Brutal force failed to deter desertion, driving the shift to psychological control

Evidence

Gradually the authorities came to realize that what was needed was a system of control and surveillance that would be similar to that reached to circumvent the role of the village shaykhs reviewed in the last chapter. Rather than depending on sentry guards and bedouin patrols catching deserters, the aim was to imprint on the minds of the soldiers the idea of internment in the first place and to subject them to a regime of surveillance that would make obedience and discipline seem natural and be habitually practiced. That system, it was hoped, would target the minds of the recruits and not only their bodies; a system that would, in the words of an eighteenth-century French military thinker, bind them “by the chain of their own ideas” rather than “constrain them with iron chains.” — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 664 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Discipline collapsed and mass desertion followed the fall of Acre; Egyptian army discipline shifted from brutal force to abstract internalized controls; Mehmed Ali’s army shifted from guarding against desertion to imprinting discipline on soldiers’ minds — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 664 (+1 more)

Related

• Mehmed Ali’s army shifted from guarding against desertion to imprinting discipline on soldiers’ minds (similarity 0.88)
• Desertion and rebellion fundamentally undermined the performance of Ali’s army (similarity 0.88)
• The Egyptian army replaced spectacular punishment with rehabilitative discipline (similarity 0.87)
• The Egyptian army shifted from terror-based coercion to non-physical disciplinary methods (similarity 0.85)
• Egyptian soldiers obeyed orders because desertion and retreat both meant court martial (similarity 0.85)
• Coercion-based internment failed to deter Egyptian soldiers from desertion (similarity 0.83)
• Syria’s prosperity and shared Arabic language drew Mehmed Ali’s soldiers out of their camps. (similarity 0.83)
• Egyptian soldiers continually breached camp boundaries meant to isolate them (similarity 0.82)
• Muhammad Ali’s army trained soldiers to obey orders mechanically without reflection (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptian army discipline shifted from brutal force to abstract internalized controls (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptian army discipline adopted Foucault’s disciplinary power over retribution (similarity 0.81)
• Within roughly a decade Egypt replaced Mamluk-style warriors with a trained modern army (similarity 0.80)
• Albanian troops resisted discipline because they regarded Mehmed Ali as first among equals (similarity 0.79)
• Bedouins and sapper regiments proved unreliable as camp guards due to desertion (similarity 0.79)
• Military drill and surveillance failed to overwrite Egyptian soldiers’ civilian loyalties and thinking. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Egyptian army discipline shifted from brutal force to abstract internalized controls #corroborates (0.80)
• Mehmed Ali’s army shifted from guarding against desertion to imprinting discipline on soldiers’ minds #expands (0.70) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 664