:
68
THE SUDAN
only gradually, for the system permeated the whole country, and any attempt to abolish it by a stroke of the pen would have caused violent upheavals and also have raised a most difficult social problem by creating a vast class of unemployed tending to drift into the urban centres.
Once concluded, the Condominium Agreements stood un- challenged as the constitutional charter of the Sudan, and neither Turkey nor any of the other European Powers dis- puted their validity. The shadowy rights of Turkey were finally dissolved in 1915 with her entry into the First World War on the side of Germany and the declaration of a British Protectorate over Egypt. In this the Sudan was not specifically mentioned, but by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Turkey formally relinquished her rights over both Egypt and the Sudan.
So far as Egypt was concerned, it is interesting to note, in the light of later fulminations by Egyptian Ministers and- their claim that the Sudan is, and always has been, an integral part of Egypt, the legal effect of an action brought against the Egyptian and Sudan Governments before the Mixed Courts in Cairo *that is to say, before the interna tional tribunals created in 1875, with the consent of the Khedive on the one side and of the European Powers on the other, and having jurisdiction over all civil cases between Egyptians and Europeans, and Europeans of different nation- alities. The plaintiffs were a firm of contractors who sued upon a contract made by the Sudan Government and joined the Egyptian Government on the ground that the Sudan had never ceased to be an integral part of Egypt: The Egyptian Government pleaded that by the Agreements of 1899 the Sudan Government was constituted an autonomous Government absolutely separate and distinct from the Egyptian Government, and that the latter was consequently in no way responsible for the Sudan Government's contrac- tual obligations. The Court upheld this plea and the plain- tiffs were non-suited. The Sudan Government pleaded that the jurisdiction of the Mixed Tribunals was excluded from the Sudan by the same Agreements, by virtue of which the Sudan Government was constituted an independent government.
* Bencini et Quistes contre le Gouvernement Egyptien et le Gouvernement du Soudan (see Bulletin de législation et de Jurisprudence Egyptiennes, 1 December, 1910).
THE CONDOMINIUM AGREEMENTS OF 1899
69
The Court upheld this plea also and found that by the Agree- ments a new state was established in the Sudan distinct from and independent of Egypt.
up
A Condominium connotes conjoint sovereignty, but that, according to the jurists,* does not mean that two sovereigns exercise authority over the same territory-which is an im- possibility-but that one sovereignty is vested in a body made. of the Governments of the two Powers that exercise the Condominium. Thus the position reached in 1899 may be summed up as follows: Great Britain had accepted responsi bility for the guardianship and regeneration of Egypt and been paramount in that country for seventeen years. She had retrieved it from financial and political ruin, and given it an ordered government, an efficient army, peace, justice and prosperity. She had preserved it from the consequences of its own folly and misdeeds and from invasion by the Dervish hordes. By her weight in the councils of Europe she had re- futed the claims of others who held that, since the Egyptians had been ejected, the Sudan had become a res nullius, to be annexed by the first comer. Finally, with the help of Egyptian men and money, but with the leadership and driving force in her own hands, she had crushed the Dervish power and put herself in a position to effect the regeneration of the Sudan also. She had accepted a virtual trusteeship for the admini- stration of that country and constituted herself a Mandatory Power, though the expression had not at that time been coined. For more than fifty years she has scrupulously carried out her mandate, with all due regard to Egypt's rights and interests, and the history of the Sudan and its progress since i 1899 is the record of the fulfilment of that duty.. in: "The Sudan
"The Sudan", Si Harild Ma
Si Harold Mac Michael
ANNEX
THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN CONVENTION OF 1899
Agreement between Her Britannic Majesty's Government and the Government of His Highness the Khedive of Egypt, relative to the Future Administration of the Sudan.
*
4.g., Oppenheim, International Law (1928), and Lawrence, International Law.
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