British Political Ambitions 43 The Hicks expedition incident occurred on the arrival of Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer) in Egypt. He informed the Khedive that England had no interest in Sudan and would not help Egypt remain there or regain some of its territories. Lord Manners explained Evelyn Baring's words to the Khedive, saying that a man elected to a strong but poor position – as Egypt was at the time – would have no choice but to relinquish some of his possessions for fear of bankruptcy. The Khedive replied to Sir Evelyn Baring that he could not abandon Sudan, and if Egypt did not receive assistance to strengthen its army, he would prefer to resort to the Sultan of Turkey for this assistance. Baring replied, "But on the condition that Ottoman troops do not enter Egypt, and that they carry their own supplies, wherever their base may be." The next day, the Khedive was presented with "advice and counsel to abandon Sudan, so that there would be no master, and England could extend its dominion over it." When the Egyptian ministry refused to abandon Sudan, it was forced to resign. Lord Manners said, "The British government followed the opinion of its representative and ordered him to inform the Egyptian government that it must abandon Sudan immediately, and if any minister refused, he should resign." Thus, we falsified the theory at the time that the policies of Egypt and Sudan were not intertwined. The strangest of the arguments presented by Lord Cromer to Khedive Tawfiq to withdraw his troops from Sudan was that the Egyptian government spent 640,000 pounds on Sudan and only received 480,000 pounds from Sudan, so it was not permissible for Egypt to spend 160,000 pounds annually in Sudan. They considered the deployment of 16,000 Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers to subdue Sudan to be excessive, but when Sudan became theirs, they found this number insufficient and increased it with all kinds of weapons and formations at Egypt's expense and from the Egyptian treasury.

As for the Sudan provinces, all of them were organized after its recapture and the secession of its peripheries, and they are as follows: