The nineteenth century was, in many ways, an age of rapid political upheaval. Across the world, maps were being redrawn as empires weakened, nations emerged, and rebellions, wars, and technological shifts altered long-standing orders. Some of the era’s strangest outcomes were born from this turbulence: freed African American slaves founding a republic on the coast of West Africa, Belgium privately ruling the Congo, Indian soldiers serving in police forces as far away as Shanghai, more than ninety percent of Paraguay’s male population perishing during the War of the Triple Alliance, and Algeria being absorbed directly into France. Global politics was volatile, and because empires and societies were not as interconnected as they are today, such anomalies did not appear unusual at the time. This post examines one such peculiar nineteenth-century outcome that continues to exist today: the settlement of CALCUTTA in BELIZE.
At first glance, it seems odd for Belize to carry the name of an Indian city, but a closer look makes the connection clearer. The Kingdom of England established the Crown Colony of Jamaica and its Dependencies in 1655, a colonial structure that expanded westward to include British Honduras by around 1670—territory that largely corresponds to present-day Belize. The same administrative network later extended to the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands, both of which remain British Overseas Territories even today. Until 1884, British Honduras was governed directly from Jamaica, and it was during these decades of Jamaican control that an unexpected Indian dimension entered the region’s history. While the wider system of indentured labour had already begun transporting Indians to overseas colonies, it was the aftermath of the 1857 Indian Rebellion that decisively altered British imperial policy.
After the rebellion was suppressed in 1858, many Indian revolutionaries were officially classified as convicts by the British state. Along with their families, they were deported across the empire to distant colonies including Mauritius, Singapore, the Andaman Islands, Hong Kong, Burma, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca, Aden, Fiji, Trinidad, and Guyana. In the same period, several hundred Indians were transported to the narrow northern coastal stretch of British Honduras, where they were settled at the Corozal Plantation. This estate lay at the extreme northern edge of the colony, close to what is today the Mexico–Belize border, barely ten to eleven kilometres away. The sugar estate came to be known as 'Calcutta', largely because Calcutta was the Indian port from which many of these individuals had been shipped.
This means that a place named Calcutta exists today barely eleven kilometres from Mexico.
This movement marked only the first phase of Indian settlement in the region. A second wave arrived in 1872, when indentured labourers were transferred from Jamaica to this small settlement under promises of improved living conditions. A third group arrived from neighbouring Guatemala, where Indians had previously been employed on coffee plantations in the Cuchumatanes, often referred to locally as the Café Mountains. Notably, unlike most Caribbean sugar colonies dominated by European planters, several of the sugar estates in this region were operated by American owners. Calcutta was also not the only site of Indian settlement; communities expanded into nearby estates such as San Andrés, San Antonio, Estrella, Carolina, and Ranchito, as documented by researchers Sylvia Gilharry Perez and Kumar Mahabir.
Over time, the settlement grew and Indian cultural influences initially spread through food practices, domestic customs, and community life. Today, only a small percentage of Corozal’s Calcutta village identifies as East Indian. The town of Corozal itself has an earlier origin, founded by the Cruzo’ob Maya—refugees who fled south from Yucatán during the Caste War of 1848. Within the span of just over a decade, two very different displaced communities settled within minutes of each other: Maya refugees from Mexico and Indians transported from South Asia. Unlike many other Indian diaspora settlements, however, Calcutta’s residents no longer speak Indian languages. Spanish, Creole, and regional tongues dominate daily life, while Awadhi, Bhojpuri, and Hindi appear to have disappeared within a few generations. Even so, individuals of East Indian descent later entered government service, education, transport, and local politics, and a handful of family-run businesses and restaurants continue to reflect this heritage.
The settlement’s name has remained unchanged. Today, Calcutta appears clearly on maps, with the Philip Goldson Highway running through it. It lies between Xaibe and Ranchito to the north and San Joaquin to the south, roughly four kilometres from the coastline of Corozal Bay, which opens into the Caribbean Sea. The New River flows a short distance to the south, marking the closest major waterway. Below are two maps: one showing the present-day settlement of Calcutta, and another drawn from an 1857 map of British Honduras, based on the work of Henry Darwin Rogers and Alexander Keith.
@mapsbysagar
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