 The cultivation of sugar cane was introduced to Belize, before becoming a British colony, in 1848 by the Maya and Mestizo refugees fleeing from the Caste War in the Yucatán Peninsula.After the American Civil War in 1865, American immigrants from the southern United States invested heavily in sugar plantations and small sugar mills throughout southern Belize.Serpon Estate was bought by a Scottish man named William Bowman.