Military administration provided the model for Egypt’s civilian bureaucracy and surveillance state
Evidence
Besides writing the history of this constant struggle between Mehmed Ali and his soldiers, this book is also interested in showing how the army, given its centrality, helped to “modernize” Egypt or, as Mitchell has put it, to “colonize” it. This it does by critically presenting the logic of the military machine as depicted in the different laws, regulations and manuals that were issued to regulate various aspects of military life. For these laws and manuals not only affected and shaped military life; they also offered a model of how society in general could be organized, as indeed it was. For example, as we have seen, effective surveillance and policing systems that would enable the military authorities to track down and catch deserters were generalized throughout the country to establish a truly controlled society where individuals and their movements were monitored. In addition, the army’s need to screen the conscripts medically, to treat them for disease, and to maintain a healthy environment in the crowded camps and barracks provided the impetus to found a medical school, to institute a country-wide vaccination program, and to make the bodies of the soldiers (and eventually of civilians as well) available to the self-assured medical gaze. Finally, the requirement that the soldiers should not live off the lands they marched through or ended up occupying, and that their food, clothes and equipment should be sent from central depots in Egypt to whichever war front they happened to be stationed at, meant that an efficient administrative system was needed that would ease the functioning of the army, and would also provide a model for the civilian bureaucracy to copy. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1698
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Mitchell’s Colonising Egypt and echoes themes of how army logistics shaped state institutions raised elsewhere in the Foucault-informed literature.