Description: In this thesis the author attempts to answer the questions: What was there in the Egyptian Sudan that rival colonial powers wanted, and why would they consider war as a means of getting it? Under what circumstances did Britain go into Egypt and lay a claim to the Egyptian Sudan? How did France expect to gain and hold territory in the Egyptian Sudan with a mere handful of men under Jean Baptiste Marchand in competition with the much greater force of the British leader, Sir Herbert Kitchener? What happened when these forces met at a Shilook village on the Nile, and what was the reaction in Europe? To what extent was the Fashoda Crisis and its settlement responsible for a treaty of friendship between the two rival powers that was to place them side by side in World War I?