Muhammad Ali’s Sudan expansion was European-style mercantile imperialism born of unmet domestic markets

Evidence

Like Lawson,Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot concludes that, under Muhammad Alï, the Egyptian campaigns were imperial enterprises that do not fit the model of the Ottoman Empire. Marsot believes Egypt needed to expand because of the paucity of markets within its own borders. Had there been a more equitable distribution of wealth, Egyptians could have created markets for their own products. The struggle for economic and political control that Lawson describes as having occurred among the dominant elites of Egyptian society prevented this from occurring, thus leaving Muhammad Alï with only one option, according to Marsot:“an imperialist one that fitted in with mercantile thought with its imperialist flavour.” And so the viceroy “followed the practice of earlier European mercantile countries like England and France who had sought to build colonies in the New World, and for the same reasons. That is why he regarded military expansion and imperialist designs as essential to his economic development, and his economic development as essential for independence.” — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 184

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing framework comparing Egyptian vs Sudanese coloniality — Marsot explains why Egypt became an imperial actor itself.