. Dampier (1699, 80) describes a logwood operation in Yucatan in 1676:

"Some fell the Trees, others saw and cut them into convenient Logs, and one chips off the Sap ... and when a Tree is so thick that after it is logged, it remains still too great a Burthen for one Man, we blow it up with Gunpowder."

BELIZE IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC LOGWOOD TRADE
The logwood cutters in Belize were tied into the North Atlantic trade by New England and Jamaican merchant ships. These vessels picked up logs from the river bank or seashore and carried them to Boston or Port Royal, Jamaica, for eventual reexport to Europe. Thus, beginning in the 1680s, Belize was directly linked with two important nodes in the North Atlantic trade, although it had no direct connections with Europe. Connections between the Yucatan and Jamaica and New England were already well-established before Englishmen began to cut logwood in Belize. Jamaican vessels went to the "lagunas of Yucatan," probably Cape Catoche and the Bay of Campeche, to carry off logwood in the 1670s. Although Jamaica had local supplies of logwood, most of the dyewood sent from the island to New England or Europe came from the Main ("An account of the present state and condition of Jamaica," Jan. 1, 1676, in CSP 1675-76, No. 800).

Much of the logwood sent to Boston from the Yucatan and the Bay of Honduras never reached the English market but went instead to continental com [end p. 79] petitors ("Answer of Edward Randolph to several heads of inquiry concerning the present state of New England," Oct. 12, 1676, in CSP 1675-76, No. 1067). English officials viewed the shipping of the logwood to foreign ports by New England merchants as a contravention of mercantilist policy and attempted to shut the trade down at the sources. Perhaps because London felt it was receiving little benefit from Belize and Yucatan, Jamaica's Governor Lynch declared in 1682:

I have forbidden our cutting logwood in the Bay of Campeachy and Honduras, your Lordships having justly declared that the country being the Spaniards' we ought not to cut the wood. There is not the least pretence or reason for it. It is now become a greater drug than fustic, and is almost all carried to Hamburgh, New England, Holland, &c., which injures us and the customs and trade of the nation (Lynch to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, Aug. 29,1682, in CSP 1681-1685, No. 668).

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LOGWOOD PRODUCTION
Demand for logwood peaked in the first half of the eighteenth century with the expansion of the English woolen industry. Market prices for logwood increased dramatically, and, consequently, Belizean exports of the wood steadily increased. By 1750, log wood prices had climbed to £25 per ton and Belizean exports had reached 8,000 tons annually (Robert Hodson to Mr. Aldworth, April 21, 1751, and "Memorial of settlers driven from Belize," Feb. 10,1783, in Burdon 1931, 77, 134). In the first decades of the eighteenth century, the logwood exported from Belize and the Bay of Campeche was sufficient to satisfy not only the demand of the British woolen industry but also that of all of Europe (Jeremiah Drummer to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Feb. 25, 1720, in CSP 1720, No. 578). One Richard Harris stated in 1714 that logwood "is soe essentially necessary in dying our manufactures that it would be of the last and worst consequence to be deprived thereof' (Deposition of Richard Harris to Mr. Popple, Dec. 27, 1714, in CSP Aug. 1714; 4 Dec. 1715, No. 129). This placed the Crown in an awkward situation. Britain desired the dyewood from Belize, but because of Belize's anomalous position as an English settlement not "part of H.M. Plantations," the Council of Trade and Plantations ruled in 1699 that Belizean logwood could be carried to other European countries (Council of Trade and Plantations to the Lords Justice, Sep. 15, 1699, in CSP 1699, No. 791). This further encouraged the New Englanders to strengthen the Belize-Boston connection. An account in 1724 reveals the helplessness of London as it saw much of the Belizean logwood being sent to foreign ports through New England:

There is annually a great many vessels go from [Boston] to the bay of Honduras to cutt and load logwood a great part whereof is brought into this port and it [is] practised to load logwood from this part for Holland, Hamborough, and the Streights, which I humbly presume to be very prejudicial to the trade and manufacturies of Great Brittain if not timely prevented ... (Mr. Cummings to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Dec. 22,1724, in CSP 1724-1725, No. 439).

When demand abroad for logwood intensified in the early eighteenth century, the few Baymen in the settlement realized they themselves could not cut and drag enough timber to satisfy the demand. In the 1720s, the Baymen began to bring in African slaves via the Antillean slave markets to work alongside them in the forests (Henderson 1809, 59; Bolland 1988, 45). It is difficult to estimate how many Africans were brought to Belize in the early and mid-eighteenth century, but the number was presumably quite small. Prior to 1787, "creoles", people with African blood, ⁹ numbered only in the hundreds (Major Caulfield to Governor Trelawny, Aug. 2, 1745 and "Disposal of Miskito Shore settlers," July 1787, in Burdon 1931, 73, 162).

