Egypt and the Sudan 323
claim by right of conquest—Mehemet All, no doubt,
conquered the Sudan. But the Mahdi reconquered it,
and might have conquered Egypt but for British inter-
vention. It was the English who again recovered it, for
reasons only partly connected with Egypt; though prin-
cipally at the cost of Egypt in men and money. The
expense of its recovery and of its reconstruction has
cost Egypt altogether some £10,000,000, of which
£7, ooo, ooo represent interest-bearing loans. This modest
outlay has, as has been already pointed out, brought a
good return to Egypt in removing a serious menace from
her land frontiers as well as in certain revenues and rake-
offs frqjn the commercial and political connections.
Egypt's contribution, in fact, constitutes a good claim
for compensation, but not for the control of these vast
territories unless they can also be recognised as either
racially or regionally a part of Egypt. Yet notoriously
they are neither. The Sudan is, no doubt, a hinterland
of great importance to Egypt, but in no sense is it a
part of its homeland.
The Sudan, as now delimited by the political parti-
tion of Africa between the Powers, is a geographical
region including nearly all the drainage basin of the
White Nile. It ranges from the highlands of Equatorial
Africa, which constitute its southernmost zone—a
country wholly negro and wholly outside the range of
Moslem civilisation and Arabic penetration. In its
general conditions it may be classed with Uganda. Next
towards the North comes the swamp-belt of the Bahr-
el-Gazal, inhabited by primitive tribes like the Dinkas,
Annuah, and Nuerah, and until latitude 10° is reached
at Fashoda all the conditions as to cult, culture, and
cultivation are purely Central African. North of Fashoda
begins the Sudan as most of us think of-it, the open