Better Judges of the Situation: Environmental Realities & Problems of Imperial Authority in the Bay of Honduras

Abstract

In 1786, Britain and Spain concluded the Convention of London, a treaty renewing permission for Anglo woodcutters to cut timber within a designated area in the Bay of Honduras. In exchange, Britain affirmed once again Spain's sovereignty over this valuable section of the Central American coast. As a revision of several earlier treaties, this new agreement differed in that, while allowing mahogany cutting for the first time, it attempted to strictly define and limit the boundaries within which the woodcutters (or Baymen as they called themselves) could operate, and took decisive steps to restrict their settlement's expansion. While the two nations hailed the Convention as a welcome bilateral solution to a long-standing inter-imperial conflict, many of the Baymen, especially members of the local white oligarchy, reviled the outcome. In a memorial to George III, the treaty's critics in the Bay dismissed it as the misguided product of presumptuous diplomats:[T]he court of Madrid may amuse the court of London, with the number of miles and leagues which have been ceded to […] the British Settlement as long as the court of London is pleased to be amused with it. But […] your Memorialists with infinite respect to the superior Abilities and Knowledge and Wisdom of both Courts, most humbly pretend to be better Wood-cutters and better judges of the Soil, the Situation, and the Trees […] than all the courts of Europe […] They speak, and have always spoken, from their Knowledge and Experience.