The Fish River is made the eastern boundary of the Cape Colony
July - The Sultan of Mysore, India declares war on the British
October - Joachim van Plettenberg, Governor of the Dutch Cape Colony appoints Adriaan van Jaarsveld, to be field commandant over the eastern front.
16 December - The Netherlands joins the League of Armed Neutrality that is formed by Catherine the Great of Russia to protest British interference with the shipping of neutral nations during the war. Russia, Sweden, Prussia, Denmark, Austria, Portugal and Italy all join
20 December - Britain declares war on the Netherlands
French troops arrive at the Cape Colony to guard it against the English
3 February - British forces captured St Eustatius and neutralises all other Dutch outlets in the West Indies and in Surinam. French and Spanish forces later recaputed the island for the Dutch
July - Field Commandant Adriaan van Jaarsveld declares the Zuurveld, a district between the Sundays and the Great Fish Rivers clear of the Xhosa tribes hereby ending the First Cape Frontier War
5 August - The Dutch fleet clash with the British Fleet at Dogger Bank in the English Channel
19 October - American and French soldiers and French naval forces force the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, ending the American War of Independence
April - François Le Vaillant, French explorer, collector and ornithologist, arrives in the Cape Colony and travels until 1785
30 April - The paper rix dollars is issued for the first time in the Cape
Grosvenor, wreck, Pondoland coast of South Africa
British forces capture the French outpost of Cuddalore in the Indian Ocean, later recaputed back
The Dutch port of Trincomalee on Ceylon is captured by the British, later recaptured back by the French
3 September - The Treaty of Paris is signed ending the war. The Dutch have lost the most from the war
The French troops departed the Cape
14 February - Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff is appointed Governor of the Cape
3 May - The Dutch East India Company ship, the Brederode, carrying a cargo of porcelain, tin and spices, runs aground near Cape Agulhas
The Dutch East India Company established a magistracy at Graaff Reinet
The Dutch East India Company passed a law subjecting the nomadic Khoikhoi in the colony to certain restrictions
The start of the French Revolution
The Dutch East India Company, filled with corruption, becomes financially unstable
Merino sheep is imported from the Netherlands
Xhosa tribes started moving back into the Zuurveld, a district between the Sundays and the Great Fish Rivers and clashing with the frontiersmen which is known as the start of the Second Cape Frontier War.
10 January 1780 - Martin Heinrich Carl Lichtenstein, physician, explorer and zoologist, is born in Hamburg, Germany
12 November 1780 - Piet Retief, Voortrekker leader is born at Wagenmakersvallei, Cape Colony
10 August 1783 - Louis Tregardt, Voortrekker leader, is born at Kango, in the Swellendam District
4 June 1787 - Leopold Marquard, educationist and missionary to Southern Africa, is born in Westphalia, Germany
23 July 1781 - Martin Melck, the founder of the Lutheran church in Strand Street, Cape Town
1780s in South Africa Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
