Mehmed Ali justified forced fellah labor as necessary for their own good

Evidence

See in this respect the Pasha’s own words quoted by Madden where he says, “I was compelled again for their [i.e. these fellahs’] own sakes, to force them to work, and without the whip they would do nothing”: Madden, Egypt, p. 38. The same author writes shortly afterwards that ”… one thing I am certain of, that whenever Mohammed Ali dies, he will go down to the grave lamented by some fifty or sixty individuals, none of whom are of his country, and execrated by some two millions of his subjects, who are the natives of it”: ibid., p. 44; see also Waghorn’s comment that “[i]t has been insisted that Mohamed Ali has done nothing to better the condition of the Fellah. I reply, he has done everything he can do, not, perhaps, for them, but for their sons”: Thomas Waghorn, Egypt in 1837 (London: Smith Elder, 1837), p. 15. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 168

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the debate on coercion versus paternalism in the Pasha’s modernization project, echoing earlier chapters on conscription and the army’s labor extraction.