dive was made therefore to understand that
he must not make such changes in the administration without a previous
agreement with the representative of the protecting power; and a
compromise was effected by which Fakhri Pasha retired, and the post of
premier was confided once more to Riaz. With this compromise the
friction between the khedive and Sir Evelyn Baring, who had now become
Lord Cromer, did not end. For some time Abbas Hilmi clung to his idea of
liberating himself from all control, and secretly encouraged a
nationalist and anti-British agitation in the native press; but he
gradually came to perceive the folly, as well as the danger to himself,
of such a course, and accordingly refrained from giving any overt
occasion for complaint or protest. In like manner the relations between
the British officials and their Egyptian colleagues gradually became
more cordial, so that it was found possible at last to reform the local
administration in the provinces according to the recommendations of Mr
(afterwards Sir) Eldon Gorst, who had been appointed adviser to the
ministry of the interior. Nubar Pasha, it is true, who succeeded Riaz as
prime minister in April 1894, objected to some of Mr Gorst's
recommendations, and in November 1895 resigned. He was succeeded by
Mustafa Fehmi, who had always shown a conciliatory spirit, and who had
been on that account, as above stated, summarily dismissed by the
khedive in January 1893. After his reinstatement the Anglo-Egyptian
condominium worked without serious friction.

Fashoda.

The success of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, and the consequent
economic and financial prosperity of Egypt proper, rendered it possible,
during 1896-1898, to recover from the Mahdists the Sudanese provinces
(see _Military Operations_), and to delimit in that part of Africa, in
accordance with Anglo-Egyptian interests, the respective spheres of
influence of Great Britain and France. The arrangement was not effected
without serious danger of a European conflict. Taking advantage of the
temporary weakness of Egypt, the French government formed the project of
seizing the Upper Nile valley and uniting her possessions in West Africa
with those at the entrance to the Red Sea. With this object a small
force under Major Marchand was sent from the French Congo into the
Bahr-el-Ghazal, with orders to occupy Fashoda on the Nile; whilst a
Franco-Abyssinian Expedition was despatched from the eastward, to join
hand