The Egyptian Sudan The Sudan Agreement In the view of politicians and jurists Lord Cromer, the author of the Sudan Agreement, was the first to acknowledge its invalidity from a legal perspective. He praised Lord Salisbury, who ratified this agreement for his courage and his undertaking of an act not permitted by prevailing laws, nor by enforceable or agreed-upon international laws. Jurists and politicians have written extensively on this matter.

Politicians said that the English looked at the Egyptian Sudan after its evacuation and after its recapture, and after the powers appeared negligent and indifferent, with two perspectives: the perspective of the covetous, wanting to annex it to their possessions, and the perspective of controlling it and preventing others from doing so. Thus, Egypt bore its expenses and burdens. Those who advocated annexation among them said, "If we annex Sudan to our possessions, we will not be doing anything new; rather, we will be transforming this temporary situation into a permanent one. Do we not see that we have taken Uganda, Equatoria, the Equator, and its hinterland, and Zululand from Egypt? If the result of this is that the Sublime Porte's protest is weak and we do not care about it."

And those who advocated benefiting from it while leaving the burden of expenses to Egypt said: "Why should we burden ourselves with troubles and expenses when profit is guaranteed to us?"

The British government hesitated between the two theories and returned to Lord Cromer to ask his opinion. Lord Cromer replied that he leaned towards the second theory because he was pessimistic about the fate of Sudan. He said in his report for 1899: "Sudan has always been a maw that swallows millions of pounds, and those millions that are poured into it dissolve like snow under the sun in the desert. To this is attributed the bankruptcy of the Egyptian treasury. England agreed to it with large sums, hoping to recover them upon the settlement of accounts. It was not forgotten that the British government, when it directed the expedition to Khartoum in 1898..."