a basis for interfering in Egyptian affairs. Shortly thereafter, the United Kingdom along with the other Great Powers deposed Isma'il in favour of his son, Tewfik Pasha. Tewfik was seen as a puppet of the foreign powers who had deposed his father, a perception heightened by his repressive policies. Discontent with Tewfik's rule ignited the Orabi Revolt of 1881 led by nationalist army officers and soldiers under Ahmed Orabi. Orabi came from a peasant family, and his rise through the ranks of the military in spite of his humble background had been made possible by the reforms of Isma'il, reforms which he saw as being under attack by Tewfik. The prospect of revolutionary instability in Egypt, and the inferred danger to the Suez Canal, prompted the United Kingdom to intervene militarily in support of Tewfik. British occupation Though legally a self-governing vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt had been virtually independent since 1805, with its own hereditary monarchy, military, legal system, currency, and empire (chiefly in Sudan). The brief Anglo-Egyptian War that resulted from the United Kingdom's support of the Khedive did not alter the Khedivate of Egypt's de jure status, however, it left the United Kingdom in de facto control over the country, a state of affairs that became known as the veiled protectorate. In the years that followed, the United Kingdom would cement its political and military position in Egypt, and subsequently in Egypt's domains in Sudan, with the British high representative in Cairo exercising more power than the Khedive himself. In 1888, at the Convention of Constantinople, the United Kingdom won the right to protect the Suez Canal with military force, giving Britain a permanent base from which to dominate Egyptian politics In 1899, the United Kingdom forced Tewfik's successor as Khedive, the nationalist Abbas II, to transform Sudan from an integral part of Egypt into a condominium in which sovereignty would be shared between Egypt and the United Kingdom. Once established, the condominium witnessed ever-decreasing Egyptian control, and would for most of its existence be governed in practice by the United Kingdom through the Governor-General in Khartoum. For the remainder of his reign, this would be one of the flashpoints between the nationalist Khedive Abbas II and the United Kingdom, with Abbas seeking to arrest and reverse the process of increasing British control in Egypt and Sudan. Following the Ottoman Empire's entry in to the