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Abstract

The subject of this thesis is the history of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan during the governor-generalship of Sir Lee Stack, 1917-1924. The study is based primarily on the unpublished records of the Sudan Government and various collected private papers. The first chapter deals with the appointment of Stack to succeed Sir Reginald Wingate; the economic and political effects on the Sudan of the first world war; the structure of the central government and the officials who directed it; and provincial administration. Stack's relations with Wingate and Viscount Allenby as high commissioners in Cairo are discussed. Among the most important developments of Stack's tenure were the emergence, on the one hand, of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi as leader of the revivified Mahdist sect, and, on the other, of secular opposition to the Sudan Government. The second chapter traces the rise of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman, the nature of his support, and the government's attempts both to utilize and to limit his influence. The second part of the chapter charts the tentative beginnings, after the war, of secular opposition, and in focussing on the disturbances of 1924 attempts to analyse the motives of this opposition and the response of the government to it. The surge of Egyptian nationalism following the war led to a fundamental change in the relationship of Egypt and Britain, the co-domini in the Sudan. The Sudan's prominent place in the complicated series of negotiations before and especially after the British declaration to Egypt in February 1922, is considered in chapter three. An attempt is made to analyse the reasons for the breakdown in negotiations that culminated in the British ultimatum to Egypt in November 1924 following the assassination of Sir Lee Stack. The ultimatum itself and its consequences in the Sudan are considered in detail. Revived Mahdism, secular opposition, and Egyptian hostility, combined with a latent mistrust of educated Sudanese led the administration under Stack away from the direct, "bureaucratic" methods of the Wingate era toward Indirect Rule. This development is traced in the final chapter, in which conclusions are reached regarding the nature of Indirect Rule in the Sudan and its consequences for the political future of the country.