You are warmly invited to the following seminar hosted by the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies on Wednesday 15th December:
 
Victor Bulmer‐Thomas, Professor Emeritus, London University
The Rise, Decline and Fall of the Belize Economy before Independence

Venue: G32, Senate House, ground floor, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU
Time: 5pm
 
Abstract and Bio below. 
This is the last seminar of the ISA/ICS Caribbean seminar series in 2010 - we do hope you will join us to toast the end of term. We hope you will rejoin us for the spring series in 2011 (details shortly to be posted on http://americas.sas.ac.uk/events.htm)

Abstract: At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, the small population of Belize had the
highest average income in the Caribbean. This was due to its specialisation in high
value timber products and a very profitable entrepot trade with Central America. By
the time Belize became a British colony in 1862, this privileged position was starting
to erode due to the decline of the re‐export trade and severe difficulties in the
mahogany industry. Crown Colony rule did nothing to reverse this, the efforts to
diversify the economy towards agricultural exports were both too little and too late,
and the Belize economy entered a long period of relative decline. When the Great
Depression struck in the 1930s, the material basis of the economy was undermined
and the economy endured a sharp fall.

Professor Victor Bulmer‐Thomas is Professor Emeritus of London University and
Senior Distinguished Fellow of the School of Advanced Studies. He served as Director
of the Institute of Latin American Studies between 1992 and 1998 and recently
served as Director of Chatham House. He is currently Visiting Professor at Florida
International University where he is working on an economic history of the
Caribbean since the Napoleonic Wars. He has published extensively on the
Caribbean and Latin America, including books on the Political Economy of Central
America since 1920 (1987), the Economic History of Latin America Since
Independence (2nd edition, 2003) and the two volume Cambridge Economic History of
Latin America published in 2006.