The battle of Omdurman therefore ranks with the most decisive in modern history, not only in a military sense, but also because it extended British influence up the Nile valley as far as Uganda.  Had French statesmen and M. Marchand achieved their aims, there is little doubt that a solid wedge would have been driven through north-central Africa from west to east, from the Ubangi Province of French Congoland to the mouth of the Red Sea.  The Sirdar’s triumph came just in time to thwart this design and to place in the hands that administered Egypt the control of the waters whence that land draws its life.  Without crediting the stories that were put forth in the French Press as to the possibility of France damming up the Nile at Fashoda and diverting its floods into the Bahr-el-Ghazal district, we may recognise that the control of that river by Egypt is a vital necessity, and that the nation which helped the Khedive to regain that control thereby established one more claim to a close partnership in the administration at Cairo.  The reasonableness of that claim was finally admitted by France in the Anglo-French agreement of the year 1904.

That treaty set the seal, apparently, on a series of efforts of a strangely mixed character.  The control of bondholders, the ill-advised strivings of Arabi, the armed intervention undertaken by Sir Beauchamp Seymour and Sir Garnet Wolseley, the forlorn hope of Gordon’s Mission to Khartum, the fanaticism of the Mahdists, the diplomatic skill of Lord Cromer, the covert opposition of France and the Sultan, and the organising genius of Lord Kitchener—­such is the medley of influences, ranging from the basest up to the noblest of which human nature is capable, that served to draw the Government of Great Britain deeper and deeper into the meshes of the Egyptian Question, until the heroism, skill, and stubbornness of a few of her sons brought about results which would now astonish those who early in the eighties tardily put forth the first timid efforts at intervention.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PARTITION OF AFRICA

In the opening up of new lands by European peoples the order of events is generally somewhat as follows:—­First come explorers, pioneers, or missionaries.  These having thrown some light on the character of a land or of its people, traders follow in their wake; and in due course factories are formed and settlements arise.  The ideas of the new-comers as to the rights of property and landholding differ so widely from those of the natives, that quarrels and strifes frequently ensue.  Warships and soldiers then appear on the scene; and the end of the old order of things is marked by the hoisting of the Union Jack, or the French or German tricolour.  In the case of the expansion of Russia as we have seen, the procedure is far otherwise.  But Africa has been for the most part explored, exploited, and annexed by agencies working from the sea and proceeding in the way just outlined.