History of the Cape Colony before 1806 Reinet. The Netherlands fell to the French army under the leadership of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1795. Reacting to the weakness of the Dutch East India Company holdings, a British army under General Sir James Henry Craig set out for Cape Town to secure the colony for the Stadtholder Prince William V of Orange against the French. The governor of Cape Town refused at first to obey any instructions from the prince, but after the British threatened to use force, he capitulated. The boers of Graaff Reinet did not surrender until an army had been sent against them, and in 1799
Agencies of British India Agencies of British India An agency of British India was an internally autonomous or semi-autonomous unit of British India whose external affairs were governed by an agent designated by the Viceroy of India. They varied in character from fully autonomous self-governing dependencies such as princely states, where the agent functioned mainly as a representative of the Viceroy, to tribal tracts which were integral parts of the British Empire and where the agent was completely in charge of law and order. The agent of a protected tract or princely state usually resided outside the territory in his charge, as opposed to