British hostility targeted Mehmed Ali’s expansion, not his industrialization or trade

Evidence

This chapter has also argued that Britain’s opposition to Mehmed Ali’s policies was not informed by any perceived threat that his “industrialization” schemes posed to British trade, but that it was his imperialist expansion that was the target and cause of British hostility. By expanding far beyond the borders of his province, Mehmed Ali attracted the attention and hostility of Great Britain, who saw in his policies a grave danger to her imperial interests in Asia. It was this perceived danger rather than any threat to losing potential markets in the eastern Mediterranean that attracted British hostility to the Pasha’s expansionary policy. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1589

The present book, while accepting the assumption that Britain did indeed view Mehmed Ali’s activities suspiciously and that her policies as represented and pursued by Lord Palmerston were, in fact, instrumental in curbing Mehmed Ali’s power, does not unproblematically assume that the reason for this hostile stance was its fear of the Pasha’s industrial schemes. Rather, it argues that Mehmed Ali’s imperialist expansion over wide areas of the Ottoman Empire seriously challenged Britain’s more ambitious imperialist designs and was regarded in London and Bombay as a threat to Britain’s possessions in Asia, her communications with India and her influence in Istanbul. … Indeed, this book brings into question this very distinction between “internal” and “external” factors and will argue that it is an outcome of the Pasha’s policies and, significantly, of the manner in which they have been written about, and is not something that Mehmed Ali confronted at the outset of his long career. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 99

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges standard economic narratives of 19th-century Anglo-Egyptian relations; connects to larger debates about why the Concert of Europe checked the Pasha.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1589; Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 99