BELIZE IN THE BRITISH IMPERIAL SYSTEM
Belize's place in the British imperial system and the global economy through the eighteenth century was to satisfy an intense demand for the valuable[end p. 80] woods her forests contained (Camille 1994). A view held in Britain at the time was that "[c]ountries yet barbarous are the right and only proper nurseries" for British timber supplies (Dr. Thomas Preston, 1791, quoted in Albion 1926, 119). The governor of Jamaica, Charles Grey, remarked in 1852 that in the late eighteenth century, Belize "resembled an extensive factory¹⁰ in a foreign state [the Spanish colony of New Spain]" (BA 1852). It is clear from this statement that Britain had come to see Belize in a different light than it did its other Caribbean possessions. Belize, by this time, was regarded as an extensive timber reserve surrounding the entrepot of Belize City. In this mercantile period, Belize's role in the British imperial economy suited London well.

Beginning in 1763, a series of treaties between Spain and Britain gave the Baymen rights to cut and export timber unmolested in the northern half of present-day Belize, while reaffirming Spain's sovereignty over that territory. Article 17 of the Treaty of Paris, signed by Spain and England in 1763, for the first time gave English subjects on the Belize coast the right to cut logwood, although no definitive boundaries were mentioned. This Spanish concession came at a time when the wood was only marginally profitable. Beginning in the 1750s, the market price for logwood steadily declined because Belizean production by this time far exceeded the limited European demand for the dyewood.¹¹ With formal Spanish permission to cut logwood in hand, the Baymen decided to regulate and record the boundaries of their claims. The "logwood works" they established beginning in 1765 were unsurveyed parcels of land 2,000 paces or yards along rivers, in which individuals had exclusive rights to cut logwood. Ownership, however, was not implied ("General meeting of the inhabitants of Belize," April 10, 1765, in Burdon 1931, 107).

Two Anglo-Spanish treaties in the 1780s gave definition to territorial limits of English timber extraction. In 1783, under the Treaty of Versailles (Article 6), Spain conceded the Baymen rights to cut logwood as far south as the Belize River in return for British recognition of Belize as belonging to Spain (Figure 2). The Convention of London in 1786 (Articles 2 and 3) gave the Baymen rights to cut mahogany and extended the southern limit of their operations to the Sibun River. These two agreements forbade the Baymen to establish permanent agricultural plantations.

Spain largely ignored the activities of the English settlement within its jurisdiction in the late 1700s. Spanish officials only occasionally visited Belize to ensure compliance with the treaties. In their last attempt to exercise sovereignty over the territory, the Spanish were defeated by the Baymen at the Battle of St. George's Caye in 1798. Spain never thereafter returned to Belize to assert its claim to territory either to the north or to the south of the Sibun River (Dobson 1973, 78). [end p. 81]

THE DECLINE OF THE LOGWOOD INDUSTRY
As logwood prices on the European market steadily declined in the 1750s and 1760s, the Baymen turned to mahogany, which was much in demand in the furniture and shipbuilding industries (GB 1934, 17). By 1780, mahogany had replaced logwood as the main export from Belize, although Spain did not grant the settlers the right to cut mahogany until 1786.¹² Until the twentieth century, virtually all of the mahogany shipped from Belize was sent to Great Britain.

The shift from logwood to mahogany led to many changes in the settlement landscape of Belize. Loggers in search of mahogany began to penetrate the Belizean interior for the first time, because the trees are not restricted to coastal locations. The inland movement of the timber extraction frontier was especially rapid in the late eighteenth century, as the mahogany most accessible from the coast and along the lower courses of the rivers became exhausted. The shift in economic orientation from logwood to mahogany extraction also brought a sharp increase in the number of African slaves brought to Belize to work in the forests (Bolland 1988, 48). More laborers were needed for mahogany haulage because the trees were larger and because mahogany was only valuable if it arrived at the market intact, unlike logwood, which could be dynamited into smaller pieces. By 1800, Belize's population approached 4,000 people, 3,000 of whom were slaves. Only 300 whites lived in Belize at this time (Colonial Office 1803).

