Libya–Sudan border

History

Britain invaded Egypt in 1882, establishing a protectorate over an area that had hitherto being nominally subject to the Ottoman Empire. In the 1890s the British conquered Sudan, and in 1899 a condominium was established which created Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. In September 1911 Italy invaded the nominally-Ottoman Vilayet of Tripolitania, and the Treaty of Ouchy was signed the following year by which the Ottomans formally ceded sovereignty of the area over to Italy. Italy organised the newly conquered regions into the colonies of Italian Cyrenaica and Italian Tripolitania and gradually began pushing further south; in 1934 they united the two territories as Italian Libya.

In 1925 Britain and Italy signed a boundary treaty, whereby the 22nd parallel north was utilised starting at the tripoint with Egypt and proceeding westward, terminating at the border between Italian Libyan and French Equatorial Africa (i.e. the modern Chad-Libya border). The north-west corner of Anglo-Sudan Egyptian thus created was referred to as the Sarra Triangle; this latter area was ceded to Italy on 20 July 1934, and the boundary re-drawn at its current position. On 7 January 1935 France and Italy signed a treaty which shifted the French Equatorial Africa-Libya boundary southwards (creating the Aouzou Strip, thereby also shifting the Libya-Sudan southwards slightly, however this agreement was never formally ratified by both parties and was thus never implemented.

During the North African Campaign of the Second World War Italy was defeated and its African colonies were occupied by the Allied powers, with Libya split into British and French zones of occupation. Libya was later granted full independence on 2 December 1951, followed by Sudan in 1956.