Late Colonial Era, and Independence
Guatemala declared its independence from Spain in 1821, and the UK did not accept the Baymen of Belize as a crown colony until 1862, 64 years after the Baymen's last hostilities with Spain. This colony became known as "British Honduras".
Under the terms of the Anglo-Guatemalan Treaty of 1859, Guatemala agreed to recognize Belize and Great Britain promised to build a road from Guatemala to the nearby Belize city of Punta Gorda. In 1940, Guatemala claimed that the 1859 treaty is void because the British failed to comply with economic assistance provisions found in Clause VII of the Treaty. Belize, once independent, claimed this was not a treaty they were bound by since they did not sign it (and that an International Court of Justice ruling and international laws demand that Guatemala honour the boundaries in the 1859 treaty even if the UK never builds the road as promised).
Read more about this topic: Belizean-Guatemalan Territorial Dispute
Famous quotes containing the words late, colonial and/or independence:
“Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“The North will at least preserve your flesh for you; Northerners are pale for good and all. There’s very little difference between a dead Swede and a young man who’s had a bad night. But the Colonial is full of maggots the day after he gets off the boat.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)
“We commonly say that the rich man can speak the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence of opinion and action;—and that is the theory of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that is to say, not the man of large income and large expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less than his income and is steadily kept so.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)