The Syrian Civil War, as of September 11, 2015

The Partition of Africa: The Marginal European presence in 1878 and the colonial empires of 1914

Monument to Captain Marchand in Paris, showing the route he took from the French Congo to the Nile in 1896/98, with 20 French officers and 130 Senegalese troops

“Captain Marchand Across Africa!” (illustrated book, Paris, 1898)

Marchand and his African troops defend Fashoda from Mahdist gunboats (image published in L’Illustration, August 1898)

The Battle of Omdurman, September 2, 1898: Lord Kitchener defeated the Mahdists with 8,000 British and 17,000 Egyptian troops and then arrived at Fashoda

Captain Marchand rows out from Fashoda to parley with Lord Kitchener, 19 September 1898; the French government ordered Marchand to evacuate on November 3

“Commandant Marchand at Fashoda,” portrait commissioned in 1898 by the French Army Museum in Paris

The “Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway” in 1914 (see Joll, )

The Young Turks displayed special interest in the employment of German military trainers (cartoon from Punch, October 5, 1910)

French pacifist rally outside Paris, May 25, 1913

The “National Socialist” Maurice Barrès presides over a Joan of Arc festival in Compiègne, June 13, 1913

“The Kiss of the Alsatian” (anonymous colorized postcard from 1914)

Citizens of Paris rejoice on August 2, 1914

Some troops in Paris may have had second thoughts...

Soldiers in Berlin, 2 August 1914

German troop train, August 1914: “Holiday Outing to Paris”

Munich’s Odeon Square, August 1, 1914: “I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.” (Mein Kampf, p. 161)

Tsar Nicholas II greets Russian soldiers departing for the front in August 1914