The first map of the area south and west of the Great Fish River, the eastern border of the Cape Colony, which was to be given to English settlers in 1820. A note top left states that the area is blessed with "Fine Pasture Country, uninhabited, and considered as neutral Ground, since the Convention with the Caffre Chiefs, after the last disturbances in the Year 1819".

In 1793, at the onset of the French Revolutionary Wars, the Cape of Good Hope, historically a very strategic trading post between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, was fiercely fought over by the British and the French. The British occupied the Cape in 1795, ending the Dutch East India Company's monopoly in the region, although at the Treaty of Amiens (1802) the Dutch temporarily regained control until 1806. At the start of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, the British once again took control, and the Cape became a vital base for Britain up until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.