Capture of Río Hondo
| Capture of Hondo River | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the American Revolutionary War | ||||||
| ||||||
| Belligerents | ||||||
 Kingdom of Spain |
 Kingdom of Great Britain | |||||
| Commanders and leaders | ||||||
| Roberto Rivas Betancourt (es) [1] | unknown |
The Capture of Río Hondo was the result of a Spanish military operation in the autumn of September 1779 against British settlements around the Hondo River in present-day Belize.
Campaign
[edit]The Kingdom of Great Britain owned the area south of the Hondo River since the early 18th century. The area was sparsely populated and contained only a number of semi-sedentary settlements of loggers.
After the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War (1779–1783), the Spanish launched a number of attacks against these British settlements. Success was very limited and on 22 September the Spanish even suffered a defeat, so the British were not driven out.[2]
However, the British abandoned their colony after the Spanish Capture of Cayo Cocina on the 15 September 1779. The colony was abandoned until 1784 when the British logging rights were confirmed in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.[3][4].
References
[edit]- ^ "Rivas Betancourt, Roberto de". Enciclopedia Yucatan en el tiempo (in Spanish). Retrieved 2025-11-14.
- ^ Bracamonte y Sosa, Pedro (2004). La encarnación de la profecía Canek en Cisteil (in Spanish). CIESAS. ISBN 978-970-701-457-2. Retrieved 2025-11-14.
- ^ Bolland, O. Nigel (2003). Colonialism and Resistance in Belize. Cubola Productions. p. 30-31. ISBN 9789766401412.
- ^ Restall, Matthew (2009). The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan. Stanford University Press. p. 23. ISBN 9780804749831.