Emancipation Day 2025: Reckoning with Belize’s Timber Economy and a Family Legacy

Yesterday, August 1, 2025, Belize commemorated Emancipation Day, marking the anniversary of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 taking effect across the British Empire in 1834. Though legal slavery ended that year, full freedom was only realized at midnight on July 31, 1838. It is that 1838 moment which most fully embodies the emancipation Belize and other Caribbean nations remember today.

The early economy of what became British Honduras, now Belize, was shaped profoundly by the logwood and mahogany industries. In the eighteenth century, British settlers known as the Baymen established control in the region by extracting logwood, a valuable source of dye for European markets. As demand grew for mahogany, a timber prized for furniture and fine construction, settlers imported enslaved Africans to power the industry.

These men, women, and children endured backbreaking labor. Isolated in forest camps, they cut, hauled, and floated timber through harsh and dangerous terrain under punishing conditions. Some worked in domestic service, while others became highly skilled in forestry, serving as axmen and huntsmen. At various times, enslaved Africans comprised the majority of the colony’s population.

Although slavery officially ended in the 1830s, Belize only formally recognized Emancipation Day in 2021. The national observance of August 1 is not simply a commemoration of freedom won, but also an acknowledgment of the suffering that preceded it.

It is here that my family’s history converges with the nation’s.

James Hyde, my ancestor, served as an agent for British Honduras in the 1830s and was a known figure in the timber economy. Historical records confirm his involvement with Hyde & Hodge, Co., a London-based firm engaged in merchant trading and mahogany cutting. He also fathered a free-coloured son, George Hyde, to whom he provided financial support before returning to Britain.

It is impossible to tell the story of Belize’s economy, or the Hyde family’s place within it, without confronting the reality that these foundations were laid through systems of enslavement and racial hierarchy. This is not just historical abstraction, it is personal and generational.

The Bible tells us that the sins of the parents fall upon the children. This truth has echoed throughout the modern history of the Hyde family. Belizeans have watched that reality unfold in the form of family disputes, questions of identity, and painful silence. That silence must end. Truth must now speak.

So today, on this Emancipation Day, I offer a heartfelt and unreserved apology.

On behalf of my ancestors, and the Hyde family as a whole, I apologize for the role we played in a system that enriched us while enslaving others. I recognize the harm that was done, and the privileges passed down because of it.

No one has asked me to make this apology.

No one has required me to speak of reparations.

But my spirit will not allow me to stay silent.

As I continue to build HYDE into a business grounded in values of justice, sustainability, and truth, I pledge that when we are able, reparations will be paid. Not for attention, not because of pressure, but because I believe it is right. The burden of history is not one I can ignore. Others might, but I will not.

To truly honor Emancipation, we must not only remember what was taken, we must work to restore what has been lost.

Let that restoration begin with honesty and action.