In 1914, the legal fiction of Ottoman sovereignty was ended, and the Sultanate of Egypt (which the Ottomans had destroyed in 1517) was re-established, but Egypt was not legally independent. Though the United Kingdom did not annex Egypt, it made the restored sultanate a protectorate (a state not part of the British Empire but nonetheless administered by the United Kingdom), thereby formalising the political and military role that it had exercised in Egypt since 1882.