In Sept. and Oct. 1924 conversations took place in London be tween the prime minister (Ramsay MacDonald) and Zaghlul Pasha (prime minister of Egypt) in which the position of the Sudan as well as Egypt was discussed. No agreement was reached, whereupon MacDonald sent a despatch (Cmd. 2269 of 1924) to the British High Commissioner in Cairo in which, referring to the Sudan, he said: . . . In the meantime, the duty of preserving order in the Sudan rests, in fact, upon His Majesty's Government, and they will take every step necessary for this purpose. Since going there they have contracted heavy moral obligations by the creation of a good system of administration ; they cannot allow that to be destroyed ; they regard their responsibilities as a trust for the Sudan people ; there can be no question of their abandoning the Sudan until their work is done. His Majesty's Government have no desire to disturb existing arrangements, but they must point out how intolerable is a status quo which enables both military and civil officers and officials to conspire against civil order, and unless the status quo is accepted and loyally worked out until such time as a new arrangement may be reached, the Sudan Government would fail in its duty were it to allow such conditions to continue. . . .
The failure of Zaghlul in London left him without any con structive policy for dealing with the Sudan, and the forces of disorder asserted themselves. On Nov. 20, 1924, Sir Lee Stack succumbed to a murderous attack made on him in the streets of Cairo. An ultimatum was thereupon presented by the British Government and among its terms was the immediate withdrawal of all Egyptian troops from the Sudan, i.e., all purely Egyptian units and the Egyptian officers of the Arab and Sudanese units. The demand was refused, and on Nov. 23 orders were issued for their compulsory removal. Some of them departed without demur; others adopted an attitude of passive resistance. At this stage some black Sudanese detachments stationed in Khartoum, probably misunderstanding the exact position of affairs, and cer tainly instigated by the Egyptian officers and by sympathisers among their own officers, mutinied on Nov. 27, and it was not until the 29th that order was restored. The evacuation of the Egyptian units and personnel was followed by the creation of a Sudan defence force, consisting of Sudanese and Arab units which had hitherto been incorporated in the Egyptian army. The new force undertook allegiance solely to the governor-general of the Sudan who was no longer also sirdar of the Egyptian army. By the end of 1924 conditions had been restored to normal.
Sir Geoffrey Archer, a man of much experience of African races, became governor-general in Jan. 1925. He put into fuller practice
the principle of decentralized control—that is, leaving the admin istration as far as possible in the hands of the native authorities. On account of ill-health Sir Geoffrey resigned his post in 1926; Sir John Maffey, who succeeded him, adopted fully Archer's devo lutionary policy and in 1927 a measure was passed ("Powers of Sheikhs ordinance") which strengthened the authority of the chiefs over their tribes as judges in criminal and civil cases. A notable event was the opening in Jan. 1926 of the Sennar dam, which brought a great part of the Gezira under irrigation. A par ticularly satisfactory feature of this work was its popularity among the native owners and cultivators. While 1925 and 1926 were both years of drought in the northern Sudan, the material progress of the people continued ; the Government established a central re serve of grain and controlled prices.
Among the pagan negroid tribes of the southern Sudan probably the greatest agent in development was the building of roads as adjuncts to river transport; by 1928 thousands of miles of road were in use by motor traffic in the dry season. This opened up markets and led to the introduction of money, and the cultivation of food crops and of cotton. Whether they desired it or not these backward races felt the impact of new methods and agencies. The first steps in their transformation, the stopping of inter-tribal war fare and the establishment of public order, were slowly accom plished, mainly by the personal influence of British officials. One difficulty was that the Government had not forces sufficient effec tively to control the border region. To help in this matter there were in 1914 and again in 1926, territorial rearrangements in the south (see UGANDA). In administered areas peaceful progress was not uninterrupted. There was a somewhat serious rising among a section of the Dinkas in Mongalla province in 1919, during which the governor, Maj. C. H. Stigand, and Maj. R. F. White lost their lives, their small force being attacked by spearmen in the long grass. Punitive measures followed in 1920 and the Dinkas gave little trouble thereafter ; some of them took to cotton growing and coffee planting. There was unrest among the Nuer of the Bahr-el-Ghazal province in 1927 and Capt. V. H. Fergusson, dis trict commissioner, with several other persons, was murdered in December of that year. Aeroplanes were used in the retributory action taken.
In March 1928 a new draft treaty between Great Britain and Egypt was rejected by the Egyptian cabinet ; whereupon the Brit ish Government reminded the Egyptian Government that under the agreement of 1899, Great Britain continued to control the Sudan.