Cromer, Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer (1841–1917)

English colonial administrator. In Egypt, he was controller general of finance 1879–80 and effective ruler as agent and consul general 1883–1907. He rescued the government from threatened bankruptcy, reorganized the administration, and laid the foundations of modern Egypt.

During his administration the Sudan was restored to Anglo-Egyptian rule, settled by the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.

He was born in Norfolk, entered the Royal Artillery in 1858, was aide-de-camp to Henry Stokes in the Ionian Islands in 1861, and was appointed private secretary to the viceroy of India 1872–76. His first appointment in Egypt was as commissioner of the Egyptian public debt in 1877. He was made Baron Cromer in 1892, viscount in 1898, and earl in 1901.