The Iroquois, who claim sovereignty over what…

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) has been responsible for defending its own colonies east of the Cape Colony, but for the first time has to request assistance from the Dutch navy.

However, ships are lacking at first and what naval forces are available will be unable to prevent Britain from taking effective control of the Dutch colonies (all of the Dutch colonies in the Indian Subcontinent will be taken).

British admiral George Johnstone had been sent in March 1781 to capture the Cape Colony.

France, which had already planned to send a fleet to India, had received intelligence of this, and directed its commander, the Bailli de Suffren, to try to reach the Cape before Johnstone.

After Johnstone and Suffren met in a happenstance battle in the Cape Verde Islands, Suffren had been able to arrive before Johnstone, and the strength of French troops he left had dissuaded Johnstone from attacking the colony.

After capturing a number of VOC ships in the nearby Saldanha Bay, he returns to North Atlantic waters.

Word of the Anglo-Dutch War reaches Sumatra, where both the Dutch and British companies have trading outposts, in August 1781.

The directors of the British company at Fort Marlborough receive instructions from Bombay to destroy all of the Dutch outposts on the west coast of Sumatra.

Quite fortuitously, a fleet of five East Indiamen arrives not long after, and the directors seize the opportunity for action.

Henry Botham, one of the directors, commandeers the fleet, and with one hundred company soldiers sails for Padang.

Jacob van Heemskerk, the VOC chief resident at Padang, surrenders all of the west coast outposts without a fight on August 18, unaware that Botham's force is relatively weak.

The capture nets the British five hundred thousand florins in goods and money.

The fortress at Padang will be destroyed before the town is returned to VOC control in 1784.

Suffren had continued on to Isle de France (now Mauritius), then India, where he arrives to fight a number of actions against Hughes.

Suffren attempts to take the Dutch port of Negapatam (taken by the British in 1781), but is frustrated by admiral Hughes.

The French re-capture Trincomalee in August, and Suffren fights Hughes to a standstill in a naval battle several days later.

The two fleets withdraw and the British repair in Bombay while the French refit in the Dutch colony of Sumatra.

The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War had left the Dutch East India Company (VOC) a financial wreck.

After vain attempts at reorganization by the provincial States of Holland and Zeeland, the company is nationalized by the new Batavian Republic on March 1, 1796.

The VOC charter has been renewed several times, but is allowed to expire on December 31, 1799.

Most of the possessions of the former VOC will subsequently be occupied by Great Britain during the Napoleonic wars, but after the creation of the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands by the Congress of Vienna, some of these will be restored to this successor state of the Dutch Republic by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.

On returning to Singapore from Bencoolen in October 1822, Raffles immediately begins drawing up plans for a new town.

An area along the coast about five kilometers long and one kilometer deep is designated the government and commercial quarter.

A hill is leveled and the dirt used to fill a nearby swamp in order to provide a place for the heart of the commercial area, now Raffles Place.

An orderly and scientifically laid out town is the goal of Raffles, who believes that Singapore would one day be "a place of considerable magnitude and importance."

Under Raffles' plan, commercial buildings are to be constructed of brick with tiled roofs, each with a two-meter covered walkway to provide shelter from sun and rain.

Spaces are set aside for shipyards, markets, churches, theaters, police stations, and a botanical garden.

Raffles has a wooden bungalow built for himself on Government Hill.

The British had begun to expand their commerce with China from their bases in India through both private traders and the British East India Company in the late eighteenth century.

The company has occupied a small settlement at Bencoolen (Bengkulu) on the western coast of Sumatra since 1684; from there it had engaged in the pepper trade after being forced out of Java by the Dutch.

Acutely aware of the need for a base somewhere midway between Calcutta and Guangzhou (Canton), the company had leased the island of Penang, on the western coast of the Malay Peninsula, from the sultan of Kedah in 1791.

From these posts at Penang and Bencoolen, the British had begun in 1795 to occupy the Dutch possessions placed temporarily in their care by the Kew Letters, including Malacca and Java.

After war in Europe ended in 1814, however, the British had agreed to return Java and Malacca to the Dutch.

By 1818 the Dutch have returned to the East Indies and had reimposed their restrictive trade policies.

In that same year, the Dutch negotiated a treaty with the Bugis-controlled sultan of Johore granting them permission to station a garrison at Riau, thereby giving them control over the main passage through the Strait of Malacca.

British trading ships are heavily taxed at Dutch ports and suffer harassment by the Dutch navy.

Meanwhile, the British government and the British East India Company officials in London, who are concerned with maintaining peace with the Dutch, consolidating British control in India, and reducing their commitments in the East Indies, consider relinquishing Bencoolen and perhaps Penang to the Dutch in exchange for Dutch territories in India.

In the absence of any legal code, Raffles promulgates a series of administrative regulations in early 1823.

The first requires that land be conveyed on permanent lease at a public auction and that it must be registered.

The second reiterates Singapore's status as a free port, a popular point with the merchants.

In his farewell remarks, Raffles assures them that "Singapore will long and always remain a free port and no taxes on trade or industry will be established to check its future rise and prosperity."

The third regulation makes English common law the standard, although Muslim law is to be used in matters of religion, marriage, and inheritance involving Malays.