20th century
Northeast Africa
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was a distinctive colonial condominium administered by Britain and Egypt. In April 1946, under pressure from competing nationalist visions, the British Co-Dominus declared that it aimed at a free and independent Sudan able to determine its future relations with Britain and Egypt.
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The Story
Sudan occupied a distinctive position in the post-war politics of British Africa because Britain administered it jointly with Egypt as a condominium. This arrangement gave the territory a political status different from that of ordinary British colonies and made its future inseparable from competing claims about Sudanese independence and union with Egypt.
Nationalists pressed for independence, while other political forces imagined Sudan’s future within an independent union with Egypt. These pressures led the British Co-Dominus to issue a declaration in April 1946. The stated objective was a free and independent Sudan capable, once independence had been achieved, of defining its relations with Britain and Egypt for itself.
The Sudanese case appeared exceptional, but the excerpt places it within a broader shift in British thinking. By 1947, the Colonial Office reportedly expected that most major British African colonies would become self-governing within the Commonwealth within a generation. Sudan therefore illustrates both the distinctive pressures of a condominium and the wider post-war movement toward political devolution.
20th century
Northeast Africa
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was a distinctive colonial condominium administered by Britain and Egypt. In April 1946, under pressure from competing nationalist visions, the British Co-Dominus declared that it aimed at a free and independent Sudan able to determine its future relations with Britain and Egypt.
Continue exploring
The Story
Sudan occupied a distinctive position in the post-war politics of British Africa because Britain administered it jointly with Egypt as a condominium. This arrangement gave the territory a political status different from that of ordinary British colonies and made its future inseparable from competing claims about Sudanese independence and union with Egypt.
Nationalists pressed for independence, while other political forces imagined Sudan’s future within an independent union with Egypt. These pressures led the British Co-Dominus to issue a declaration in April 1946. The stated objective was a free and independent Sudan capable, once independence had been achieved, of defining its relations with Britain and Egypt for itself.
The Sudanese case appeared exceptional, but the excerpt places it within a broader shift in British thinking. By 1947, the Colonial Office reportedly expected that most major British African colonies would become self-governing within the Commonwealth within a generation. Sudan therefore illustrates both the distinctive pressures of a condominium and the wider post-war movement toward political devolution.