Traditionally the home of the Lugbara, Kakwa,[1] Bari,[2] and Moru peoples,[3] the area became part of the Ottoman-Egyptian province of Equatoria, and was first visited by Europeans in 1841/42, becoming an ivory and slave trading centre.

[5] Charles George Gordon succeeded Baker as Governor of Equatoria in 1874 and noting the unhealthy climate of Gondokoro, moved the administrative centre downstream to a spot he called Lado,[6] laying the town out in the pattern of an Indian cantonment, with short, wide and straight streets, and shady trees.

[8] Although Gordon stationed over three hundred soldiers throughout the region[9] his efforts to consolidate Egyptian control over the area were unsuccessful and when he resigned as governor in 1876, only Lado and the few garrison settlements along the Nile could be considered administered.

These negotiations resulted in the 1894 British-Congolese Treaty, signed on 12 May, under which the British leased all of the Nile basin south of the 10° north latitude to King Leopold II of the Belgians, sovereign of the Congo Free State, for the period of his lifetime.

[15] The treaty also dictated that the whole of the Bahr-el-Ghazal (with the exception of the Lado Enclave) be ceded to the Congo State during the lifetime of King Leopold "and his successors".

[3] The official plan was to occupy the enclave, but the ultimate aim was to use Lado as a springboard to capturing Khartoum to the north and control a strip of Africa from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

"[30] In May 1906 the British cancelled the lease of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, although Leopold refused to evacuate the region until the promised railway between the Lado Enclave and the Congo frontier was built.

[31] The Lado Enclave was important to the Congo Free State as it included Rejaf, which was the terminus for boats on the Nile, as the rapids there proved a barrier to further travel.

Efforts were made to properly defend Lado against any possible incursion by another colonial power, with twelve heavy Krupp fort guns installed in November 1906.

As a result, the Congo Free State was unable to create an effective government, leading to civil unrest within the enclave.

[34][full citation needed] There were also rumours of gold deposits in Lado which led to great interest in the region in the early years of the twentieth century.

The shifting sandbanks of the Nile led to islands on the border of the enclave and the Sudan regularly created or destroyed and made navigability difficult.

[41] English traveler Edward Fothergill visited the Sudan around 1901, basing himself at Mongalla between Lado to the south and Kiro to the north, but on the east shore of the river.

[42] While a large percentage of its population were Indigenous inhabitants, many Bari left the enclave, escaping Congo Free State rule, and settled on the eastern (Sudanese) shore of the Nile.

Starting about six weeks after Leopold's death in December 1909,[45] from the years 1910 to 1912, hunters arrived in great numbers and shot thousands of elephants before Sudanese officials were able to take control of the area.

[54] On 10 June 1910, following Leopold's death, the district officially became a province of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, with British Army veteran Captain Chauncey Hugh Stigand appointed administrator.

However, in reality, following Leopold's death and the subsequent withdrawal of Belgian colonial troops, British authorities neglected to administer the area, leaving the enclave to become a "no man's land".

[60] Although the Lado Enclave was a small, remote area in central Africa, it captured the imagination of world leaders and authors, becoming a byword for an exotic region, and was used as a setting for their stories.