Fashoda Incident

– cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne, published in Punch'' after Rhodes announced plans for a telegraph line from Cape Town to Cairo in 1892. During the late 19th century, Africa was rapidly being claimed and colonised by European colonial powers. After the 1885 Berlin Conference regarding West Africa, Europe's great powers went after any remaining lands in Africa that were not already under another European nation's influence. This period in African history is usually termed the Scramble for Africa by modern historiography. The principal powers involved in this scramble were Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The French thrust into the African interior was mainly from the continent's Atlantic coast (modern-day Senegal) eastward, through the Sahel along the southern border of the Sahara, a territory covering modern-day Senegal, Mali, Niger, and Chad. Their ultimate goal was to have an uninterrupted link between the Niger River and the Nile, hence controlling all trade to and from the Sahel region, by virtue of their existing control over the caravan routes through the Sahara. France also had an outpost near the mouth of the Red Sea in French Somaliland (now Djibouti), which could serve as an eastern anchor to an east–west belt of French territory across the continent at its widest point. The British, on the other hand, wanted to link their possessions in Southern Africa (South Africa, Bechuanaland and Rhodesia), with their territories in East Africa (modern-day Kenya), and these two areas with the Nile basin. Sudan, which then included modern-day South Sudan and Uganda, was the key to the fulfilment of these ambitions, especially since Egypt was already under British control. This 'red line' (i.e., a proposed railway or road, see Cape to Cairo Railway) through Africa was made famous by the British diamond magnate and politician Cecil Rhodes, who wanted Africa "painted Red" (meaning under British control, since territories held by Britain were often coloured red on maps). If one draws a line from Cape Town to Cairo (Rhodes's dream) and another line from Dakar to French Somaliland by the Red Sea in the Horn (the French ambition), these two lines intersect in eastern South Sudan near the town of Fashoda (present-day Kodok), explaining its strategic importance. The French east–west axis and the British north–south axis could not co-exist; the nation that could occupy and hold the crossing of the two axes would be the only one able to proceed with its plan. Fashoda was founded by the Egyptian army in 1855 on high ground in a large boggy area and was situated at one of the few places where a boat on the Nile could unload. The area was inhabited by the Shilluk people, and by the mid-1870s, Fashoda was a market town. Wilhelm Junker, one of the first Europeans to arrive in the region described the town in 1876 as "a considerable trading place ... the last outpost of civilization, where travellers plunging into or returning from the wilds of equatorial Africa could procure a few indispensable European wares from the local Greek traders." By the time the French arrived in 1898, the Egyptian fort was deserted and in ruins. Other European nations were also interested in controlling the upper Nile valley. The Italians who had an outpost at Massawa on the Red Sea, made an attempt but their defeat at the Battle of Adwa in March 1896 ended it. In September 1896, King Leopold II, the Sovereign of the Congo Free State, sent a column of 5,000 Congolese troops, with artillery, towards the White Nile from Stanleyville on the Upper Congo River. After five months they reached Lake Albert, about from Fashoda. The soldiers were upset at their treatment and mutinied on 18 March 1897. Many of the Belgian officers were killed and the rest fled. ==Crisis==

Marchand expedition France made its move by sending Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, a veteran of the conquest of French Sudan, back to West Africa. He embarked a force composed mostly of West African colonial troops from Senegal on a ship for central Africa. Marchand's force set out from Brazzaville in a borrowed Belgian steamer with orders to secure the area around Fashoda and make it a French protectorate. They steamed up the Ubangi River to its head of navigation and then marched overland (carrying 100 tons of supplies, including a collapsible steel steamboat with a one-ton boiler News of the meeting was relayed to Paris and London, where it inflamed the pride of both nations. Widespread popular outrage followed, each side accusing the other of naked expansionism and aggression. The crisis continued throughout September and October 1898. The Royal Navy drafted war orders and mobilized its reserves. French withdrawal In naval terms, the situation was heavily in Britain's favour, a fact that French deputies acknowledged in the aftermath of the crisis. Several historians have given credit to Marchand for remaining calm. The military facts were undoubtedly important to Théophile Delcassé, the newly appointed French foreign minister. "They have soldiers. We only have arguments," he said resignedly. In addition, he saw no advantage in a war with the British, especially since he was keen to gain their friendship in case of any future conflict with Germany. He therefore pressed hard for a peaceful resolution of the crisis even though it had led to a wave of nationalism and anti-British sentiment in France. In an editorial published in ''L'Intransigeant'' on 13 October, Victor Henri Rochefort wrote "Germany keeps slapping us in the face. Let's not offer our cheek to England." As P. M. H. Bell writes, The French government quietly ordered its soldiers to withdraw on 3 November and the crisis ended peacefully. Marchand withdrew his small force by way of Abyssinia and Djibouti, rather than cross Egyptian territory by taking the relatively quick journey by steamer down the Nile. No Fight - JM Staniforth.png|Cartoon by Joseph Morewood Staniforth on the incident. A French poodle says to a British bulldog: "Well, if I can't have the bone I'll be satisfied if you give me one of the scraps." Illustration anglophobe dans La France illustrée (1898).png|A painting by Aurélie Léontine Malbet depicting mice eating food. It was published in the 19 November 1898 issue of La France illustrée with an added caption that read "The English in Siam, Egypt, the Sudan and other places". ==Aftermath==

Fashoda was a major diplomatic defeat and a national humiliation for France. According to French nationalists, the capitulation was clear evidence that the French Army had been severely weakened by the Dreyfusards. It also inspired intense anti-British sentiment, and some French people claimed that Britain might be preparing to attack France. The reopening of the Dreyfus affair in January the following year had done much to distract French public opinion from events in Sudan and people increasingly questioned the wisdom of a war over such a remote part of Africa. Nevertheless, it put an end to French ambitions of an equatorial empire stretching from the West coast to the East. Britain, meanwhile, relished in the success, and although wary of French retaliation her coercive policy had resolved the crisis. The French also realized that in the long run they needed the friendship of Britain in case of a war between France and Germany. Historians note that Germany could have exploited the Fashoda Crisis to pivot France away from Britain or provoke Anglo-French conflict to divert France's attention and weaken both rivals in which Germany might gain leverage by diplomatic support to France to secure alignment against Britain, potentially isolating Britain in Africa, Instead, Germany remained passive. Kaiser Wilhelm's intermittent signalling of interest was insufficient; the German government made no concrete offers to France. A passive observation ensured Germany lost a rare strategic opening in late-19th-century colonial and blunder European diplomacy. In March 1899, the Anglo-French Convention of 1898 was signed. One of its provisions was an agreement that the watersheds of the Nile and the Congo rivers should mark the frontier between their spheres of influence. The Fashoda Incident was the last serious colonial dispute between Britain and France, and its classic diplomatic solution is considered by most historians to be the precursor of the Entente Cordiale of 1904. The same year, Fashoda was officially renamed Kodok. It is located in modern-day South Sudan. Legacy A French colonial officer George de Villebois-Mareuil saw the Second Boer War as a chance to avenge the French humiliation at Fashoda—he was however killed at the Battle of Boshof. The two main individuals involved in the incident are commemorated in the , a road bridge over the Saône, completed in 1959 in the French city of Lyon. The incident gave rise to the 'Fashoda syndrome' in French foreign policy — a tendency to assert French influence in areas which might be becoming susceptible to British influence. As such it was used as a comparison to other later crises or conflicts such as the Levant Crisis of 1945, the Nigerian Civil War in Biafra in the 1970s and the Rwandan Civil War in 1994. == See also ==

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