In 1879 the French launched in the Senegal hinterland the first deliberate European attempt to create a large territorial empire in tropical Africa. Until the 1870s, 'Africa as a whole' had been a purely geographical concept, of no practical relevance to the European politicians and merchants concerned with the continent. Advances or acquisitions in Africa undertaken primarily to secure a diplomatic advantage in Europe are not however quite unknown. The most striking is the Anglo-Egyptian advance into the Sudan in March 1896. For the French, the one redeeming feature of British informal empire was its purely de facto existence, devoid of legal warrant and therefore instantly vulnerable should the power-balance ever tilt in favour of France. Until the mid-1890s the European scramble had surprisingly little effect upon Anglo-Afrikaner rivalries in South Africa. After the collapse of the Anglo-Congolese Agreement, Rosebery attempted to negotiate an upper Nile settlement directly with Paris.