[4] The Portuguese lack of interest in the island of Bolama and the Bijagós Archipelago opened opportunities for, on 10 May 1792, two British naval officers, Lieutenants Philip Beaver and Henry Dalrymple, to apply for a concession in London to found a model colony on Bolama Island (scarcely inhabited and apparently available for European settlement).

[8][9] After Darlymple gave up, Philip Beaver, on 27 July 1792, bought the ownership rights to Bolama's land, acquiring them from the king of Canhabaque.

[4] In 1816 Joseph Scott carried out an expedition to try to re-establish the village of Bolama, but he encountered resistance from the Bijagós peoples, who repopulated the island.

On 9 May 1830 Joaquim António de Mattos began the Portuguese military occupation of Bolama, the island's first permanent colony.

Some of these attacks managed to briefly occupy the island, sometimes freeing slaves, sometimes imprisoning Portuguese soldiers, in an unprecedented conflict in relations between Portugal and Great Britain, surpassed in diplomatic terms (but not in military escalation) later only by the dispute known as the Rose-Coloured Map.

On 3 December 1860 Stephen Hill, governor of Sierra Leone, visits Bolama and establishes a fixed military contingent.

On 21 April 1870 the dispute was resolved by an arbitration award of the President of the United States, Ulysses Grant, which gave Portugal victory, determining that the British withdraw from the region.