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a sharp increase in market prices for logwood brought an impressive though brief resurgence of the industry (Figure 3). Oddly, this boom came after the introduction of artificial dyes in Europe. Although synnthetic black dyes were available in Europe in the 1860s and were said to be displacing "logwood black" dyes (Travis 1993, 139), exports of Belizean logwood remained strong into the early twentieth century. During this peak period, exports of Belizean logwood averaged over 20,000 tons per year. Logwood's importance to the Belizean economy was immense, accounting for over fifty percent of the value of its domestic exports. Most of the logwood was exported to Britain, although France sometimes received up to forty percent of the Belizean wood (calculated from GB 1887 BB through GB 1900 BB). [end p. 82]

A significant portion of the logwood exported from Belize in this period was not locally cut but came from the adjacent regions of the Petén in Guatemala and southeastern Yucatan in Mexico. Local merchants re-exported the foreign timber, evidence of Belize City's modest role as an entrepot.¹³ Reported logwood annually comprised an average of nineteen percent of the logwood exports from Belize from 1890 to 1905 (calculated from GB 1890 BB through GB 1906 BB).

After being a major component of Belize's economy for more than two centuries, logwood steadily declined in importance through the early 1900s. Annual exports of Belizean logwood decreased ten-fold in two decades to less than 2,000 tons by 1920, accounting for less than three percent of the value of exports. ¹⁴ Contemporary government reports (Foreign Office 1919, 37; GB 1925C, 17; Hummel 1925, 14) stated that this decline was mainly due to competition from aniline dyes, which were thought to have taken over European markets and to have driven down the price for logwood. However, the price decrease for logwood in the early twentieth century was slight.¹⁵ Thus, reduced market demand alone cannot account for the sharp decline in exports during this period. In fact, as the market price for logwood rebounded strongly in the 1920s, exports of the timber continued to decline. A more important factor in the decline of the Belizean logwood trade appears to have been over-exploitation of the resource.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the logwood market collapsed. Logwood timber during the lean years of the depression was "practically unsaleable," and production and export figures plummeted (GB 1938C, 13).¹⁶ For the next decade and a half, logwood exports averaged less than one hundred tons per year, or less than half a percent of what they had been forty years earlier. By the mid 1940s, logwood exports had virtually ceased. However, from the perspective of the late twentieth century, the depresssion of the logwood trade in the 1930s was not the principal cause for the demise of the industry. The logwood industry was already well in decline by the 1930s and the depression of the logwood markets should only be thought of as the final blow to the industry. Centuries of overcutting had already imperiled the industry when the markets crashed.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Although the first English settlers were pirates, for whom the coast of Belize was an excellent place of refuge, it was not long before they realized the value of the territory's resources. By the 1680s, these early settlers were extracting logwood near the coast to satisfy an intense European demand for the wood. The history of Belize's logwood industry can be divided into four distinct periods: a boom period from 1680 to 1780, when Belize became an important world supplier of logwood; a period from 1780 to 1880, when the economic focus of Belize shifted away from logwood to mahogany; a short period of resurgence, from 1880 to 1910; and a final bust period from 1910 to 1940, when logwood's place in the Belizean economy declined to a point of relative insignificance. Decreasing demand had merely compounded the fundamental problem of a dwindling supply, which was the result of centuries of over-extraction.

In some regards, the legacy of logwood extraction on the Belizean landscape has been minimal. The areal extent of forest disturbance was limited to narrow coastal and riverine zones, where the cutting of logwood without replanting led to a decreased incidence of the tree. Logwood exploitation also did not lead to any substantial settlement formation or road development. Logwood clearings were usually abandoned to the forest after timber operations moved elsewhere. Because loggers relied almost entirely upon river transport, they did not develop a road network.

However, the logwood trade has been of lasting importance in the formation of the territory's heterogeneous ethnic character and in the shaping of Belizean attitudes about the significance of the forest and the dignity of forest work. The most imporrtant legacy of the logwood industry is the composition of the population of the territory. Englishmen were attracted to Belize because of the presence of large areas of high quality logwood. Within decades of their first settlement of the territory, these early Englishmen began importing Africans to work as slaves in the logwood stands. For the next century and a half, creoles comprised over eighty percent of Belize's population. The Creoles, products of centuries of African and English miscegenation, today number approximately 60,000, still thirty percent of [end p. 83]the population, in a country that is becoming increasingly mestizo.

The forests have special meaning in Belize. The success of the logwood trade suggested to the early English settlers that Belize's riches lay in the forests, an attitude that did not significantly change until the twentieth century, when the economic focus of the territory began to shift toward field agriculture. Many Belizeans, particularly the English-speaking creoles, pride themselves on their descent from pirates and timber cutters. Logwood was central to Belize's economic history and appears to have been incorporated as a vital element in the national myth.

