Extractive Economies and the Quest for Sovereignty in the Mid-19th-Century Belizean Borderlands

Currently on the docket of the International Court of Justice sits a centuries-old territorial dispute between Guatemala and Belize, which until 1981 involved the United Kingdom, as Belize was a British colony. This paper zooms into this conflict in the mid-late 19^th century, when ongoing efforts by Maya political entities challenged state and imperial efforts to control their land and expand extractive industries.

Using sources from the U.K., Guatemala, and Belize, this paper shifts our attention westward, away from the main theaters of the Caste War to Belize’s western border, an understudied region that played an important role both in that prolonged conflict. Maya actors in the Caste War forced state and empire builders in Mexico, Guatemala, and British Honduras, respectively, to recognize and contend with different geographies and sovereignties on the ground. As international capital invested in the expansion of mahogany and chicle works in the Belizean borderland region, outsiders—largely American and British firms—alongside their local counterparts, challenged Indigenous sovereignty and exacerbated inter-Maya rivalries. Indigenous communities reasserted control through implementing measures like those utilized by the liberal state: demanding rent payments and taxes for extraction on their land and then violently evicting those who refused.

In response, Guatemala and the U.K. reactivated their unresolved territorial dispute and worked to define, survey, and demarcate the border to clarify jurisdictional questions that arose as each attempted to weaken Maya power. Thus, this case presents an example of how the growth of extractive industries coupled with Indigenous efforts to control such expansion incentivized the British empire and Guatemalan state, respectively, to territorialize the region according to a logic of fixed borders and mobility managed by the state.