The Race to Fashoda - Tapa dura

The fortress of Fashoda is on an obscure junction of the Nile, but from 1870 onwards, because of its strategic position and the rise of European colonialism, it became the subject of conflict between the rival Western powers of Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and Italy. This is an account of those struggles based largely on unpublished documents and told from the perspective of the Africans themselves. It also aims to show how this conflict led to the African people's first battles for their independence and fostered the political tensions that helped to cause World War I.