The Fashoda Incident of 1898 occurred in Sudan and caused a diplomatic crisis between the British and French empires. A small French force claimed authority over the town of Fashoda (modern Kodok) and the Upper Nile Valley. A much larger British force, fresh from victory over the Mahdist state at the Battle of Omdurman, requested that the French withdraw, which they eventually did. This messy incident in the Scramble for Africa nearly started a war between the two colonial powers, which were increasingly paranoid about each other's intentions. The Fashoda Incident soured Anglo-French relations, and they would not be restored until both states realised Imperial Germany was the real threat to them in Europe and further afield.
Control of the Nile
The Mahdist War (1881-99) saw the establishment of the Mahdist state in Sudan, initially headed by the inspirational Islamic leader Muhammad Ahmad (1844-1885), the self-proclaimed Mahdi. Britain, which governed Egypt as a protectorate in all but name (it was not officially made one until 1912), was keen to also control neighbouring Sudan since the Nile River, so vital to Egypt, runs right through it. The ambition was to continue the relationship between the two states when, before the British takeover, Egypt had been part of the delapidated Ottoman Empire, and Sudan had been nominally governed by Egypt. The Mahdi had other plans, and he personally led the successful siege of Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, in 1885, a lengthy operation in which the British national hero General Charles Gordon (1833-1885) was killed.
After the fall of Khartoum, the British government was urged by the British public to gain swift revenge; however, it was just then occupied with other parts of the British Empire, notably Afghanistan. Consequently, the Mahdists were left largely to themselves through the 1880s and 1890s. Britain did, in the meantime, guarantee Sudan's borders via treaties with Italy in 1891 and the Congo Free State (future Belgian Congo) in 1894. Uganda, to the south of Sudan, was declared a British protectorate in 1894. In 1896, Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) from its colony, Italian Eritrea. The European powers, closing in on Sudan from all sides, seemed to be in direct competition for this particular part of Africa. There had been similar flashpoints in other parts of the continent, notably in Nigeria in West Africa, where France and Britain had competing claims.
Britain certainly considered Sudan as within its particular sphere of influence. The diplomatic pieces with fellow imperial powers seemed to be gradually falling into place, but from 1896, more concrete action was required to definitively secure Sudan as a British protectorate. A large and well-equipped army was to be sent from Egypt to defeat the Mahdists. This Anglo-Egyptian-Sudanese army was led by General Herbert Kitchener (1850-1916), and he methodically advanced south, building a railway line as he went.
After Kitchener had defeated the Mahdist army at the Battle of Omdurman in Sudan on 2 September 1898, his new orders were to push on up the White Nile River to confront a small French force led by Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, which had audaciously crossed the border from the French Congo. Marchand, under instructions from the French Ministry of Colonies, had planted his national flag at the small town of Fashoda in southern Sudan. The French had almost the whole of West Africa as their sphere of imperialist activity, and to covet this part of Africa was considered too much for the British to bear.
Britain versus France
The Berlin Conference 1884-5 had set out that European claims to new territory in Africa must be based on long-standing relations, such as trade or cultural activities like missionary work. Further, "the claims of a European government to a particular region would only be recognized if the European power in question was already effectively in control of that region" (Reid, 153). The British government felt it had such a claim to Sudan, and France did not. France, however, saw no reason not to attempt some sort of permanent presence in southern Sudan, a move which might one day permit a permanent land connection between French West Africa and French Somaliland on the eastern coast. Some French engineers even dreamed of a railway from Dakar to Djibouti. Britain's takeover of Egypt and ousting of French influence there remained a difficult fact to accept. France had always thought of Egypt as being their particular playground, going back to the misadventures of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). Why shouldn't Sudan, then ruled by an indigenous rebel and abandoned by the Anglo-Egyptian government in Cairo, not be taken by way of compensation? Perhaps by taking control of Sudan, Egypt might once again return to France's sphere of influence. Such were the hopes of the more radical elements of the French government, foreign office, and army.
The British certainly did not want to isolate British Somaliland and British East Africa from their other territories in the region, namely, Sudan. Neither did the British want the French to start building dams on the Upper Nile and so have the welfare of Egypt taken out of their hands. The British had long had engineering ambitions of their own. This was to build a railway that connected Cairo to the British Cape Colony in the southern tip of Africa. Kitchener's methodical invasion of Sudan had begun to make the British trans-African railway plan look like a distinct possibility. Kitchener had even ensured his railway used the same gauge as that used in Southern Africa.
