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604 General History of Europe decline of Turkey (Chapter XLIII). Now we must see how these conditions which for almost fifty years had somehow been adjusted peacefully helped, in the summer of 1914, to precipi- tate the war. First, let us recall the exploration and partition of Africa. France took most of the Mediterranean shore, and in so doing incurred, at different times, the rivalry of Italy, England, and Germany. Its province of Algeria, conquered in 1830 and thor- oughly subdued in 1870-1874, had two native states as neighbors -Tunis and Morocco. Claiming that the Tunisian tribesmen were raiding the border, France conquered Tunis in 1881 and thus forestalled Italy, which had intended taking the site of ancient Carthage for itself. France and England fell out when England got financial control in Egypt, for this was bitterly resented by the French. When the English, under General Kitchener, had conquered the Sudan in 1898, at the cost of many lives, a French explorer, Colonel Mar- chand, crossed the heart of Africa from the west and planted the French tricolor at Fashoda, in the upper Sudan, before Kitchener could reach there. When word of this reached Paris and London, war seemed inevitable, and it would have come had not the French given way. The "Fashoda affair" created a very strained situa- tion between France and England. 1097. Edward VII and the Entente Cordiale. Within four years, however, the change in feeling was complete. King Ed- ward VII, who had succeeded to the throne of England upon the death of his mother, Victoria, in 1901, was personally fond of France and the French of him. Skillful statesmen made the most of the new situation, and in 1904 France and England came to a "cordial understanding" or, to use the French phrase, entente cordiale concerning all their outstanding sources of quarrel. This Entente, as it is generally called, turned out to be one of the most important facts in the world's history. France was to recognize British interests in Egypt, and England those of France in Morocco, which country France had begun to penetrate