Challenge: Triple Sudan

Gessi Pasha is allowed a free rein by a British-dominated and seriously pissed-off Egyptian government. The British planners are happy to allow him to draw troops from the southern parts of the Sudan which they see as a cheap and effective way of countering Islamic claims of self-government. Gessi's black, partly Christianised troops spread holy terror and break the back of the Sudanese Arab tribes in the 1880s and 1890s, extending claims for territory into Kenya, Tanganjika, Uganda, and the eastern Congo (which eventually is transferred to Sudanese government as public opinion turns against King Leopold's moneymaking schemes). After a brief war in 1904/05, Ethipoia and Somaliland become attached to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan as protectorates. Officially not part of the British Empoire, the Sudan offers a convenient vehicle to further British influence in Africa, sghutting out the Germans and acting as the guardian of the northern part of the 'Cape-to-Cairo-railway' built in 1896-1908. Its land borders are with Egypt, French Central Africa, Italian Libya, the Franco-Belgian Congo Condominium, Rhodesia and Portuguese Mosambique. After independence in 1954, the Sudan collapüses in internecine warfare.

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