ABSTRACT
On July 10, 1898 a French force of seven European officers and 120 Senegalese soldiers under the command of Major Jean Baptiste Marchand arrived at the fortified oasis of Fashoda in modern-day Sudan. Marchand had risen from the ranks and therefore was almost custom-made for fame in a Third Republic France suspicious of its own entrenched military officers. He had played a key role in the French conquest of West Africa and had taken charge of the expedition to extend French influence east to the Nile River. His arrival at Fashoda created a surge of patriotism badly needed in a country still suffering from its humiliation at the hands of the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War of 18701871, the aftershocks of the bloody civil war known as the Paris Commune that followed, and the enduring scandal known as the Dreyfus Affair. Marchand’s arrival at Fashoda seemed to usher in a new era of French glory at the expense of France’s long-standing rival, the British Empire.
