The culmination of a long series of clashes between Britain and France in the “scramble for Africa”. The French objective, to occupy the sub-Saharan belt from west to east, countered the British aim of linking their possessions from the Cape to Cairo. Thus in 1896 the French dispatched a force under General Jean‐Baptiste Marchand from Gabon to occupy the Sudan, at the same time that Kitchener was moving up the Nile to recover Khartoum. Both reached Fashoda during the summer of 1898, and as neither side desired conflict, they agreed that both French and British flags should fly over the fort. The matter was referred to London and Paris, and for a while tension between the two countries was extreme. In December the French ordered Marchand to withdraw, and this enabled an agreement to be reached whereby the Nile and Congo watersheds should demarcate the respective spheres of influence by the two countries in Africa.