The first large group of Huguenots arrives at the Cape

During the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Dutch forces retook New York and renamed it New Orange. The brief restoration of Dutch rule was another imperial transfer imposed over Indigenous homelands; it did...

The treaty ended the war and set the terms for the Dutch return of New Netherland to England. European powers formalized colonial possession through diplomacy, while Indigenous communities had no role...

Dutch authorities formally returned New Netherland to England under the postwar settlement. The transfer ended Dutch political rule in the colony but preserved European settler claims and systems of...

The charter dated 23 September 1682 formalized a company shared by the Dutch West India Company, Amsterdam, and the Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck family. It organized plantation expansion and rule in a...

The VOC directors decided to send French Huguenot refugees to the Cape. Their settlement served the company’s demand for skilled farmers and reinforced colonial expansion. The Cape was already...

French minister Pierre Simond accompanied Huguenot settlers to the Cape under VOC direction. The company promoted a Protestant settler population to develop farming and strengthen its provisioning...

A ship’s infected laundry brought smallpox to the Cape station. The epidemic devastated Khoikhoi communities, while also killing enslaved people and settlers. As communities fled and died, settler...

On 9 October, Dutch authorities and armed colonists began mass violence against Chinese residents of Batavia. The killings followed an escalating crisis shaped by VOC labor controls, deportation...

In a letter to the Society of Suriname, Governor Jan Jacob Mauricius Crommelin argued that colonial troops could not defeat Maroon communities and that peace might save the colony. Maroon...

The treaty recognized Mangkubumi as ruler of part of the Mataram realm and formalized a political division shaped by VOC intervention. Javanese rulers pursued their own political strategies, but the...