British Honduras was the former name of what is now the independent nation of Belize and was a British colony on the east coast of Central America, southeast of Mexico. First settled by Spaniards in the seventeenth century, it became a British crown colony from 1871 through 1964, when it became self-governing. Belize became fully independent from the United Kingdom in 1981. Belize was the last continental possession of the United Kingdom in the Americas.