Egypt’s national identity was constituted in the nineteenth century by Mehmed Ali’s policies

Evidence

This book offers a critique of this particular reading of Egyptian history. While not concentrating on the person of Mehmed Ali Pasha, it investigates his career closely to see how it is read in a manner that makes the three centuries preceding it appear as tyrannical and foreign. More fundamentally, it deals with Mehmed Ali’s long career as a way of explaining how “Egypt” came to be seen as a nation with a purposeful, clear identity. Rather than taking “Egypt” as referring to a nation with an unadulterated identity inhabiting a territory with distinct borders that sharply distinguish it from other nations, this book argues that “Egypt” came to refer to a nation so defined only in the nineteenth century and mostly as a result of Mehmed Ali’s policies. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 87

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Undermines the assumption that Egypt’s nationhood predates the modern period, arguing it was produced by a foreign-born Ottoman governor’s state-building — a paradigm-shifting claim about what a ‘nation’ is.