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
History of the Cape Colony from 1870 to 1899 Colony and the Transvaal, politicians in both places began to debate forming a closer relationship. While acting as Premier of Cape Colony, Rhodes endeavoured to bring about the friendly gesture of commercial federation among the states and colonies of South Africa by means of a customs union. He hoped to established both a commercial and a railway union, which is illustrated by a speech he gave in 1894 in Cape Town: President Kruger and the Transvaal government found every possible objection to this policy. Their actions in what became known as the Vaal River Drift Question best illustrates the plan