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Here's the first chapter of a little something I've been working on about a Fashoda Incident that goes a bit awry (even if it doesn't blow up into a full blown Anglo-French war). Most of this is similar to OTL and the greater divergences will be seen in the next chapter.

Ghosts of Fashoda


Chapter I: The Fashoda Crisis, the Boxer Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War, 1898-1904.

The Fashoda Incident or “Fashoda Crisis” that took place in 1898 was the climax of imperial territorial disputes between Britain and France in Eastern Africa. A French expedition to Fashoda on the White Nile in Sudan sought to gain control of the NileRiver and thereby force Britain out of their protectorate of Egypt. The British held firm as Britain and France were on the verge of war.

A French force of just 120 tirailleurs soldiers and twelve French officers set out from Brazzaville in French or Middle Congo in a borrowed Belgian steamer, under Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand with orders to secure the area around Fashoda, and make it a French protectorate. They steamed up the UbangiRiver to its head of navigation and then marched overland through jungle and scrub to the deserts of Sudan. They travelled across Sudan to the NileRiver to be met there by two expeditions coming from the east across Abyssinia, one of which, from Djibouti, was led by Christian de Bonchamps, a veteran of the Stairs Expedition to Katanga. After an epic fourteen month journey largely by foot through the heart of Africa the Marchand Expedition arrived on July 10th 1898, but the De Bonchamps Expedition failed to make it after being ordered by the Ethiopians to halt, and then suffering accidents in the Baro Gorge. On September 18th, a powerful flotilla of British gunboats under the command of Sir Herbert Kitchener arrived at the isolated Fashoda fort. As commander of the Anglo-Egyptian army that had just defeated the forces of the Mahdi at the Battle of Omdurman, Kitchener was in the process of retaking the Sudan in the name of the Egyptian Khedive.

Both sides were polite but insisted on their right to Fashoda, but things started to tense up as a political crisis erupted between France and Great Britain that threatened to escalate into war. The imperial pride of both countries was enflamed and widespread popular outrage followed, each side accusing the other of naked expansionism and aggression. The crisis continued throughout September and October. It is unknown which side fired the first shot, but it’s generally assumed that a soldier from either side with a nervous trigger finger accidentally fired or that a weapon misfired, provoking the other side to return fire in the assumption that the other had launched an attack. While the French force was superior in size, the British had naval support and more firepower. Marchand lost nearly twenty men, a sixth of his force, to fire from British gunboats and was forced to withdraw. Several more skirmishes and raids took place over a period of several weeks as the French retaliated, to which the British responded etcetera, until both sides had to admit a shooting war was going on by early November.

At this point Anglo-French relations had seriously chilled and tensions could be cut with a knife, both sides mobilizing their armed forces. The French all too well recognised the inferiority of their naval forces that would allow the Royal Navy to easily blockade France, preventing France from projecting power to Africa and this Fashoda, which was the reason for this conflict to begin with. Paris backed down with its ambassador in London signalling to the British Prime Minister, third marques of Salisbury, that France recognised the British claim. The French withdrew on December 1st 1898 and in April 1899, the French and British agreed that the source of the Nile and the Congo rivers should mark the frontier between their spheres of influence.

While newly appointed French foreign minister Théophile Delcassé had seen no advantage in a colonial war with Britain, it had de facto turned into one even it had been only two months of on-and-off skirmishing. His resolve to come to a peaceful resolution quickly had been thwarted and that put an end to any hopes of having a friendly or even allied Britain against a threatening Imperial Germany, at least in the foreseeable future. Britain’s attitude toward such an alliance changed after this imperialist scuffle as, momentarily, patriotic sentiment and anti-French feelings took over from long term thinking concerning a possible German threat in both public opinion and the government. The fact that German Emperor Wilhelm II made a string of positive comments, sometimes to the point of sycophancy, temporarily reduced worries about Germany; the public bought it and cheered for Wilhelm when he visited although Queen Victoria and her son and heir Edward didn’t particularly enjoy his overbearing presence during his visit in 1899. In the meantime, this short conflict for the time being reinvigorated British isolationism strongly, and the firm British renewal of the commitment to Splendid Isolation would have serious consequences in the short term.

Britain remained in isolationism and instead remained committed to its own imperial ambitions and interests, most notably the Great Game, which was the strategic conflict between the Russian Empire and Great Britain in the Middle East and Asia. Things would come to a head between Russia and Britain’s ally Japan, but not before the Western world acted in unison against the Chinese.

In 1899 the Boxer Rebellion started in the old, crumbling Chinese Empire. The Boxer Rebellion was a violent anti-Christian and anti-western uprising as a response to western imperialism, increasing cosmopolitanism and missionary evangelism against the backdrop of a state fiscal crisis and natural disasters such as floods leading to failed harvests. The once powerful Chinese dragon was now crumbling and countless concessions and unequal treaties had been forced upon China, such as the British treaty forcing the Chinese to import opium.

