Faschoda crisis
The Faschoda crisis took place between Great Britain and France in 1898 . They represented the culmination of imperialist rivalry between the two powers during the scramble for Africa . For the III. French Republic was the Fashoda -Crisis next to the Panama scandal and the Dreyfus affair , the third major crisis within a decade.
Interests
Great Britain had set itself the goal of establishing a north-south belt of colonies in Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo ( Cape-Cairo Plan ). France, on the other hand, wanted an east-west belt from Dakar to Djibouti . The claims of the two states finally collided in the small Sudanese town of Faschoda (since 1905 Kodok) on the White Nile . The Egyptians had built a small fort there in 1820, at the time of Muhammad Ali Pasha , but it had been abandoned and dilapidated for years.
The way to Faschoda
Egypt had gradually conquered Sudan in the years since 1819, but lost actual control over the country from 1885 onwards as a result of the Mahdi uprising . In the southern province of Equatoria , the local governor Eduard Schnitzer , better known as Emin Pascha , was able to assert himself against the Mahdists until 1888 , when Henry Morton Stanley persuaded him to retreat to East Africa. In the years that followed, southern Sudan became the target of conflicting interests of the European colonial powers. Among other things, the Belgian King Leopold II strove to expand the Congo Free State , which was in fact privately owned, to the Nile. Among other things, he commissioned the experienced Baron Dhanis with an expedition to South Sudan - officially to secure the Lado enclave - but this failed in 1897 due to a revolt by his African auxiliaries.
Another European power with ambitions in East Africa was the Kingdom of Italy . After the victory of the Ethiopians under Emperor Menelik II over the Italians in the Battle of Adua in March 1896, the British government under Lord Salisbury , encouraged by the German Emperor Wilhelm II , decided to come to the aid of the besieged Italians. The British General Herbert Kitchener , Sirdar (Commander-in-Chief) of the Egyptian Army , was given the task of equipping an expeditionary army , marching up the Nile and ending the Mahdi uprising. As Sirdar, Kitchener formally represented the Egyptian Khedives , not the British government in London. Despite his position as an "Egyptian" general, Kitchener was de facto bound by the orders of the British government and its consul general Sir Evelyn Baring .
France had failed to take part in the crackdown on the Egyptian Urabi movement in 1882 and increasingly lost its previously great influence there to the British. An expedition to the Upper Nile was supposed to enhance France's role in the region and enable a land connection between the French colonies in West and Central Africa and the French Somali coast . This French Congo-Nile project would have also meant the end of the British Cape-Cairo plan . The contingent under Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand consisted of twelve French officers and about 150 Africans, mainly Tirailleurs sénégalais . At the time of their departure from Brazzaville in mid-1896, the Anglo-Egyptian campaign in Sudan had only just begun. France had informed Emperor Menelik in advance of Marchand's mission. He sent a cavalry detachment to the area of Faschoda to greet them, but they arrived long before the French and left the region again before Marchand arrived. Two other French expeditions, which were to advance from the Somali coast via Abyssinia to Faschoda and were supposed to unite with Marchand, were successfully hindered by the Ethiopians, who were pursuing their own goals in Eastern Sudan. After having hoisted the French flag in various places in the Bahr al-Ghazal region as a sign of occupation, the Marchand troops reached their destination Faschoda on July 10, 1898, after traveling for about two years. The fort was renamed Fort Saint-Louis . On August 25, a division of the Mahdists attacked the fort unsuccessfully with two gunboats .
On September 2, 1898, Kitchener defeated the Mahdists decisively at the Battle of Omdurman , whose revolt was practically suppressed. After the occupation of Khartoum, Kitchener quickly learned of the presence of the French in Faschoda and immediately embarked with a force of around 1,500 men and several gunboats to the south.
course
On September 18, a British gunboat with Kitchener on board reached Faschoda. The French were asked to evacuate their little fort. Talks between the two sides took place in a friendly atmosphere, but Marchand declared that he would not withdraw without instructions from his government.
News of the situation in Fashoda quickly reached Europe and sparked violent reactions in the British and French press. Both governments reacted prudently. The French were aware of the danger of a two-front war against Britain and Germany and instead preferred an alliance with Britain against Germany. London and Paris did not want to wage war over remote territory, and with Egypt's formal claim to Sudan, the British were legally in a better position. Théophile Delcassé , Foreign Minister in the Brisson II cabinet (June 28 to October 26, 1898), relented in the negotiations and Marchand was ordered to withdraw. His group reached the Indian Ocean in May 1899.
Result
In the Sudan Treaty of March 21, 1899, both countries defined their respective areas of interest. The peaceful solution to the Faschoda question is an important prerequisite for the Entente cordiale , which was concluded in April 1904 . The Sudan Treaty and the resulting fears in Germany were the trigger for the First Morocco Crisis from March 1905 to April 1906.
literature
- Marc Michel: La Mission Marchand. 1895-1899 . Mouton, Paris et al. 1972, ( Le monde d'outre-mer passé et présent Série 1, ISSN 0077-0310 , Études 36).
- Paul Webster: Fachoda. La bataille pour le Nile . Édition du Félin, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-86645-313-1 .
- Hillas Smith: The Unknown Frenchman. The Story of Marchand and Fashoda . Book Guild Ltd, Lewes 2001, ISBN 1-85776-537-0 .
- Bruce Vandervort: Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830-1914. UCL Press, London 1998, ISBN 1-85728-487-9 ( Warfare and History ).
Web links
- Gerd Fesser : A strange adventure . The time 29/1998.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Winfried Baumgart : "The Greater France". New research on French imperialism 1880–1914 , in: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte , Vol. 61.2, 1974, pp. 185–198. ( PDF; 600 kB ( Memento from October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive )).
- ↑ Thomas Pakenham : The crouching lion. The colonization of Africa 1876–1912. ECON Verlag, Düsseldorf 1993. ISBN 3-430-17416-3 . P. 572.
- ↑ Pakenham: The Crouching Lion. P. 587 ff.