Fashoda Incident (1898): Britain and France Clash on the Nile

The Fashoda Incident was a tense standoff in 1898 between Britain and France over control of the upper Nile, centred on the small fort of Fashoda in what is now South Sudan. A French expedition under Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand reached the site in July after an epic two-year journey across Africa, only to be confronted in September by a far larger Anglo-Egyptian force under Herbert Kitchener. The crisis brought the two countries close to war, ended in a French withdrawal, and became a turning point in the Scramble for Africa and in Anglo-French relations.

Background: the race for the Nile

By the 1890s Britain saw the Nile as vital. It had occupied Egypt since 1882, and Egypt’s agriculture and the route to India through the Suez Canal depended on the river. British strategists feared that a rival power holding the upper Nile could, in theory, threaten Egypt’s water supply, an idea popularised in France itself by an 1893 lecture by the engineer Victor Prompt on damming the river.

France had resented British control of Egypt since 1882. French colonial enthusiasts hoped to build an east–west belt of territory from West Africa to the Red Sea, and a flag on the upper Nile would also force Britain to reopen the “Egyptian question”. In March 1895 the British under-secretary Sir Edward Grey warned in the House of Commons that a French expedition into the Nile valley would be seen as an “unfriendly act”.

The Marchand expedition

The French government approved the Congo-Nile mission in 1896. Its leader, Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, was a veteran of campaigns in West Africa. His party included about a dozen French officers and NCOs, among them Captain Albert Baratier and Lieutenant Charles Mangin, and roughly 120 to 150 Senegalese tirailleurs (African colonial infantry).

The expedition set out from the Atlantic coast of the French Congo in 1896 and travelled up the Congo and Ubangi rivers. Its men carried supplies and even a dismantled steamer, the Faidherbe, across the watershed into the Nile basin, then struggled through the swamps of the Bahr el Ghazal. France also hoped to link up with expeditions coming from Ethiopia in the east, but these did not reach the meeting point in time.

On 10 July 1898 Marchand reached Fashoda, a ruined Egyptian fort on the west bank of the White Nile, and raised the French flag. His men repaired the fort and planted gardens. On 25 August they drove off an attack by Mahdist steamers sent upriver from Omdurman.

The standoff with Kitchener

A week after his victory at the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898, Kitchener learned of the French presence. He steamed south with five gunboats and around 1,500 British, Egyptian and Sudanese troops, and arrived at Fashoda on 19 September.

Kitchener deliberately wore the uniform of the Egyptian army, of which he was commander, and presented himself as acting for the Khedive of Egypt, the nominal ruler of Sudan. The meeting was courteous. Kitchener protested against the French occupation, Marchand said he could not withdraw without orders, and the two men agreed to refer the matter to their governments. The Egyptian flag was raised near the French post and Kitchener left a garrison before steaming back north.

The diplomatic crisis

In London, the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury refused to negotiate while the French remained at Fashoda. British public opinion was strongly behind him, and the Royal Navy, far stronger than the French fleet, began preparing for war in October 1898. Newspapers in both countries were bitter.

France was poorly placed to resist. The country was deeply divided by the Dreyfus affair, governments were unstable, and its ally Russia showed no wish to fight Britain over a fort in Sudan. The foreign minister Théophile Delcassé, who believed Germany was France’s real danger, chose not to risk war. On 3 November 1898 the French government decided to withdraw, and the decision was announced the next day.

Marchand left Fashoda on 11 December 1898. Rather than return down the Nile through British-held territory, his column marched east through Ethiopia to Djibouti on the Red Sea, completing a crossing of the continent. The officers were greeted as heroes on their return to France in 1899.

Settlement

On 21 March 1899 Britain and France signed a convention, in the form of a declaration added to their 1898 Niger agreement, that fixed the boundary between their spheres. The watershed between the Nile and Congo basins became the dividing line: France gave up any claim to the Nile valley, and in return its position in the central Sahara and around Lake Chad was recognised.

Sudan itself became the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium in January 1899, in practice a British-run territory. Fashoda, on its southern fringe, was renamed Kodok in 1904.

Consequences in France and Britain

In Britain, Fashoda was celebrated as a triumph that confirmed control of the whole Nile valley, coming straight after the victory at Omdurman. It also encouraged a belief in London that firm diplomacy backed by naval power would make rivals retreat, a belief that later colonial crises tested.

In France the withdrawal was felt as a national humiliation. Nationalist newspapers attacked the government, and the affair became tangled with the bitter quarrels over the Dreyfus case, which already divided the army, politicians and public. Marchand himself was treated as a hero who had been let down by politicians, and some nationalists hoped to use his popularity against the Republic, though he kept out of such schemes.

Delcassé, who remained foreign minister until 1905, drew a different conclusion. He judged that France could not afford quarrels with both Britain and Germany, and that its future lay in settling colonial disputes with London. Over the next few years he worked patiently towards an understanding, trading recognition of British control in Egypt for British support of French ambitions in Morocco.

Key people

• Jean-Baptiste Marchand (1863–1934): French officer who led the Congo-Nile mission; later a general in the First World War.
• Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916): Sirdar of the Egyptian army, fresh from Omdurman; later British Secretary of State for War.
• Théophile Delcassé (1852–1923): French foreign minister from June 1898, architect of the later entente with Britain.
• Lord Salisbury (1830–1903): British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary during the crisis.

Timeline

• 1895, 28 March: Edward Grey warns that a French move into the Nile valley would be an “unfriendly act”.
• 1896: The Marchand expedition sets out from the French Congo.
• 1898, 10 July: Marchand reaches Fashoda and raises the French flag.
• 1898, 2 September: Kitchener defeats the Mahdists at Omdurman.
• 1898, 19 September: Kitchener and Marchand meet at Fashoda.
• 1898, 3–4 November: France decides to withdraw and announces it.
• 1898, 11 December: Marchand’s column leaves Fashoda.
• 1899, 21 March: Anglo-French convention divides the Nile and Congo basins.
• 1904, 8 April: Britain and France sign the Entente Cordiale agreements.

Why it matters

Fashoda was the last serious colonial crisis between Britain and France and the closest they came to war in the modern era. The humiliation was keenly felt in France, but the lesson Delcassé drew was to settle colonial disputes with Britain. Within six years the two old rivals signed the Entente Cordiale, the basis of their alliance in the First World War.