Certainly, the French government took the British railway plan seriously. French Foreign Minister Gabriel Hanotaux, already convinced Britain was behind some dastardly international conspiracy to remove France from everywhere in Africa, described the railway project as "a conception, a gigantic formula, worthy of the compatriots of Shakespeare" (James, 94). French ministers, without any evidence, also convinced themselves that Britain was up to all kinds of tricks and subterfuge, such as funding anti-government forces in France, providing rebel tribes in French African territories with guns, and even sending warriors from the Zulu Kingdom to fight French forces around the Niger River. As stereotypes became accentuated, the British dismissed these claims as typical French hysteria.
Clearly, in an imperialist zero-sum game where the players wanted to connect their colonies either east to west or north to south, there would inevitably be a point where the two lines crossed. That point turned out to be the entirely unremarkable outpost of Fashoda.
Preoccupied with their increasingly paranoid rivalry, neither the British nor the French governments were very much concerned with the fate of the Africans living in the states they dreamed of controlling. Indeed, Sudan had very little to offer any colonial power other than prestige, but prestige feeds vanity, and it was this vice, both in Britain and France, that underpinned the game of diplomatic charades played out in the final months of 1898. France had made such a bold opening move in Sudan that only a total rebuttal could be tolerated by the British. It was now irrelevant that the southern Sudan was, as Lord Cromer, British Consul-General in Egypt, described it, "...large tracts of useless territory which it would be difficult and costly to administer properly" (Fage, 151). As the historian G. N. Sanderson points out, "In the great Upper Nile contest, economic motives were of negligible importance for Britain and France alike" (Fage, 153). The Fashoda Incident had become a test of which state, Britain or France, had real and effective power in this part of Africa. There could only be one method to secure Sudan, the surest in international law: military might and occupation.
An Outpost on the Nile
Far away from the conference rooms of Europe, the men on the ground at Fashoda had more practical and immediate decisions to make. Fashoda, located on the banks of the White Nile and 400 miles (640 km) from Omdurman, had once been an Egyptian outpost. Here, a small fort had been built and garrisoned by Egyptian troops in order to suppress the slave trade. These troops had since left Fashoda, which was now nothing more than a ruined fort surrounded by maize fields and swamps. The most useful thing there for any occupier was a single grove of date palms.
Captain Marchand had reached Fashoda on 10 July 1898. His force was not a large one, consisting of only eleven French officers and around 150 Senegalese Askari troops. These men had made an impressive 3,500-mile (5,600-km) trek across Central Africa, starting from Lake Chad back in 1896. It had not all been footwork for Marchand since he had sometimes used a bicycle with solid rubber tyres (this venerable old vehicle can today be seen at the St Cyr Military Academy in Brittany). Even more impressive was the cutting up (literally) and reassembly of the Faidherbe steamboat (which was 80 feet/24 metres long) so that its parts could be dragged across the watershed between the Congo and Nile rivers, a distance of 250 miles (400 km). This feat was only made possible by using 200 slave porters given by a local sultan. Hostile tribes, hippos, swamps, and mosquitoes were just some of the challenges to Marchand's men reaching their goal. On arrival at Fashoda, they toasted their achievement in typical Gallic fashion: a glass of well-travelled and slightly warm champagne.
Marchand was not just claiming little Fashoda for his country but the entire Upper Nile region. He had raised the tricolour flag above the fort, although ominously, the rope had snapped at the first attempt. Marchand now awaited the inevitable British reaction, and perhaps some help from the east. Besides Kitchener's and Marchand's columns, there were several more secretive expeditions heading to Fashoda. Two French expeditions were planned from French Somaliland through France's ally, Ethiopia, which would then link up with Marchand. These never materialised as both expeditions evaporated on the march, most of the men dying of one disease or another. The British also planned a support expedition of their own, this one coming from British Uganda in the south. This expedition failed near the start when the Ugandan soldiers mutinied, and, in any case, crossing the lion-infested plains of northern Uganda would have been no easy task. Then there was King Leopold II of Belgium's planned expedition from the Congo Free State, intended to stake its own claim in southern Sudan. This, too, turned into a disaster as the African soldiers, once deep within the Ituri forest, mutinied and killed their Belgian officers. It seemed everyone wanted a piece of Sudan, but, in the end, the clash would be between the only two commanders to reach Fashoda: Marchand and Kitchener.
