In preparation for the peace conference that was expected to follow World War I, in the spring of 1917 the British Foreign Office established a special section responsible for preparing background information for use by British delegates to the conference. Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is Number 98 in a series of more than 160 studies produced by the section, most of which were published after the conclusion of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Encompassing the territories of the present-day Republic of the Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was a condominium, created by agreements concluded in 1899 between Great Britain and Egypt (then still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire), under which the two countries agreed to jointly administer this vast territory. Establishment of the condominium was preceded by a period of upheaval marked by imperial rivalry between Britain and France for influence in Sudan and the uprising, beginning in 1881 and led by the charismatic religious leader known as the Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, 1844–85), aimed at ending Egyptian rule and purifying the country of Turkish, Egyptian, and European influences. The conquest and re-subjugation of Sudan in 1896−99 was achieved by an Anglo-Egyptian army that invaded from the north and overthrew the state established by the Mahdi. The book includes sections on physical and political geography, political history, social and political conditions, and economic conditions. The appendix contains the text of the two Anglo-Egyptian agreements of 1899, the agreement concluded in 1898 between Great Britain and France delimiting spheres of influence in this part of Africa, and the 1902 agreement between Great Britain and Ethiopia defining the latter’s border with Sudan. The Anglo-Egyptian condominium lasted until 1956, when Sudan gained full independence. South Sudan, which is ethnically and religiously distinct from the remainder of the country, gained its independence from Sudan in 2011.