Missions were destroyed and Chinese Christians were murdered. In June 1900 lightly armed but fanatical Boxers who believed in their supernatural powers converged on Beijing and besieged foreign embassies, leading to the deaths of several western diplomats including the German ambassador. This was considered one of the bloodiest episodes in the rebellion, but was only the prelude to something much worse. It also induced Dowager Empress Ci Xi – the de facto leader of China – to declare war on the western powers. The Boxers were originally a village sect in Shandong province who practiced martial arts and callisthenics. They believed that through prayer, martial arts and diet they could perform extraordinary feats such as being immune to swords and bullets. Having packed the court with xenophobe conservatives, the Dowager Empress was able to support the Boxers. Under the leadership of British minister to China, security personnel and the legation staff valiantly defended the compound with makeshift equipment including one muzzle-loaded gun known as the International Gun because the barrel was British, the carriage was Italian, the shells were Russian and the crew was American.

The Eight-Nation Alliance consisting of (ordered by contribution) Great Britain, Russia, Japan, France, the United States, Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary – after being initially turned back – brought 20.000 armed troops to China, defeated the Imperial Army, and captured Beijing on August 14th 1900, lifting the siege of the legations. Uncontrolled plunder of the capital and the surrounding countryside ensued, along with the summary execution of those suspected of being Boxers.The Boxer Protocol of September 7th 1901 provided for execution of government officials who had supported the Boxers, provisions for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and an indemnity of 67 million pounds (450 million taels of silver), more than the government's annual tax revenue, to be paid as indemnity over a course of thirty-nine years to the eight nations involved.

Not three years later the Russo-Japanese War erupted in February 1904. During the late 19th century the Russians had encroached on Manchuria and Korea. The Russians forced the Chinese to lease Port Arthur in 1897 after their threatening fleet had appeared there and they quickly fortified Port Arthur as it was their sole warm water port on the Pacific. A year later they built a railroad from Mukden to Harbin, angering the Chinese and thereby contributing to the Boxer Rebellion. Russia had gained a concession in northern and central Manchuria after the Eight-Nation Alliance intervention but steadily expanded its control in the southern part of the region as well. Moreover, they intimidated the Koreans into giving Russia mining and forestry concessions near the Yalu and Tumen rivers, alarming and angering Japan which considered Korea to be under its suzerainty and hoped to expand its sphere of influence into southern Manchuria. The Japanese under Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi started to negotiate with the Russians about the status of Korea and Manchuria, believing that Japan was too weak to evict the Russians militarily. Japan would get Korea and recognise Russian suzerainty over Manchuria.

The Russians didn’t bother to respond and Japan declared war on February 8th 1904. When the declaration of war was received in St. Petersburg, Port Arthur had already been attacked. This shocked and angered Tsar Nicholas II because hee had been assured by his advisors that Japan would not fight. Moreover, the fact that Japan had committed and act of war before the formal declaration angered him and he sacked several of his advisors and ministers for their incompetence. Their racist attitudes would find their way into the Russian military as well. They couldn’t believe that a Yellow race could defeat a White race, explaining Russia’s defeat and why Russia thought it beneath her to enlist the aid of France. Lack of French intervention kept Britain out of the conflict, since the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which the two countries had signed in 1902, would only activate if either signatory became involved in war with more than one power.

Until the arrival of reinforcements, however, the Russians remained on the defensive, enabling the Japanese to land near Incheon and occupying the Korean peninsula by April. Russian reinforcements didn’t arrive in time because the Trans-Siberian Railway was incomplete near Irkutsk, meaning Japan won the Battle of the YaluRiver on May 1st 1904. The Japanese scored a decisive victory, dispelling the idea that the Japanese were an easy enemy, and in the meantime the Imperial Japanese Navy blockaded Port Arthur, losing the Russians two battleships due to mines while the Japanese also lost two (because a breakout attempt failed, the blockade was a strategic Japanese success). The siege of Port Arthur commenced in April 1904. Japanese troops tried numerous frontal assaults on the heavily fortified hilltops that overlooked the harbour, which were defeated with Japanese casualties in the thousands. Eventually, though, with the aid of several batteries of 28 cm (11 inch) Krupp howitzers, the Japanese were finally able to capture the key hilltop bastion in December 1904.

Meanwhile, attempts to relieve the besieged city by land also failed, and, after the Battle of Liaoyang in late August, the northern Russian force that might have been able to relieve Port Arthur retreated to Mukden (Shenyang). Major General Anatoly Stessel, commander of the Port Arthur garrison, believed that the purpose of defending the city had been lost after the fleet had been destroyed. Several large underground mines were exploded in late December, resulting in the costly capture of a few more pieces of the defensive line. Nevertheless, the Russian defenders were affecting disproportionate casualties each time the Japanese assaulted their positions, but despite this Stessel decided to surrender to the surprised Japanese generals on January 2nd 1905. He made this decision without consulting the other military staff present, or the Tsar and military command, who all disagreed with the decision. Stessel was convicted by a court-martial in 1908 and sentenced to death for his incompetent defence and insubordination, though he was later pardoned.

