The “New Imperialism” and the Scramble for Africa 831

southern Sudan, nearly bringing the two powers to war. The French gov­
ernment resented the fact that Egypt served as a base for British initiatives
in the hot, dry Sudan.
A fundamentalist Islamic and nationalist revolt led by a former Sudanese
slave trader who declared himself to be the Mahdi (the Guided One) in the
early 1880s challenged the nominal authority of the khedive of Egypt over
Sudan. After the Mahdi and his followers (the Mahdists) began a holy war
against Egypt and defeated Egyptian armies led by British officers, the
British sent an expedition to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to evacuate
the Egyptian population. It was led by the dashing, eccentric British adven­
turer General Charles “Chinese” Gordon (1833-1885), so called because
he had commanded troops that assisted the Chinese government in putting
down the Taiping Rebellion in the 1860s. Besieged for ten months in Khar­
toum by the Mahdi’s forces in 1884, Gordon was killed when the Mahdists
stormed the garrison two days before a relief expedition from Britain arrived
in January 1885.
Britain lost interest in Sudan until the French colonial lobby, still smart­
ing from Britain’s occupation of Egypt, sought a strategic foothold on the
Nile River. In January 1895, Britain claimed the Sudan. The French gov­
ernment, in turn, announced that it considered Sudan open to all colonial
powers. The British government responded that it would consider any
French activity in Sudan “an unfriendly act.”
In 1898, a British force commanded by Lord Horatio Kitchener (1850—
1916) set out from Egypt for Sudan with the Upper Nile outpost of Fashoda

The charge of the dervishes (followers of the Mahdi) at the Battle of Omdurman in

the Sudan, 1898.