Conscription shortfalls drove Egypt to build a modern surveillance state

Evidence

As we shall see below these “gaps” were filled not simply by grabbing more men from the villages to replace those who “were not in their places.” New techniques were implemented to deal with the different kinds of “gaps”: the deserters, those who were medically unfit in the first place and were therefore returned to their villages, and those who died of old age after being conscripted (firar ve murteci ve muteveffi). Accordingly, deserters would be caught by instituting a country-wide system of policing and surveillance; the medically unfit would be treated in newly founded hospitals that would be linked to a modern medical establishment; and the problem of wrongly conscripting old men would be solved if precise information had been collected about the population of the entire country that would be broken down by age, gender, residence, occupation, etc. In short, to fill these “gaps,” the Egyptian state would undertake new tasks that it had hitherto not considered to fall within its duty nor its ability to perform. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 477