Meanwhile, the Russians were preparing to reinforce their Far East Fleet by sending the Baltic Fleet, under the command of Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky. The squadron departed in September 1904 and sailed half way around the world from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific via the Cape of Good Hope. After a port of call at Madagascar, then CamRanBay in French Indochina, the Russian Baltic Fleet finally reached the Far East in May 1905 only to be destroyed in the Battle of Tsushima on May 27th and May 28th 1905. On October 21st 1904, while steaming past Great Britain (an ally of Japan, but neutral, unless provoked by a non-combatant nation), vessels of the Russian fleet nearly sparked a war with Britain in the Dogger Bank incident by firing on British fishing boats that they mistook for enemy torpedo boats, which caused the British to deny them access to the Suez Canal thus forcing them around Africa.

With the fall of Port Arthur, the Japanese Third Army was now able to continue northward and reinforce positions south of Russian-held Mukden. With the onset of the severe Manchurian winter, there had been no major land engagements since the Battle of Shaho the previous year. The two sides camped opposite each other along 110 kilometres of frontlines, south of Mukden. The Imperial Japanese Army in February 1905 defeated the Russians in the battle of Mukden, the final serious land engagement of the entire war. Japanese forces proceeded to assault the right and left flanks of Russian forces surrounding Mukden, along an 80 kilometre front and approximately half a million men were involved in the fighting. Both sides were well entrenched and were backed by hundreds of artillery pieces. After days of harsh fighting, added pressure from the flanks forced both ends of the Russian defensive line to curve backwards. Seeing they were about to be encircled, the Russians began a general retreat, fighting a series of fierce rearguard actions, which soon deteriorated in the confusion and collapse of Russian forces. On March 10th 1905 after three weeks of fighting, General Kuropatkin decided to withdraw to the north of Mukden. The Russians lost 90.000 men in the battle. The retreating Russian Manchurian Army formations disbanded as fighting units, but the Japanese failed to destroy them completely as they themselves had suffered large casualties and were in no condition to pursue. Although the battle of Mukden was a major defeat for the Russians and was the most decisive land battle ever fought by the Japanese, the final victory still depended on the navy. They provided, as mentioned above, by destroying the Russian Baltic Fleet at Tsushima.

Popular discontent in Russia after the war exploded into the already simmering Russian Revolution of 1905, an event Nicholas II of Russia had hoped to avoid entirely by taking intransigent negotiating stances prior to coming to the table at all. In Poland, which Russia partitioned in the late 18th century, and where Russian rule already caused two major uprisings, the population was so restless that an army of 250.000–300.000 – larger than the one facing the Japanese – had to be stationed to put down the unrest. Notably, some political leaders of the Polish insurrection movement (in particular, Józef Piłsudski) sent emissaries to Japan to collaborate on sabotage and intelligence gathering within the Russian Empire and even plan a Japanese-aided uprising. Chaos swept across Russia with a temporary upsurge of revolutionary activity, street protests, terrorist attacks and paralyzing strikes everywhere and with an economy in shambles Russia was in no position to continue the war.

After courting the Japanese, Roosevelt decided to support the Tsar’s refusal to pay indemnities, a move that policymakers in Tokyo interpreted as signifying that the United States had more than a passing interest in Asian affairs. Russia recognized Korea as part of the Japanese sphere of influence and agreed to evacuate Manchuria. Japan would annex Korea in 1910, with scant protest from other powers. Russia also signed over its 25-year leasehold rights to Port Arthur, including the naval base and the peninsula around it, and ceded the southern half of Sakhalin Island to Japan.

This was the first major military victory in the modern era of an Asian power over a European nation. Russia's defeat was met with shock in the West and across the Far East. Japan's prestige rose greatly as it became seen as a modern nation. Concurrently, Russia lost virtually its entire Pacific and Baltic fleets, and also much of its international reputation as a great power. Although the war had ended in a victory for Japan, Japanese public opinion was shocked by the very restrained peace terms which were negotiated at the war’s end. Widespread discontent spread through the populace upon the announcement of the treaty terms. Riots erupted in major cities in Japan. Two specific requirements, expected after such a costly victory, were especially lacking: territorial gains and monetary reparations to Japan. The peace treaty led to feelings of distrust, as the Japanese had intended to retain all of Sakhalin Island, but were forced to settle for half of it after being pressured by the United States. This war was barely over, but soon the Entente powers would face a much bigger crisis.
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