Marchand was not entirely passive while he waited for developments, since he had his men repair as best they could the decaying fort and had them dig defensive trenches. Marchand met with local tribal chiefs to agree to future treaties with France, negotiations lubricated with gifts of cloth, beads, and obsolete rifles. In fact, it was the Sudanese and not the British who reacted first to Marchand's presence. Two Mahdist steamers sailed up to Fashoda to attack the French. The steamers, captured from General Gordon after the siege of Khartoum, towed a number of rowing boats packed to the gunwales with perhaps 1,500 Mahdist warriors. The French had better rifles and were camouflaged behind banks of reeds, and so they were able to drive off the exposed boats. The episode put paid to any lingering hope Marchand might have had that the Mahdists would support him against the British.
Kitchener & Marchand Meet
Kitchener left Khartoum on 9 September and sailed up the Nile, arriving in Fashoda a couple of weeks later. With him were two battalions of soldiers, artillery units, and a flotilla of five gunboats. Kitchener had around 1,500 men, ten times the force under Marchand's command. The British general, although under orders not to use direct force, insisted that the French remove their flag and themselves from Sudan. Marchand was not overawed by the size of the Anglo-Egyptian army, and he refused to pull down his nation's flag or leave the fort until he had orders to do so from Paris. A waiting game followed as diplomats in Europe sent flurries of communications to their respective governments. Meanwhile, Kitchener hoisted the Egyptian flag atop a tree near the fort and both he and Marchand amiably swapped war stories over whiskies and soda. The inflated high spirits of the Frenchmen at this surprising good sense and conviviality were soon punctured when Kitchener gave them the latest newspapers from Europe, all of which were covered with disturbing news of the Dreyfus affair (see below) and the imminent fall of the French government.
Anglo-French relations were rather more frosty back in Europe. The British government, which pointed out that a new British-led administration was now in place in Sudan, formally insisted that either the French leave Fashoda or face a war. In fairness, the British Foreign Office had warned France back in 1895 that any French military presence in this area would be considered "an unfriendly act" (James, 96). The French government indicated its intentions by mobilising its naval fleet at Toulon on the Mediterranean coast. In response, the British bulked up their Mediterranean fleet. As politicians blustered and the press became increasingly jingoistic, war seemed much more likely than a peaceful solution to the crisis.
Crucially, Russia, France's ally by treaty, informed the French government that it would not offer military support if France and Britain went to war over a dispute in Africa (their treaty was designed for mutual protection against German aggression in Europe). Another factor in France's change of position was the explosion of the Dreyfus affair. The arrest and conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for spying grabbed all the headlines and led to riots in Paris. Dreyfus had been sent to the notorious Devil's Island prison in French Guiana, but it turned out he was framed, and a cover-up of the real spy had been carried out by the army. That Dreyfus was Jewish resulted in accusations of anti-Semitism at the highest level. It was feared that a military coup d'etat might occur any day.
The French Withdraw
The reality in Sudan was that Marchand was entirely isolated, and the British could easily use the Royal Navy, still by far the largest navy in the world, to cause havoc with French colonial ports in other parts of Africa, a campaign which the dilapidated French navy would not be able to respond to. The French public seemed divided 50:50 over whether to stay or leave Fashoda. The French government realised its position was untenable, and Marchand was ordered to withdraw from Fashoda in November. Kitchener, showing a rare sense of tact, hoisted not the British but the Egyptian flag above the fortress of Fashoda. Marchand, no doubt giving a Gallic shrug, then continued where he had left off and made his way to the east coast of Africa, completing his personal transcontinental crossing.
Britain and France agreed on the borders of southern Sudan in a treaty signed in March 1899. This treaty also mutually recognised France's claim to West Africa and Britain's to East Africa and the Upper Nile. As French President Félix Faure noted, "We have behaved like madmen in Africa…led astray by irresponsible people called colonists" (James, 98).
At Khartoum, a modern administrative government was established, and Sudan was ruled as a British protectorate in all but name. Anglo-French relations were soured for some years to come because of the Fashoda Incident. The French press certainly enjoyed itself over the Anglo-Boer Wars, with British losses magnified and front pages awash with lurid accusations of atrocities and general Barbarie Angaise, not all of which were fiction. Only the mutual threat of an ever more aggressive Imperial Germany led to Britain and France settling their differences and signing the Entente Cordiale in 1904.