NOTES
1. Belize was officially an English "settlement" (sometimes referred to as simply "Honduras") by the Bay of Honduras from the time of the first English inhabitants. In 1862, the territory became the colony of British Honduras. The settlers continnued to govern the colony until 1871 when they voluntarily transferred all administrative responsibilities to London to become a "Crown colony." In 1964, Britain granted the colony internal self-government which led to complete independence in 1981. With self-government, the name "Belize" was adopted to replace British Honduras. In this paper, the name "Belize" is used to refer to the area of the present-day country regardless of the time period involved.

2. The foremost geographical treatise on logwood is the Ph.D. dissertation by McJunkin (1991).

3. Early accounts refer to settlers from the British Isles as "English" although, undoubtedly, some Scotsmen and Irishmen were in the group. In this paper, "English" or "Englishmen" is used to refer to early settlers from the British Isles.

4. It is difficult, if not impossible, to establish the exact year of the first English presence in Belize. The early Englishmen were not prone to keeping records and often tried to keep their activities secret. The Scottish pirate Peter Wallace may have used Belize as a base for his pirating in the early 1600s. In fact, the name "Belize" may have been corrupted from Wallace's name (Dobson 1973, 51-52).

5. William Dampier, the son of a small tenant farmer in Somerset, England, arrived in Jamaica in 1674. Dissatisfied as an indentured laborer, Dampier left the island for the Yucatan to become a logger (Bennett 1964). Dampier published his notes of these experiences (Dampier 1699), and they remain the best source of information about the early logwood cutters on the Main.

6.The places named were Cape Gracias a Dios, Darien, Mosquito, Bay of Campeche, Cuba, and Hispañiola (Governor Thoomas Modyford to Secretary Lord Arlington Oct. 31, 1670, in CSP 1669-74, No. 310). It did not take the Englishmen long to realize that the Yucatan (particularly the Bay of Campeche and Cape Catoche) and the Bay of Honduras contained the best suppply of logwood in the West Indies.

7. The ten major river systems in Belize are: Rio Hondo, New River, Belize River, Sibun River, Manatee River, North Stann Creek, Sittee River, Rio Grande, Temash River, and Sarstoon River.

8. Belize was inhabited by Indians when the Spanish and English arrived, contrary to what some scholars have asserted. The Europeans displaced large numbers of Maya through the seventeenth century. By the early eighteenth century, most of the Maya had moved into the interior, settling in western and northwestem Belize, well beyond of the frontier of English timber extraction (Bolland 1988, 92-94).

9. The designation "creole" has a different meaning than it does in some other Caribbean countries. In Belize, a creole refers to a person with a significant portion of African blood. The population of whites in the settlement prior to 1786 probably never exceeded 100. The population of Belize increased significantly in 1787 when Britain evacuated over 3,000 settlers from the Miskito Shore in present-day northeastern Honduras to Belize in return for concessions from Spain in 1786, permitting the Baymen to cut logwood and mahogany in the northern half of present-day Belize (Camille 1996, 48).

10. "Factory" here means "a place where merchants and factors reside, to negotiate business for themselves and their correspondents on commission" (from McCulloch 1838).

11. For example, the market price for a ton of logwood was £25 in 1749, £11 in 1756, £5 in 1770, £8 in 1779, and £10 in 1782 ("Memorial of settlers driven from Belize", Feb. 10, 1783, in Burdon 1931, 134).

12. Immediately after receiving Spanish permission to cut mahogany under the Convention of London in 1786, the settlers drew up resolutions establishing "mahogany works" ("Meeting of Committee", July 25, 1787, in Burdon 1931, 164-165). A mahogany works was similar to a logwood works in that it was a right granted to extract timber in a specified locale. Mahogany cutters needed larger tracts than logwood cutters because mahogany trees are scattered through the forest unlike logwood trees, which tend to grow in stands close to the coast. A typical mahogany works ran for three miles along a river, and its sidelines extended half the distance to the next navigable river or eight miles "aback" (BA 1846). It was not long until mahogany works were thought of as freehold property ("locations") that could be sold. Superintendent Charles St. John Fancourt noted in 1846 that a location "has always been considered ... to be inviolable" (BA 1846).

13. Re-exported logwood was brought to Belize City by water. Timber from the Petén in Guatemala was sent down the Belize River, whereas timber from the Yucatan was carried along the coast in rafts (Duncan 1968, 62).

