with the Fashoda Incident, or Fashoda crisis. Before
he left Sudan, he went up the Nile River to the French
outpost at Fashoda, where the French had dispatched
a small unit from their Equatorial Africa Colony in an
attempt to block British control of the Nile. Kitchener,
delayed by his victory at Omdurman, arrived at Fashoda
on 18 September 1898. The French commander of the
fort, Colonel Jean-Baptiste Marchand, at first refused
the British entry, but when Kitchener demanded Brit-
ish troops be allowed in, Marchand relented. He also
allowed French and British flags to fly over the fort, but
war between the two powers looked inevitable. The cri-
sis broke when Theophile Declasse, the French foreign
minister, decided to withdraw French claims to Fashoda
and allow the British to take over the redoubt. March-
and was ordered to withdraw on 4 November 1898, and
warfare was avoided. For his service at Omdurman and
at Fashoda, Kitchener was awarded the Knight Grand
Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) and raised to the
peerage as Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. He was 48
years old.
Fresh from his victory against the Mahdists, Kitch-
ener was sent to southern Africa to take on the Boers,
a group of Dutch settlers who had colonized the area
called the Orange Free State (now part of South Africa).
Resisting British expansion into the Orange Free State,
the Boers had proved to be brilliant tacticians and guer-
rilla fighters. Kitchener, who arrived in the midst of the
war there, was promoted to the rank of lieutenant gen-
eral and appointed second in command and chief of staff
to Lord roberts, the commander of the British army
in southern Africa. Kitchener established the blockhouse
system, a strategy of constructing fortifications protect-
ing British troops from surprise attacks by the Boers, and
he directed the strategy leading to the battles of Paarde-
berg (18–27 February 1899), Bloemfontein (31 March
1900), and Pretoria (5 June 1900). Promoted to gen-
eral in November 1900, he succeeded Roberts as com-
mander, but he was harshly criticized for his methods of
fighting the Boers, including destroying their farms and
putting women and children into camps.
In June 1902, the war ended with the Peace of Ver-
eeniging. Kitchener was rewarded again for his services
to the British nation by being named Viscount Kitchener
of Broome. He was then sent to India as commander
in chief, where he pushed through important admin-
istrative reforms of military organization, command,
and control; he also modernized training methods. His
reorganization efforts brought him into conflict with
Lord Curzon (1859–1925), the viceroy of India. When
Kitchener insisted on raising the dispute to British cabi-
net level, Prime Minister Arthur Balfour sided with him
and dismissed Curzon as viceroy. Kitchener was able to
complete the Indian army’s reorganization but was not
appointed in Curzon’s place in order to maintain gov-
ernmental authority over the military.
In 1909, when Kitchener left India, he was pro-
moted to the rank of field marshal. He was named to
succeed the duke of Connaught as commander in chief
of British forces in the Mediterranean, but after returning
to England in 1910, he refused this assignment, and his
place was taken by Sir Ian hamilton, who later com-
manded Allied troops at Gallipoli during the First World
War. Kitchener did accept the post of consul general of
Egypt and Sudan, taking up his position in September- He was serving in that post and had recently re-
turned to England when the First World War broke out
in August 1914. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith im-
mediately named Kitchener to his cabinet as secretary
of state for war. Realizing that the British were unpre-
pared, Kitchener warned the government that the con-
flict would not end quickly, as many believed. He also
foresaw that the Russians would achieve little against the
Germans because Russia was even more unprepared for
war. He quickly began the mobilization and training of
70 British divisions, called “Kitchener’s Army.” Just as he
predicted, the European conflict that became known as
World War I bogged down into trench warfare involving
the British, French, and their allies against the Germans
and Austrians. As tens of thousands and then hundreds
of thousands of men were wounded or killed, Kitchener
realized that conscription was needed, but because it
was politically unpopular, he did not advance the idea.
His public image, however, was utilized in the British
government’s recruitment campaign: The mustachioed
Kitchener was seen pointing a finger at the viewer with
the words “Your country needs you,” inspiring the later
American “Uncle Sam” posters that stated, “I want you
for U.S. Army.”
Kitchener not only organized the equipping and
training of troops but also planned strategy and helped
mobilize British industry to keep the British economy
running. Because he was a loner rather than a “team
player,” Kitchener was resented by his fellow cabinet
members, who saw him as a domineering, over-power-
ful figure. Despite this opposition, Kitchener continued
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