Sultanate of Egypt

The Sultanate of Egypt was a British protectorate that existed from December 1914 to March 1922. When the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, Britain deposed Khedive Abbas II, who was suspected of pro-Ottoman sympathies, and replaced him with his uncle Hussein Kamel, who took the title of sultan. The new sultanate formally severed the nominal Ottoman sovereignty that had survived since 1805, but real power lay with the British high commissioner and the occupying army. The war brought hardship: cotton was requisitioned at low prices, grain and animals were commandeered, and tens of thousands of Egyptians were conscripted into labour and transport corps. After the war, Saad Zaghlul and the newly formed Wafd demanded independence at the Paris Peace Conference. The British arrested and deported the Wafd leaders in March 1919, triggering a nationwide revolution of students, workers, women and peasants. Hussein Kamel's successor, Fuad I, took the throne in 1917, and Britain finally issued a unilateral declaration of independence on 28 February 1922, transforming the sultanate into the Kingdom of Egypt. Cairo was the capital.