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 4 oo THE MODERN NATIONS impracticable for the government to maintain effective control there, despatched General C. G. Gordon to effect the withdrawal of the garrisons single-handed. Before long he found himself shut up in Khartum by the Mahdi and his fanatical followers. A tardy relief expedition arrived a day too late. Khartum had fallen, and the heroic Gordon was dead. Thirteen years later, when the Egyptian army had been completely reorganised and thorough preparation made for a permanent reconquest, Khartum was recovered, and the Mahdi's forces utterly shattered by Sir Herbert Kitchener. The almost simultaneous arrival from the south-west of a party of French at Fashoda nearly brought about an Anglo-French war, but the French claims were not pressed. Between the time of the British occupation of Egypt and the reconquest of the Soudan, the European powers in a series of agreements parcelled out the whole of Africa into 3 Africa what were called Spheres of Influence. Africa was the one quarter of the globe in which vast unexplored territories were occupied entirely by uncivilised tribes. Europe recognises that a civilised state has property in the territory it occupies ; and that one civilised state offends against public law if it deliberately seeks to deprive another of territory lawfully held. But Europe claims with good reason that civilised powers may impose their own control over uncivilised peoples — on which principle all the world, except Africa, had been divided before The Parti- 1880. The partition of Africa practically meant tion. that within the area allotted to each power as its sphere of influence, no other power would interfere with its proceedings except for such reasons as commanded the general assent of Europe. South of the equator, Germany and Portu- gal each had two regions, one on the east, and the other on the west, the British sphere extending northward from Cape Colony between them as far as the great lakes. Here German East Africa meets the Congo Free State, allotted to the King of the Belgians, which extends to the west coast. Thus a broad belt of territory, partly German and partly Belgian, stretches across the continent from sea to sea, parting British South Africa from the British sphere of influence in the north