Egyptian villages were rebuilt under French supervision according to censused family data in 1846

Evidence

The village of Kafr al-Zayat in the Nile Delta was part of an estate placed under the control of Muhammad Ali’s son Ibrahim (the man whose unfortunate encounter with a Birmingham whale was mentioned in chapter 1). In 1846 its inhabitants were instructed to draw up a list of the families of the village, their animals, and the different ‘industries’ in which they were engaged. In accordance with this list the village was then rebuilt, under the supervision of French engineers charged with what was called ‘the reconstruction of the villages of Egypt’. The inhabitants were moved into new houses, with each family allotted rooms according to its size and its social rank (ordinary, well-to-do, rich, or foreign). — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 157

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: colonial census-and-rebuild — how paperwork surveillance (listing families, animals, industries) physically reconstructed living space, presaging modern algorithmic urban planning.
• XREF: Connects to Scott’s ‘Seeing Like a State’ high-modernist reordering of living space, and to the chapter 1 theme of Egyptian order imposed by European techniques.