The main features of the years from 1884 to 1900 were the rapidity with which the territories earlier annexed were expanded and organised, more especially by France.  In the ’nineties her dominions extended from the Mediterranean to the Guinea Coast, and she had conceived the ambition of extending them also across Africa from West to East.  This ambition led her into a new and more acute conflict with Britain, who, having undertaken the reconquest of the Egyptian Soudan and the upper valley of the Nile, held that she could not permit a rival to occupy the upper waters of the great river, or any part of the territory that belonged to it.  Hence when the intrepid explorer, Marchand, after a toilsome expedition which lasted for two years, planted the French flag at Fashoda in 1898, he was promptly disturbed by Kitchener, fresh from the overthrow of the Khalifa and the reconquest of Khartoum, and was compelled to withdraw.  The tension was severe; no episode in the partition of Africa had brought the world so near to the outbreak of a European war.  But in the end the dispute was settled by the Anglo-French agreement of 1898, which may be said to mark the conclusion of the process of partition.  It was the last important treaty in a long series which filled the twenty years following 1878, and which had the result of leaving Africa, with the exception of Morocco, Tripoli, and Abyssinia, completely divided among the chief European states.  Africa was the main field of the ambitions and rivalries of the European powers during this period; the other fields may be more rapidly surveyed.  In Central Asia and the Near East the main features of the period were two.  The first was the steady advance of Russia towards the south-east, which awakened acute alarms in Britain regarding India, and led to the adoption of a ’forward policy’ among the frontier tribes in the north-west of India.  The second was the gradual and silent penetration of Turkey by German influence.  Here there was no partition or annexation, But Germany became the political protector of the Turk; undertook the reorganisation of his armies; obtained great commercial concessions; bought up his railways, ousting the earlier British and French concerns which had controlled them, and built new lines.  The greatest of these was the vitally important project of the Bagdad railway, which was taken in hand just before the close of the period.  It was a project whose political aims outweighed its commercial aims.  And it provided a warning of the gigantic designs which Germany was beginning to work out.  But as yet, in 1900, the magnitude of these designs was unperceived.  And the problems of the Middle East were not yet very disturbing.  The Turkish Empire remained intact; so did the Persian Empire, though both were becoming more helpless, partly owing to the decrepitude of their governments, partly owing to the pressure of European financial and trading interests.  As yet the empires of the Middle East seemed to form a region comparatively free from European influence.  But this was only seeming.  The influence of Europe was at work in them; and it was probably inevitable that some degree of European political tutelage should follow as the only means of preventing the disintegration which must result from the pouring of new wine into the old bottles.