ABSTRACT
In the early years of the Condominium there was a permanent shortage of labour in the Sudan. This affected development projects as well as agriculture and was intimately connected with the problem of domestic slavery. It was probably this affinity which led the governor-general to entrust both domestic slavery and labour to the intelligence department in Khartoum. Slave raiding and the slave trade were regarded as separate entities. According to the Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention of August 1877, slave trade from the Sudan was to have stopped by 1880. Owing to the Mahdia, the implementation of this convention in the Sudan had to be deferred until the reconquest. A new convention for the Suppression of Slavery and Slave-Trade, was signed between Great Britain and Egypt in November 1895. Under Article 2 of this convention, Egypt undertook to publish a special law enumerating the penalties to be applied for offences connected with slave trade. Such a law was published by the Egyptian government in January 1896. Shortly after the reconquest, in January 1899, slave trade in the Sudan was declared illegal and its suppression became the duty of the department for the repression of slave trade.
