Conclusion

Summary

Signed in July 1893 and ratified four years later, the Spenser–Mariscal Treaty between Great Britain and Mexico signaled the end of British involvement in the Caste War. The divergence between imperial and colonial interests latent in the governance of Belize since the beginning of the Caste War period becomes particularly salient in the dissents surrounding the Spenser–Mariscal Treaty. The belief that complicated struggles over land, labor and people in Belize could be resolved by a simple line on the map reflected British imperial hubris and the lack of understanding of ground-level reality. Colonial officials, on the other hand, entrenched in the local sphere, found their interests aligned more with the Creole and Hispanic Belizeans and the Maya at the borders than with the British Crown that they purported to represent. Examination of the correspondences surrounding the Spenser–Mariscal Treaty reveals this contradiction at the heart of the imperial project in the Belizean northern frontier at the end of the Caste War.