Belize Vacations
Belize is a country in Central America that many people want to visit. Some may want to stay at high quality places on their vacation. Some may want to travel to the nation by plane or ocean liner. Some may want to stay on their vacation at villas, houses, apartments, condoes, duplexes, mansions or other types of accommodation.
Belize is a nation in Central America that many people want to visit.
Belize formerly British Honduras, is a country in Central America. Once part of the Mayan, and very briefly the Spanish Empire, it was most recently affiliated with the British Empire, prior to gaining its independence in 1981. The country is bordered to the south and west by Guatemala, to the north by Mexico, and to the east by the Caribbean Sea.
Belize has a diverse society, composed of many cultures and speaking many languages. It is the only country in Central America where English is an official language, although Kriol and Spanish are also widely spoken.
The nation is located on the Caribbean coast of northern Central America. It shares a border on the north with the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, on the west with the Guatemalan department of Petén, and on the south with the Guatemalan department of Izabal. To the east in the Caribbean Sea, the second longest barrier reef in the world flanks much of the 386 kilometers of predominantly marshy coastline.
Belize is shaped like a rectangle that extends about 280 kilometers north south and about 100 kilometers east west, with a total land boundary length of 516 kilometers. The undulating courses of 2 rivers, the Hondo and the Sarstoon, define much of the course of the country's northern and southern boundaries. The western border follows no natural features and runs north-south through lowland forest and highland plateau.The north of Belize consists mostly of flat, swampy coastal plains, in places heavily forested. The flora is highly diverse considering the small geographical area. The south contains the low mountain range of the Maya Mountains.
The highest point in Belize is Doyle's Delight at 3,688 ft.
The Caribbean coast is lined with a coral reef and some 450 islets and islands known locally as Cayes. They total about 690 square kilometers, and form the approximately 200 mile long Belize Barrier Reef, the longest in the Western Hemisphere and the second longest in the world after the Great Barrier Reef. Three of the four coral atolls in the Western Hemisphere are also located off the coast of Belize.
Before the arrival of Europeans, Belize was part of the territory of the Maya. The Mopan Maya were the original inhabitants of Belize. The Maya civilization spread itself over Belize beginning around 1500 BC and flourished until about AD 900.
English and Scottish buccaneers known as the Baymen first settled on the coast of Belize in 1638, seeking a sheltered region from which they could attack Spanish ships. The settlers turned to cutting logwood during the 1700s. The wood yielded a fixing agent for clothing dyes that was vital to the European woolen industry. The Spanish granted the British settlers the right to occupy the area and cut logwood in exchange for an end to piracy. Historical accounts from the early 1700s note that Africans were brought to the settlement from Jamaica to work as slaves and cut timber. As early as 1800 Africans outnumbered Europeans by about four to one. By then the settlement’s primary export had shifted from logwood to mahogany.
For fear of provoking Spanish attack, the British government did not initially recognize the settlement in Belize as a colony. It allowed the settlers to establish their own laws and forms of government. During this time wealthy settlers gained control of the local legislature, known as the Public Meeting, as well as of most of the settlement’s land and timber. The British first appointed a superintendent over the area in 1786.
The Spanish, who claimed sovereignty over the whole of Central America, tried often to gain control by force over Belize, but they were not successful. Spain’s last attack ended on 10 September, 1798, when the people of Belize decisively defeated a Spanish fleet at the Battle of St. George's Caye. The anniversary of the battle is now a national holiday in Belize.
In the early 1800s the British sought greater control over the settlers, threatening to suspend the Public Meeting unless it observed the government’s instructions to abolish slavery. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1838, but this did little to change working conditions for workers in Belize.
Soon after, a series of institutions were put in place to ensure the continued presence of a viable work force. Some of these included greatly restricting the ability of individuals to obtain land, a debt peonage system to organize the newly free. The position of being extra special mahogany and logwood cutters undergirded the early ascriptions of the capacities of people of African descent in the colony. Because a small elite controlled the settlement’s land and commerce, former slaves had no choice but to continue to work in timber cutting.
In 1836, after the emancipation of Central America from Spanish rule, the British claimed the right to administer the region. In 1862 Great Britain formally declared it a British Crown Colony, subordinate to Jamaica, and named it British Honduras. As a colony Belize began to attract British investors. Among the British firms that dominated the colony in the late 1800s was the Belize Estate and Produce Company, which eventually acquired half of all the privately held land in the colony. Belize Estate’s influence accounts in part for the colony’s reliance on the mahogany trade throughout the rest of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
Belize Vacations
An Index with links to almost all our sites
Denver
Jobs
cheap vegas vacations
job opportunities in northern virginia