Muhammad Ali achieved in two decades what three centuries of Ottoman governors could not

Evidence

By the early 1820s, then, the Pasha had managed to undertake what every Ottoman governor before him for the previous three centuries had tried but failed to do, namely, to organize the economy of the province of Egypt and to reap its considerable potential wealth. Had the Pasha died in 1820, he would have been fifty years old and he would have already secured for himself a distinguished place in the history of Egypt and of the Ottoman Empire. He would have been known as the longest serving Ottoman governor of the province of Egypt, one who had managed to make its economy more efficient and to improve the performance of its bureaucracy. He would also have secured for himself the reputation among Egyptians of being one of the most brutal of the Ottoman governors who, through monopolies and corvée, had pushed them to unprecedented levels of poverty and misery. For by the early 1820s labor shortages were already in evidence, resistance to the corvée was acquiring an alarming momentum, resentment to the Pasha’s monopolies system had forced the government to amend its policies and, most significantly, “the rural society was pushed to the limit of its ability to produce and pay taxes.” — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 73

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated interest in Muhammad Ali’s military expansion — the economic base (monopolies, corvée, cotton) that financed the army.