This 'red line' (i.e. a proposed railway or road, see Cape to Cairo Railway) through Africa was made famous by the British diamond magnate and politician Cecil Rhodes, who wanted Africa "painted Red" (meaning under British control, since territories which were part of Britain were often coloured red on maps).

[3][better source needed] Fashoda was also bound up in the Egyptian Question, a long-running dispute between the United Kingdom and France over the British occupation of Egypt.

Since 1882 many French politicians, particularly those of the parti colonial, had come to regret France's decision not to join with Britain in occupying the country.

They hoped to force Britain to leave, and thought that a colonial outpost on the Upper Nile could serve as a base for French gunboats.

[3][better source needed] France made its move by sending Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, a veteran of the conquest of French Sudan, back to West Africa.

[3][better source needed] On 20 June 1896, he reached Libreville in the colony of Gabon with a force of only 120 tirailleurs plus 12 French officers, non-commissioned officers and support staff—Captain Marcel Joseph Germain, Captain Albert Baratier, Captain Charles Mangin, Captain Victor Emmanuel Largeau, Lieutenant Félix Fouqué, a teacher named Dyé, doctor Jules Emily Major, Warrant Officer De Prat, Sergeant George Dat, Sergeant Bernard, Sergeant Venail and the military interpreter Landerouin.

[5] Marchand's force set out from Brazzaville in a borrowed Belgian steamer with orders to secure the area around Fashoda and make it a French protectorate.

They steamed up the Ubangi River to its head of navigation and then marched overland (carrying 100 tons of supplies, including a collapsible steel steamboat with a one-ton boiler[3][better source needed]) through jungle and scrub to the deserts of Sudan.

They carried 1,500 British, Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers, led by Sir Herbert Kitchener and including Lieutenant-Colonel Horace Smith-Dorrien.

[7] Marchand had received incorrect reports that the approaching force consisted of Dervishes; he found himself facing a diplomatic rather than a military crisis.

More seriously the British distributed French newspapers detailing the political chaos caused by the Dreyfus affair, warning that France was in no condition to provide serious support for Marchand and his party.

[citation needed] In naval terms, the situation was heavily in Britain's favour, a fact that French deputies acknowledged in the aftermath of the crisis.

"[13] As Professor P. H. Bell writes, Between the two governments there was a brief battle of wills, with the British insisting on immediate and unconditional French withdrawal from Fashoda.

[15] Marchand chose to withdraw his small force by way of Abyssinia and Djibouti, rather than cross Egyptian territory by taking the relatively quick journey by steamer down the Nile.

The reopening of the Dreyfus affair in January the following year had done much to distract French public opinion from events in Sudan and people increasingly questioned the wisdom of a war over such a remote part of Africa.

[20] In March 1899, the Anglo-French Convention of 1898 was signed and it was agreed that the source of the Nile and the Congo rivers should mark the frontier between their spheres of influence.

The Fashoda Incident was the last serious colonial dispute between Britain and France, and its classic diplomatic solution is considered by most historians to be the precursor of the Entente Cordiale of 1904.