Felice Beato Yokohama silver exchange. From 1884 to 1885 Beato was the official photographer of the expeditionary forces led by Baron (later Viscount) G.J. Wolseley to Khartoum, Sudan, in relief of General Charles Gordon. Briefly back in England in 1886, Beato lectured the London and Provincial Photographic Society on photographic techniques. He arrived in Burma probably in December 1886, after Upper Burma had been annexed by the British in late 1885. Much publicity had been made in the British press about the three Anglo-Burmese Wars, which had started in 1825 and culminated in December 1885 with the fall of Mandalay and the
Khartoum North the area of the Nile confluence before the Egyptians established Khartoum as their military garrison and administrative center in the 1820s. It was thereafter eclipsed by the Egyptian Khartoum, its Mahdist replacement Omdurman, and the British refounding of Khartoum following their reconquest of the country in 1898. Khartoum North began to grow again, however, as the southern terminus of the Sudan Military Railroad, which was completed in 1899. (The Blue Nile was bridged in 1910 and the line extended to Sennar, but Khartoum North continued to serve as the main railroad station and yard.) On August 20, 1998 the Al-Shifa