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HISTORY] of decreased activity in French colonial expansion. The unpopularity of the Tongking expedition was one of the causes of the popularity of General Boulanger, who diverted the French public from distant enterprises to a contemplation of the German frontier, and when Boulangism came to an end the Panama affair took its place in the interest it excited. But the colonial party in France did not lose sight of the possibility of establishing

a position on the Upper Nile. The partition of Africa seemed to offer an occasion for France to take compensation for the English occupation of Egypt. In 1892 the Budget Commission, on the proposal of M. Étienne, deputy for Oran, who had three times been colonial under secretary, voted 300,000 francs for the despatch of a mission to explore and report on those regions, which had not had much attention since the days of Emin. But the project was not then carried out. Later, parliament voted a sum six times larger for strengthening the French positions on the Upper Ubanghi and their means of communication with the coast. But Colonel Monteil’s expedition, which was the consequence of this vote, was diverted, and the 1,800,000 francs were spent at Loango, the southern port of French Congo, and on the Ivory Coast, the French territory which lies between Liberia and the British Gold Coast Colony, where a prolonged war ensued with Samory, a Nigerian chieftain. In September 1894, M. Delcassé being colonial minister, M. Liotard was appointed commissioner of the Upper Ubanghi with instructions to extend French influence in the Bahr-el-Ghazal up to the Nile. In addition to official missions, numerous expeditions of French explorers took place in Central Africa during this period, and negotiations were continually going on between the British and French governments. Towards the end of 1895 Lord Salisbury, who had succeeded Lord Kimberley at the foreign office, informed Baron de Courcel, the French ambassador, that an expedition to the Upper Nile was projected for the purpose of putting an end to Mahdism. M. Hanotaux was not at this moment minister of foreign affairs. He had been succeeded by M. Berthelot, the eminent chemist, who resigned that office on the 26th of March 1896, a month before the fall of the Bourgeois cabinet of which he was a member, in consequence of a question raised in the chamber on this subject of the English expedition to the Soudan. According to M. Hanotaux, who returned to the Quai d’Orsay, in the Méline ministry, on the 29th of April 1896, Lord Salisbury at the end of the previous year, in announcing the expedition confidentially to M. de Courcel, had assured him that it would not go beyond Dongola without a preliminary understanding with France. There must have been a misunderstanding on this point, as after reaching Dongola in September 1896 the Anglo-Egyptian army proceeded up the Nile in the direction of Khartoum. Before M. Hanotaux

resumed office the Marchand mission had been formally planned. On the 24th of February 1896 M. Guieysse, colonial minister in the Bourgeois ministry, had signed Captain Marchand’s instructions to the effect that he must march through the Upper Ubanghi, in order to extend French influence as far as the Nile, and try to reach that river before Colonel Colvile, who was leading an expedition from the East. He was also advised to conciliate the Mahdi if the aim of the mission could be benefited thereby. M. Liotard was raised to the rank of governor of the Upper Ubanghi, and in a despatch to him the new colonial minister, M. André Lebon, wrote that the Marchand mission was not to be considered a military enterprise, it being sent out with the intention of maintaining the political line which for two years M. Liotard had persistently been following, and of which the establishment of France in the basin of the Nile ought to be the crowning reward. Two days later, on the 25th of June 1896, Captain Marchand embarked for Africa. This is not the place for a description of his adventures in crossing the continent or when

he encountered General Kitchener at Fashoda, two months after his arrival there in July 1898 and a fortnight after the battle of Omdurman and the capture of Khartoum. The news was made known to Europe by the sirdar’s telegrams to the British government in September announcing the presence of the French mission at Fashoda. Then ensued a period of acute tension between the French and English governments, which gave the impression to the public that war between the two countries was inevitable. But those who were watching the situation in France on the spot knew that there was no question of fighting. France was unprepared, and was also involved in the toils of the Dreyfus affair. Had the situation been that of a year later, when the French domestic controversy was ending and the Transvaal War beginning, England might have been in a very difficult position. General Kitchener declined to recognize a French occupation of any part of the Nile valley. A long discussion ensued between the British and French governments, which was ended by the latter deciding on the 6th of November 1898 not to maintain the Marchand mission at Fashoda. Captain Marchand refused to return to Europe by way of the Nile and Lower Egypt, marching across Abyssinia to Jibuti in French Somaliland, where he embarked for France. He was received with well-merited enthusiasm in Paris. But the most remarkable feature of his reception was that the ministry became so alarmed lest the popularity of the hero of Fashoda should be at the expense of that of the parliamentary republic, that it put an end to the public acclamations by despatching him secretly from the capital—a somewhat similar treatment having been accorded to General Dodds in 1893 on his return to France after conquering Dahomey. The Marchand mission had little effect on African questions at issue between France and Great Britain, as a great

settlement had been effected while it was on its way across the continent. On the 14th of June 1898, the day before the fall of the Méline ministry, when M. Hanotaux finally quitted the Quai d’Orsay, a convention of general delimitation was signed at Paris by that minister and by the British ambassador, Sir Edmund Monson, which as regards the respective claims of England and France covered in its scope the whole of the northern half of Africa from Senegambia and the Congo to the valley of the Nile. Comparatively little attention was paid to it amid the exciting events which followed, so little that M. de Courcel has officially recorded that three months later, on the eve of the Fashoda incident, Lord Salisbury declared to him that he was not sufficiently acquainted with the geography of Africa to express an opinion on certain questions of delimitation arising out of the success of the British expedition on the Upper Nile. The convention of June 1898 was, however, of the highest importance, as it affirmed the junction into one vast territory of the three chief African domains of France, Algeria and Tunis, Senegal and the Niger, Chad and the Congo, thus conceding to France the whole of the north-western continent with the exception of Morocco, Liberia and the European colonies on the Atlantic. This arrangement, which was completed by an additional convention on the 21st of March 1899, made Morocco a legitimate object of French ambition.

The other questions which caused mutual animosity between England and France in the decline of the 19th century had nothing whatever to do with their conflicting international interests. The offensive attitude of the English press towards France on account of the

Dreyfus affair was repaid by the French in their criticism of the Boer War. When those sentimental causes of mutual irritation had become less acute, the press of the two countries was moved by certain influences to recognize that it was in their interest to be on good terms with one another. The importance of their commercial relations was brought into relief as though it were a new fact. At last in 1903 state visits between the rulers of England and of France took place in their respective capitals, for the first time since the early days of the Second Empire, followed by an Anglo-French convention signed on the 8th of April 1904. By this an arrangement was come to on outstanding questions of controversy between England and France in various parts of the world. France undertook not to interfere with the action of England in Egypt,