Peter Wallace () is commonly held to have been a British buccaneer who, in the mid-17th century, founded the Bay settlement, predecessor polity of modern Belize, thereby becoming one of the first Baymen and establishing the earliest non-Amerindian state in the area. Most commonly, he is said to have done so by landing the Swallow on Swallow Caye in 1638. He is thought to have entered local oral tradition by the 1820s, and has been discussed in literature since then, with his historicity being a primary topic of debate. Recent scholarship has tended to regard him as most likely an apocryphal figure of Belize's founding myth, though he (or his legend) persists in the country's popular culture today.
Career
A number of differing stories have been told regarding Wallace's career, though virtually all of them credit him with founding the Bay settlement, thus making him one of the first Baymen in history, responsible for establishing the earliest non-Amerindian polity in what is now Belize. The most oft-repeated of these holds that in 1638, Wallace and some 80 British buccaneers aboard the Swallow landed on Swallow Caye, four miles (circa six kilometres) east of the Haulover Creek mouth, and decided to settle in the area. Variations on this telling include: The buccaneers were a , and they were forced to settle after being in 1638. The buccaneers settled during the period of the English Protectorate the 1650s. The buccaneers were , and they settled after the late 1716 Spanish capture of their Campeachy settlement (in Lake Terminos) 1717. Wallace landed the Haulover's mouth the mid-17th century. Wallace landed 1603–1604, 1610, 1640, or after the early 1667 signing of the Earl of Sandwich's Treaty.
Legacy
Wallace appeared in local buccaneering myths and legends of the Bay settlement by at least the 1820s, being first set to print in the Honduras Almanack for 1829. His Swallow, in addition, is ostensibly the namesake of Swallow Caye. His surname, similarly, has been often claimed as the etymological source of the Belize toponym, via its linguistic corruption by Spanish speakers. This last point, however, has been contested as a folk etymology, with competing theories proposed.
Today, Wallace endures in the lay literature or popular culture of Belize, it being not uncommon to remark on him or his story in passing.
Scholarly Wallace first appeared in literature in the Honduras Almanack for 1829, an official publication of the Bay settlement, printed in 1826 or 1827. It described "Wallice" as a "Lieutenant among the Bucaniers who formerly infested these seas", and who "first discovered the mouth of the River Belize". The Almanack for 1839 added: "Belize owes its origin to a Scotch Corsair Chief of the name of Wallace, a native of Falkland in Kinrosshire. At the time that these formidable pirates were driven from Tortuga, a small island situated a few miles north of St. Domingo, Wallace to escape from the just vengeance of the Spaniards fled for security amongst the numerous islands on the coast of Yucatan and finally settled at the mouth of the River Belize. Here after many vicissitudes both by sea and land Wallace fixed his residence, erected a few log huts and a small fortalice, which stood on the site now occupied by the handsome premises of Messrs. Boitias and Delande".
The Almanack stories were soon popularised by John Lloyd Stephens, in his 1841 Incidents of Travel. In Spanish literature, they were brought to wide notice by an 1849 issue of the Fénix journal by Justo Sierra O'Reilly, who added either well-sourced information (according to some historians) or manufactured embellishments (according to others). By the 1880s, the historian Archibald Gibbs described the state of scholarship on Wallace like so: "A halo of romance surrounds the early history of British Honduras, legend assigning this region as the scene of many a daring exploit, many a riotous orgie, in the good old times when the adventurous sons of Albion roamed the Caribbean, partly under the protection of their own dreaded black flag, and sometimes under that of the country of their birth ... The central hero of this romance was a Scottish rover named Wallace, or Wallis, 'who so distinguished himself,' naively remarks the Honduras Almanac fifty-six years ago, 'by acts of bravery and desperation that his name became a terror to the Spaniards'".
20th century The Almanack stories perdured in anglophone and Hispanic scholarly literature throughout the 20th century, though a number of competing theories regarding Wallace's identity and career were now proffered. In 1925, Guatemalan historian Francisco Asturias claimed that Wallace had been Walter Raleigh's first mate during (at least) the latter's El Dorado expedition, settled Belize shortly after sailing from England on 14 May 1603, abandoned the settlement in 1617, and died in England in 1621. In 1946, Belizean historian E. O. Winzerling claimed that "Willis" had first settled in Tortuga in 1639 with a group of men "drawn mostly from those expelled from Nevis", became their governor, was routed from Tortuga by the French in August 1640, soon found himself at the mouth of the Belize River, and founded his settlement there "approximately in September 1640". In 1956, American geographer James Jerome Parsons suggested that Wallace may have been a Puritan settler of Old Providence who then settled Belize in 1641 after the former colony was captured by the Spanish. By the end of the century, then, the aforementioned characterisation by Gibbs still held: scholarly consensus was split, with historians divided on what was fact and what fiction as regarded Wallace.
21st century In contrast, scholarship this century has mostly tended towards agnosticism regarding the identity and historicity of Wallace. Some historians, though, have more recently deemed this trend "incorrect", arguing that Wallace is apocryphal. The most notable exponents of this latter school are Barbara and Victor Bulmer-Thomas, who in a 2016 Tempus paper argued that in the 1820s, George Westby and Thomas Pickstock (influential Baymen), alongside George Wilson Bridges (Jamaican historian), disseminated the said Almanack accounts despite lacking any primary sources for them. They further noted, "an extensive search for a buccaneer called 'Wallace,' 'Wallice' or 'Willis' in the 17th century reveals not surprisingly that there was no such person". This analysis has seemingly gained support since then. For instance, in response to the Bulmer-Thomases, the historian Matthew Restall added, "if Wallace had existed, there would at least be one mention of him in seventeenth or eighteenth-century sources. But there is not even a passing mention of a Wallace in any of the printed sources from the era".
See also Piracy in the Bay of Honduras
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