Bare coercion failed to conscript peasants who evaded with local help

Evidence

The early methods of gathering peasants from their villages have shown that reliance on naked force was not efficient enough: the fellahin had discovered ways to evade it and were assisted in this by the village shaykhs. What the desertion lists, the registers of absconders and, above all, the census, represent is a new method of control and manipulation in which the authorities aimed at always having the initiative and tried to avoid being at the mercy of the local, unreliable officials. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 484

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Milgrom law-merchant thesis that institutions emerge where naked enforcement fails and information becomes the binding constraint.