Born 1863,
Thoissey, France
Died 1934,
Paris, France
In 1897 France sent Jean-Baptiste Marchand, a major in the French army, to the South Sudan, which is now called Mali, to establish French control of the region; at the same time the British were seeking control of territory from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cairo, Egypt. Shortly after Marchand reached the village of Fashoda on the Nile River, Anglo-Egyptian forces arrived to claim the town for Egypt. This conflict resulted in the “Fashoda Incident,” which was one of the major turning points in modern European history. The failure at Fashoda taught the French that they would never be able to achieve their goals without the support of Great Britain. The country’s leaders therefore started a conscious policy of befriending the government in London and quickly settled all the major problems it had with the British. The two countries signed a treaty of friendship, the “Entente Cordiale” in 1904. This eventually led to a military alliance that pitted France and Britain against Germany in World War I.
Marchand, the central figure in the Fashoda Incident, was born in the French town of Thoissey in eastern France north of the city of Lyons.
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