Siege of Saïo the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, proclaimed the colony of "Africa Orientale Italiana" (AOI, Italian East Africa), formed from Ethiopia (after the Italian victory in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, fought 3 October 1935 – May 1936) and the existing Italian possessions of Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. On 10 June 1940, Mussolini declared war on Britain and France, which made Italian military forces in Libya a threat to Egypt and those in Italian East Africa a danger to the British and French colonies in East Africa. Italian belligerence also closed the Mediterranean to Allied merchant ships and endangered British supply routes
Dutch Cape Colony at Graaff Reinet in 1786, and declared the Gamtoos River as the eastern frontier of the colony, only to see the Trekboere cross it soon afterwards. In order to avoid collision with the Bantu peoples advancing south, north and west from east central Africa, the Dutch agreed in 1780 to make the Great Fish River the boundary of the colony. In 1795, after the Battle of Muizenberg in present-day Cape Town, the British occupied the colony. Under the terms of the Peace of Amiens of 1802, Britain returned the colony to the Dutch on 1 March 1803, but as the