Confederate Settlements in British Honduras (review)

In Confederate Settlements in British Honduras, Donald C. Simmons, Jr. traces the course of southerners who, rather than submit to Union “reconstruction,” fled the post-Civil War South. Generally the expatriates who chose British Honduras as their new home were from Mississippi or Louisiana. Thus, it is not surprising that those with the means bought land, planted sugar cane, and set out to resurrect on foreign soil that genteel southern society which, they presumed, had died with General Lee’s surrender. Despite the legwork of enthusiastic promoters, Confederates never numbered much over a few thousand, and by 1870 had all but disappeared as an identifiable group within the population.(17) Even so, Simmons counts as very important the mark these ex-Confederates left on British Honduras. Sugar production, he writes, “more than tripled during the first five years of Confederate settlement” and sugar remains the foundation of the Belize economy to this day.(122) How to interpret this statement is left up to the reader, which points to the chief weakness of Simmons’ book. Simmons has ably established the presence of Confederate expatriates in British Honduras, but for the most part he leaves for future scholars the work of historicizing that presence and evaluating its significance.

One wonders if writing the story of Confederate expatriates could contribute to our greater understanding of the character and legacy of colonialism in Belize. Sugar figured prominently among the reasons for going to British Honduras, and since Simmons largely credits the success of the industry to the entrepreneurial prowess of Confederate expatriates, he should perhaps offer an evaluation of their contribution to the Honduran economy that engages the work on colonialism more generally. That is, in his final assessment of the Confederates, Simmons might take into account a wider range of factors, like how sugar plantations affected the natural environment and the quality of life of the Hondurans, or the correlation between sugar and Belize’s prolonged colonial status (independence did not come until 1981).

Likewise, Simmons’ evidence warrants a more probing investigation of the conflicts — that seemed the rule rather than exception — between the Confederate planters and their Honduran laborers. Simmons asserts that the Confederates preferred “free labor,” and notes, “surprising to some is the fact that efforts to continue the institution of slavery was really of little concern.”(116) But the choice was not theirs to make: slavery was illegal in British Honduras. If they were in fact indifferent about the institution of slavery, prosperity depended on cheap free labor. Simmons admits as much, writing, “It was only after Chinese and East Indian laborers, essentially indentured servants, were imported that the few Confederates who had managed to survive during those early difficult years profited from their agricultural pursuits.”(122) Apparently Confederate expatriates did not easily adjust to a free labor system that lacked the authoritative muscle they remembered from the pre-war South.

The laborers were not white and the difficulties were more than economic. Simmons points out that the vision of recreating “that distinctive political, economic, and social foundation...destroyed by the Civil War” (122) strained relationships between the Confederates and Hondurans, whether of British, African, or Native American extraction. It is telling that some natives of African descent, according to Simmons, “refused to work for the Southerners,” while others requested that the colonial government protect their land from the “intruders.”(77) Yet, while acknowledging tensions, Simmons does not adequately integrate the voices of non-Confederate Hondurans in his study, which functions to undervalue their role as historical actors, as well as the importance of their perspective on the “intruders” — Confederates.

For a student of colonialism, the exclusion of non-Confederate voices is indicative of a general absence of context for Confederate actors and the world in which they lived. Thus, if provocative, Simmons’ study is also disappointingly simple, since the Confederates seem neither to take root in — nor grow out of — the soil of British Honduras. Neither, however, is the context sufficiently developed, nor the Confederate Hondurans sufficiently problematized, to fully satisfy Civil War historians...