The VOC’s charter expires and the company is dissolved

From exile, William V instructed Dutch colonial governors to hand their colonies to Britain to prevent French seizure. The letters enabled British occupation of Dutch possessions in Asia and the...

Tula and fellow enslaved people at Knip refused to work and demanded freedom. The movement spread across Curaçao and became the largest uprising against slavery in the Dutch Atlantic. Tula’s political...

British forces occupied Malacca after receiving the Kew instructions and negotiated its transfer with Dutch officials. The occupation was presented as protection from France, but it shifted control...

British forces took Cape Town and the Cape government capitulated, beginning the first British occupation. This changed the colonial administrator but not settler claims over Khoikhoi and San land...

After a British campaign and negotiations, Colombo capitulated. The surrender ended VOC rule in coastal Sri Lanka. The British takeover was another European transfer of colonial power; it did not...

British forces defeated the Batavian garrison near Cape Town. The battle opened the way to British occupation, but the change of European rulers did not end settler land seizure or frontier wars...

After the Blaauwberg defeat and the surrender of part of the defending force, Governor Janssens and the remaining Batavian troops capitulated. British occupation began through an imperial handover...

British forces landed on Java during the Napoleonic Wars, attacking a colony administered by Dutch personnel under French imperial authority. For Javanese people the invasion meant another...

The colonial capital surrendered during the British invasion. Control of Batavia gave Britain the administrative center, but the population had no meaningful say in the change of sovereignty.

British forces captured Fort Cornelis, breaking the main defensive position of the Dutch-French colonial army on Java. The battle opened the way to British occupation; European military accounts often...