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
British Honduras Also in 1840, the colony formally became known as British Honduras, although it was also referred to as "the Belize". In 1853 the public meeting system was abandoned in favour of a legislative assembly, part of which was elected by a restricted franchise. The assembly was presided over by the British superintendent, an office created in 1784. From 1749 until 1884, British Honduras was governed as a dependency of the British colony of Jamaica. Upon its designation as a Crown colony in 1871, a Lieutenant Governor under the Governor of Jamaica replaced the superintendent, and a nominated legislative council replaced