British historians projected their own colonial ideals onto Mehmed Ali

Evidence

If this is why Mehmed Ali is useful for the Egyptian nationalist project, his appeal exceeds it to touch on other nationalisms, too. For the Pasha was equally mesmerizing for European as well as Egyptian historians, and this requires an explanation. The cases of Dodwell and Driault offer good examples. Dodwell was fascinated by the character and policies of the Great Pasha because he found in Mehmed Ali’s career an echo of what he believed the British were doing in India. For like the British viceroys in the sub-continent Mehmed Ali “hated disorder and corruption and misgovernment. Like them, he desired freedom in order that a new and better form of government might be framed.” Dodwell, therefore, offers a good example of a British historian who had a wonderful topic at hand that allowed him to look back a hundred years and nostalgically write about a time when Britannia could comfortably and uncontestedly rule the waves and when she was still confident that she could carry the “white man’s burden.” In other words, Dodwell’s book is as much a book on British imperial history as it is a study of the Egyptian Pasha. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1671

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and the broader literature on how imperial histories read the colonial ‘other’ through self-image.