14. In the early twentieth century, France and the United States began to import a significant percentage of Belizean logwood. The United States received from one-third to one-half of Belizean logwood exports in the early 1920s, while France became the chief importer of the dyewood in the mid-1920s. By the late 1920s and 1930s, Britain was once again the recipient of almost all of Belize's logwood exports (calculated from GB 1905 BB through GB 1940 BB and GB 1915 C through GB 1940 C). [end p. 84]

15. The five year averages for the price of a ton of Belizean logwood from 1895 to 1929 are: 1895-99: $22, 1900-04: $19, 1905-09: $19, 1910-14: $18, 1915-19: [no data], 1920-24: $26, 1925-29: $25 (calculated from GB 1895 BB through GB 1930 BB and GB 1915 C through GB 1930 C).

16. The average prices paid for a ton of Belizean log wood in the 1930s were: 1930: $23, 1931: $25, 1932: $15, 1933: $13, 1934: $11,1935: $11, 1936: $11,1937: $16,1938: $18, 1939: $16 (calculated from GB 1930 C through GB 1939 C).

REFERENCES
Albion, R. 1926. Forests and Sea Power, the Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652-1862. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

BA (Belize Archives Department, Belmopan). 1846. Superintendent Charles Fancourt to Berkeley, Dec. 15, 1846. R25:1577160.

__________.1852. Jamaican Governor Charles Grey to Superintendent Phillip Wodehouse, Oct. 6, 1852. R25: 3.

Bennett, J. 1964. William Dampier, Buccaneer and Planter. History Today 14: 469-477.

Bolland, N. 1988. Colonialism and Resistence in Belize. Belize: Cupola Press.

Burdon, J. 1931. Archives of British Honduras, Vol. 1. London: Sifton Praed & Co.

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies (40 vols.). 1964. Vaduz: Kraus Reprint Ltd.

Camille, M. 1994. Government Initiative and Resource Exploitation in Belize. Texas A&M University. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation.

__________.1996. Population and Ethnicity of Belize, 1861. In Belize: Selected Proceedings from the Second Interdiscipliinary Conference, ed. M. Phillips, pp. 45-63. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Colonial Office (London). 1803. British Honduras Population as of 1803, March 31. CO 123/15.

Dampier, W. 1699. A New Voyage Around the World, Vol. 1. London: James Knapton.

Dobson, N. 1973. A History of Belize. Kingston, Jamaica: Longman Caribbean Limited.

Duncan, K. 1968. Aspects of the Hardwood Forest Industry in British Honduras. In Expedition to British Honduras and Yucatan, 1966: General Report, ed. P. Furley, pp. 52-62. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.

ED (Library and Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, Boston). 1727. Letter to the Donors of Logwood, Aug. 4, 1727, in Records of Christ Church [Old North], box 2.

__________.1742. Mr. Fletcher's Agreement with Christ Church About Logwood, Jan. 12, 1742, in Records of Christ Church [Old North], box 2.

__________.1947. Christchurch, Salem Street, Boston --The Old North Church-- Historical Sketches. Unpublished manuscript by M. Babcock.

Foreign Office (Britain). 1919. British Honduras. London: HMSO.

GB (Government of Belize [British Honduras]). 1934. British Honduras, Financial and Economic Position Report. London: HMSO.

__________. 1880 BB through 1943 BB. Blue Book of British Honduras (Annual).

__________.1915c through 1950c. Annual Report of the Colony. Henderson, G. 1809. An Account of the British Settlement of Honduras. London: C. and R. Baldwin.

Hummel, C. 1925. Report on the Forests of British Honduras. London: Crown Agents.

Jones, G. 1989. Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

McCulloch. J. 1838. Dictionary of Commerce and Commercial Navigation. London.

McJunkin, D. 1991. Logwood: An Inquiry into the Historical Biogeography of Haematoxylum Campechianum L . and Related Dyewoods of the Neotropics. University of California, Los Angeles. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation.

Morris, D. 1883. The Colony of British Honduras: its Resources and Prospects. London: Harrison and Sons.

Thomas, D. 1690. Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the West India Colonies. London.

Travis, A. 1993. The Rainbow Makers: The Origins of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry in Western Europe. Bethleham, PA: Lehigh University Press.

RESUMEN
Durante el primer siglo de la colonización inglesa de Belice, el lugar que ese territorio ocupaba en el sistema económico mundial y en el sistema imperial británico quedó determinado en su mayor parte por la importancia de la industria del palo de campeche. La extracción del campeche en Belice satisfizo la creciente demanda en Europa de tintes naturales. En este estudio se describe la geografía de la extracción temprana del palo de campeche y sus efectos sobre el paisaje de Belice y se situa esa industria en un contexto económico y geopolítico más amplio.
Translated by Rafael Espejo-Saavedra [end p. 85]