On Nov. 3, 1898, after a tense stand-off with the British, the French government backed down during the Fashoda crisis in eastern Africa. The crisis could have easily sparked a war between Britain and France, though it instead ultimately led to closer ties between the countries.
By the late 19th century, European powers were scrambling for control of African colonies. Britain had dominated Egypt since 1882, controlling the nation through a puppet government. It also controlled vast swathes of central Africa as well as South Africa. The French held considerable territories in North Africa and in West Africa north of the Congo River. The Germans, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Belgians and others held African colonies as well.
A British army under Gen. Charles “Chinese” Gordon had been decimated after a nine-month siege of Khartoum in Sudan by Mahdist Islamic fundamentalists. Though the Egyptians, and by extension the British, continued to claim the Sudan and the Upper Nile, the Mahdist army largely ruled the region into the next decade. In 1898, the British finally organized a force to punish the Islamic army and to reassert control over the Upper Nile. Led by Sir Horatio Kitchener, the British decisively beat the Mahdists on Sept. 2, 1898, at Omdurman.
Making for Khartoum, Kitchener examined his sealed orders, to be opened only after the successful defeat of the Mahdists. His new orders directed him to make immediately for the old Egyptian fort of Fashoda along the Upper Nile, once Khartoum was secured. The French, it seemed, were making a play for dominance in Sudan.
While many Englishmen such as Cecil Rhodes dreamed of British domination of Africa “from Cairo to the Cape,” complete with a continent-long railway line, the French too dreamed of creating a French colonial empire from West Africa to east. The two dreams intersected at Fashoda.
By 1894, the French came to believe that the British would not reassert their control over Sudan, and since no European power actively held the region for nearly a decade, France could send an expedition to claim it. Gabriel Hanotaux, the French foreign minster, authorized a military expedition with this aim in mind. Two years later, French marine Capt. Jean-Baptiste Marchand left the French colonial city of Brazzaville in the French Congo. His trek, which included a dozen French officers and 150 African soldiers, took over two years before it finally reached Fashoda in July 1898. The French force's primary enemies along the way had been the elements, including disease, animals and geography, not natives or other European armies.
Kitchener, who had now been made a lord for his victory at Omdurman, sailed up the Nile toward Fashoda with a force of more than 2,500 British and Egyptian soldiers, as well as five gunboats, cannons and Maxim machine guns. When he arrived before the fort at Fashoda, he noted the French tricolor waving above the fort, and saw a French honor guard placed in front to greet him. Kitchner and Marchand soon met face to face, both men admirers of the other.
In the book, “Dreadnaught: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War,” historian Robert K. Massie noted the exchange between the two men:
Kitchener: “I have come to resume possession of the (Egyptian) dominions.”
Merchand: “Mon Général, I, Marchand, am here by order of the French Government. I thank you for your offer of conveyance to Europe, but I must wait here for instructions.”
Kitchener: "Captain, I will place my boats at your disposal to return to Europe by the Nile.”
Merchand: “Mon Général, I thank you, but I am awaiting orders from my Government.”
Kitchener: “I must hoist the Egyptian flag here.”
Merchand: “Why, I myself will help you to hoist it — over the village.”
Kitchener: “Over the fort.”
Merchand: “No, that I shall resist.”
Kitchener: “Do you know, Captain, that this affair may set England and France at war?”
Merchand merely bowed without replying. The two men were on a collision course, set by their governments — the irreversible force and the immovable object. The confrontation soon presented a major crisis back in Europe, with London and Paris both intent on claiming the fort at Fashoda. For both nations, this confrontation went far beyond the question of a mere fort. Prestige and national honor were at stake. The British prime minister, Lord Salisbury, declared that the Sudan, and therefore Fashoda, belonged to Egypt, and the British government would not back down from that position. In this, he had the full support of the British government and people.
In France, the new foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé, declared that Merchand's daring in crossing the continent gave France the right to Fashoda, to say nothing of the fact that the fort had been abandoned by the British and was now occupied by French troops. The French, however, were aware of the reality. While the French held Fashoda with a relatively small expeditionary force, the British commanded a much larger army and could easily take the fort by force. “We have only arguments down there, and they have soldiers,” remarked Delcassé. And a war with Britain would soon spread beyond the Sudan.
Massie wrote: “The British navy could destroy France's navy, cut all sea communications, and one by one pluck off France's colonies around the globe.”
Other factors cooled France's ambitions as well. The Dreyfus Affair, the court case surrounding a suspected traitor in the French Army, was already threatening to tear the fabric of French society apart. France's strongest ally in Europe, Russia, announced that their alliance applied only to European matters, and did not extend to Africa, in which Russia had little interest. Finally, just across France's eastern border, lay its most hated enemy, the Germans. If France was distracted by a war with Britain, would Germany take advantage and launch its own attack? Could France even survive a war against Britain and Germany?
In Britain, Queen Victoria insisted on peace. Throughout the crisis, she sent telegrams from her castle at Balmoral to the prime minister imploring him to find a way out of the crisis short of war, and letting him know she would not support the opening of hostilities against France over Fashoda.
Delcassé was looking for a way out of war himself, but it was important that the French not look to be backing down. France could not afford to look as though it feared a war, and so Delcassé issued a statement noting that his predecessor, not himself, had authorized Marchand's expedition in the first place, and that the French occupation of Fashoda served no useful purpose for the republic.
The decision to back down was made on Nov. 3 and communicated to the British the next day. While at a dinner honoring Lord Kitchener, now returned from Africa, Lord Salisbury made the announcement. The formal withdrawal of French troops from Fashoda finally occurred a little over one month later. Britain and France, which had fought countless wars against each other since the middle ages, including the blood-soaked wars of the Napoleonic era less than a century earlier, did not choose bloodshed.
Indeed, what happened at Fashoda revealed to the French the vulnerability of their situation and their need for strong allies. It also drove the point home that the real enemy was the nation that could conquer Paris and destroy French national life, not merely a nation that could interfere with French colonial ambitions.
In the book “The Origins of World War I: 1871-1914,” historian Joachim Remak wrote: “Delcassé … asked himself a quite basic question. Could France, which was in no position to fight Britain and Germany, afford to hate both countries? His answer was that France could not. … Henceforth, Delcassé would try his best to reach an accommodation with one of the two, and the power he sought to reconcile was Great Britain.”
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com