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The Invasion of the Cape Colony was a British military expedition launched in 1795 against the Dutch Cape Colony at the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Southern Africa. The Dutch colony at the Cape, established in the seventeenth century, was at the time the only viable South African port for ships making the journey from Europe to the European colonies in the East Indies. It therefore held vital strategic importance, although it was otherwise economically insignificant. In the winter of 1794, during the French Revolutionary Wars, French troops captured the Dutch Republic, which was reformed into the client state of the Batavian Republic. In response, Great Britain launched operations against the Dutch Empire to prevent the use of its facilities by the French Navy. The British expedition was led by Vice-Admiral Sir George Keith Elphinstone and sailed in April 1795, arriving off Simon's Town at the Cape in June. Attempts were made to negotiate a settlement with the colony, but talks achieved nothing and an amphibious landing was made on 7 August. A short battle was fought at Muizenberg, and skirmishing between British and Dutch forces continued until September when a larger military force landed. With Cape Town under threat, Dutch Governor Abraham Josias Sluysken surrendered the colony. Elphinstone subsequently strengthened the garrison against counterattack and stationed a Royal Navy squadron off the port. Almost a year later a Dutch reinforcement convoy reached the colony only to find that it was badly outnumbered, and surrendered without a fight. The British Cape Colony continued until the Peace of Amiens in 1802 when it was returned to the Dutch. In 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars a second British invasion recaptured the colony after the Battle of Blaauwberg and it remained a British colony until the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910. ==Background== The French Revolutionary Wars, which began in 1792 following the French Revolution, expanded in January 1793 when the French Republic declared war on the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Great Britain. This brought the war to the Indian Ocean, where both Britain and the Netherlands maintained lucrative empires. Trade from these empires was menaced by French privateers and warships operating from Île de France, (now Mauritius) but it was protected in the waters off Southern Africa by the presence of the Dutch Cape Colony. Situated at the Cape of Good Hope, the Cape Colony had been established in the seventeenth century to offer a harbour for shipping traveling between Europe and the East Indies, and in the 1790s it remained the only such station between Rio de Janeiro and British India. The Cape Colony was administered from two towns, the larger Cape Town on the wide Table Bay facing west and smaller Simon's Town on False Bay facing south. Neither bay was sheltered from Atlantic storms and both were notoriously dangerous, with winds, currents and rocks posing considerable threats to shipping. Beyond its importance as a resupply port for East Indies shipping the colony had little economic value in the 1790s, and was defended by a garrison of approximately 1,000 Dutch regular soldiers supplemented by Boer militia and local Khoikhoi units, commanded by General Abraham Josias Sluysken and Colonel Robert Jacob Gordon, in total around 3,600 troops. This garrison was centered on the Castle of Good Hope and operated from a series of coastal fortifications which protected Table Bay. False Bay was more weakly defended, covered by only two lightly armed batteries. In the winter of 1794, French soldiers invaded the Netherlands and captured Amsterdam. The French National Convention reconstituted the Dutch Republic into a revolutionary client state named the Batavian Republic, although the Stadtholder William of Orange fled to Britain. There he issued the Kew Letters instructing his colonial governors to cooperate with British occupation forces. At the urging of Sir Francis Baring, the Secretary of State for War Henry Dundas authorised a mission to ensure control of the Cape Colony and eliminate the potential threat it posed to the East Indian trade. The Admiralty sent two battle squadrons to the Cape on 3 April 1795, one under Vice-Admiral Sir George Keith Elphinstone and the other under Commodore John Blankett, carrying a small expeditionary force of 515 soldiers from the 78th Regiment of Foot under Major-General Sir James Henry Craig. A larger force under General Alured Clarke was instructed to follow these squadrons on 15 May with troops and supplies for a longer campaign, with orders to hold at Salvador until requested. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Invasion of the Cape Colony (1795)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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