Economic gain was not the driving motive behind Mehmed Ali’s expansion

Evidence

Marsot, in contrast, does not see that Mehmed Ali was blindly driven toward expansion, and argues that his expansionary policy could best be understood in economic terms. “The value of conquest [did not lie] in conquest itself. It was always posited in terms of what conquest could add to Egypt’s financial situation … Expansion was economic planning carried out by other means.” This argument, however, raises more questions than it seeks to answer. Although it is true that the economic growth that Egypt witnessed during Mehmed Ali’s reign required finding markets, the Egyptian market, as Marsot herself states, was far from saturated. That there were economic benefits to be gained by military expansion does not necessarily mean that these economic benefits were the reason behind such expansion. It might be true, for example, as Lawson argues, that the Hijaz campaign was influenced by the Pasha’s desire to redirect some of the profits of the Red Sea trade towards Egypt; that the Pasha was lured by the alleged gold mines in the Sudan; that the Greek war was entered into partly to re-establish the Egyptian trade with the Aegean; and that Syria provided the Pasha with badly needed sources of timber necessary for his navy, and coal for the production of gunpowder. But to argue that these considerations were decisive in shaping Mehmed Ali’s policy of expansion is to ignore the fact that two of these campaigns were ordered by his Sultan, and that Mehmed Ali agreed to comply with these orders only reluctantly and after considerable hesitation. Moreover, that some economic benefits could be reaped from annexing a certain province does not mean that military occupation was cost-free, and neither Marsot nor Lawson show anything resembling a calculated economic assessment done by Mehmed Ali or Ibrahim weighing the costs and the benefits of military annexation. In fact, when something resembling this assessment was carried out it was to show that the costs of maintaining the army in the annexed provinces far outweighed the revenue accruing from them. … It was suggested, for example, that in an attempt to “increase the productivity” of the province the local peasants should be given the freedom to plant whichever commodities they wanted. Towards the end of the occupation when these problems were still being strongly felt, Ibrahim suggested to his father that taxes be reduced so as to encourage people to be more productive. Mehmed Ali responded by saying that “to increase our revenues we should [encourage the population to] work harder rather than lower our taxes.” He added that he could not accept that the tax burden on the Syrians was heavy since “what we have taken is like an ear from a camel. We should have done as the Europeans do and collected [a flat rate] of 5 percent.” This was after he had received conclusive and clear reports confirming what has been feared all along, namely, that the cost of maintaining the army in Syria was not covered by the revenue raised there. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 200

Categorization

• XREF: The author’s rejection of economic determinism in favor of political/imperial motives for expansion echoes the recurring theme of how ideological and causal explanations compete in historical analysis.