French and native raiding parties under the…

The Qing dynasty is confronted in the eighteenth century with newly developing concepts of the international system and state to state relations.

The European empires are gradual expanding across the world, as European states develop economies built on maritime trade.
 
European trading posts have expanded into territorial control in nearby India and on the islands that are now Indonesia.

The Qing response, successful for a time, is in 1756 to establish the Canton System, which restricts maritime trade to this city and gives monopoly trading rights to private Chinese merchants.

The British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company had long before been granted similar monopoly rights by their governments.

Mir Jafar, the Nawab of Bengal, opens secret negotiations with representatives of the Dutch East India Company to bring troops into Dutch holdings in the area with the goal of using them against the British following the British capture and destruction of the French outpost at Chandernagore in 1757.

Britain and the Dutch Republic are at peace, although tensions are high due to the Seven Years' War, and British East India Company administrator Robert Clive is preoccupied with fighting the French.

The Dutch directors of the outpost at Chinsura, not far from Chandernagore, seeing an opportunity to expand their influence, agree to send additional troops to Chinsurah.

A fleet of seven ships, containing more than fifteen hundred European and Malay troops, comes from Batavia and arrives at the mouth of the Hooghly River in October 1759, while the Nawab is meeting with Clive in Calcutta.

The Nawab had been forced to ask the British for assistance against threats on his northern border in the interim, and tells Clive that he will return to Hooghly, summon the Dutch directors, and demand the departure of their ships.

After meeting with the Dutch, he informs Clive that he has granted the Dutch some privileges, and that they will leave as soon as circumstances permit.

This news, combined with reports that the Dutch are recruiting in and around Chinsura, lead Clive to treat the situation as a real military threat.

Of four ships he has available, Clive sends one out in an attempt to request assistance from Admiral Cornish, who is patrolling the coast.

The Dutch capture this ship when they seize several smaller British vessels on the Hooghly River.

Clive calls out the militia and puts out calls for volunteers, increases the fortifications on the river batteries, and sends Colonel Francis Forde with five hundred men toward Chandernagore with an eye toward capturing the Dutch outpost at Barnagore and intercepting the Dutch should they try to take Chandernagore.

The Dutch had landed their troops on the northern shore of the Hooghly on November 21, just beyond the range of the English river batteries, and marched for Chinsurah.
 
The three remaining British ships have followed the Dutch ships up the river at some distance.

When the Dutch have finished landing the troops, the Dutch ships begin moving down the river.

On November 23, Commodore Charles Wilson, commander of the British flotilla, indicates that he wants to pass the Dutch, who threatens to fire on the British if they do.

The next day, after the rejection of an ultimatum from Clive demanding restitution for the earlier Dutch seizures, the two fleets engage in a two-hour battle.

The Duke of Dorset forces the Dutch flagship Vlissingen to strike her colors, while Hardwicke and Calcutta chase off two ships and ground a third before the remaining ships also strike their colors.(Other British ships arriving at the mouth of the river eventually capture the two remaining fleeing Dutch ships.)

Forde and his men, having successfully taken control of Barnagore, had encamped near Chandernagore on the night of November 23.

The Dutch, hoping to trap Forde between the arriving troops and the Chinsurah garrison, had sent their arriving troops out to camp in the ruins of Chandernagore that night.

The following morning the two forces engage.

Forde's men rout the Dutch, forcing them back to Chinsura, and captured the Dutch field artillery.

Here additional troops sent from Calcutta join Forde, raising the size of his force to about twelve hundred men.

The Nawab also sends one hundred cavalry to the British camp, ostensibly to assist the British; these are likely placed to observe the battle and side with the victors.

With reports from prisoners that the Dutch reinforcements will be arriving the next day, Forde rushes a message to Clive in Calcutta requesting advice, as attacking the Dutch force could be viewed as an act of war.

Clive responds by writing on the back of Forde's message, "Dear Forde—Fight them immediately", and sending it back.

 

Forde chooses as his location the plain of Biderra, between Chinsurah and Chandernagore.

His troops occupy the village of Biderra on the right and a mango grove to the left; a wide ditch secures the center.

At about ten on the morning of November 25, the Dutch force arrives.

As soon as they come within range, Forde orders his field artillery to fire.

The Dutch continue to advance in spite of the British fire until they reach the ditch, something they had not apparently been aware of.

When the front of the Dutch lines stop, the rear continues to press forward, throwing the Dutch forces into confusion.

As their position is now within range of British musket fire, they suffer significant casualties before managing to turn retreat.

At this point Forde sends out his cavalry, inviting the nawab's men to join the charge.

However, the nawab's men hold back and do not join the British until the second charge, when it seems clear they will be victorious.

The British victory was so complete that, of the Dutch troops sent, only sixteen Europeans successfully reached Chinsurah.

In the wake of their victory, the British overthrow Mir Jafar and replace him with his son-in-law Mir Kasim Ali Khan.

Along with the Battle of Plassey, the battle helps establish British supremacy in Bengal.

The battle does not affect Dutch neutrality and they remain one of the few European states not involved in the war.

The Bougainville expedition receives news at Batavia of Wallis and Carteret, who had preceded Bougainville in discovering Tahiti.

Mount Papandayan, a complex stratovolcano located in Garut Regency, to the southeast of the city of Bandung in West Java, Indonesia, is about fifteen kilometers to the southwest of the town of Garut.

At the summit, there are four large craters that contain active fumarole fields.

An eruption in 1772 causes the northeast flank to collapse producing a catastrophic debris avalanche that destroys forty villages and kills nearly three thousand people.

The eruption truncates the volcano into a broad shape with two peaks and a flat area one point one kilometers wide with Alun-Alun crater in the middle, making the mountain appear as a twin volcano; one of the peaks is called Papandayan and the other Mount Puntang.

War between southward-migrating Xhosa and eastward-migrating Afrikaners erupts in December 1779 when the two groups meet in an armed clash near the Great Fish River, a result of allegations of cattle theft by Xhosa people.

The Afrikaners, mainly farmers, are known by the Dutch term, Boers, which will eventually come to mean any rural Afrikaner.

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.

The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783-1784) makes Negapatnam, in India, a British colony.

Ceylon is restored to Dutch control.

The British gain the right of free trade with part of the Dutch East Indies, which had been a major war aim for British merchants.

The French also return the other Dutch colonies they had recaptured from the British, including the ones in the West Indies (like St. Eustatius, which had been taken by Admiral Rodney in February 1781, but had been retaken by the French Admiral De Grasse on November 27, 1781)