Introduction

The search for the sources of the Nile in the second half of the nineteenth century brought the Egyptians to the Equatorial regions of the Sudan and ultimately led to their conquest and incorporation into the Turco-Egyptian Sudan. The ‘Unity of the Nile Valley’, which had been propagated by the Egyptian Nationalist party under Mustafa Kamil since the 1890s, remained the cornerstone of Egyptian nationalism throughout the period of British occupation. In a study comparing British rule in Egypt to its rule in the Sudan an attempt is made to determine if, and to what extent, British ability to dominate the regions was influenced by the availability and exploitation of indigenous collaborating elites. The problem of Egypt’s north-eastern borders was therefore of crucial importance ever since the Taba Incident of 1906. A special study is devoted to the period between 1936 and 1944 in Anglo-Egyptian relations and their impact on internal Egyptian politics.