Muhammad Ali relied on European experts to map conquered Sudan.

Evidence

It is important to remember that Muhammad Alï employed Europeans to help him chart out the recently conquered Sudan immediately after its conquest, a point that Dr. Frederic Bonola Bey, secretary general of the Khedivial Geographic Society, stressed in 1889 when discussing what he considered to be the half-backward, half-modernized liminality of Muhammad Alï’s empire.This may seem strange, Bonola Bey conceded, yet he considered the situation understandable, given the political circumstances of Egypt upon Muhammad Alï’s ascension to power. As a result of the internecine wars that had ravaged Egypt in the aftermath of the French invasion (1798–1801), the new dynasty found that Egypt “had fallen into a state close to barbarity. The Egyptians, absorbed in the struggle of progressive transformation that was being accomplished under the power of their sovereigns, found themselves insufficiently prepared to undertake scientific explorations.” Because of this, Muhammad Alï sought recourse in the geographic experience of Europeans very early, one result of which was the first official map of Kordofan, in the western part of the Sudan, drawn by M. Ruppel in 1829. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 191

It is important to remember that Muhammad Alï employed Europeans to help him chart out the recently conquered Sudan immediately after its conquest, a point that Dr. Frederic Bonola Bey, secretary general of the Khedivial Geographic Society, stressed in 1889 when discussing what he considered to be the half-backward, half-modernized liminality of Muhammad Alï’s empire.This may seem strange, Bonola Bey conceded, yet he considered the situation understandable, given the political circumstances of Egypt upon Muhammad Alï's ascension to power. As a result of the internecine wars that had ravaged Egypt in the aftermath of the French invasion (1798–1801), the new dynasty found that Egypt "had fallen into a state close to barbarity. The Egyptians, absorbed in the struggle of progressive transformation that was being accomplished under the power of their sovereigns, found themselves insufficiently prepared to undertake scientific explorations." Because of this, Muhammad Alï sought recourse in the geographic experience of Europeans very early, one result of which was the first official map of Kordofan, in the western part of the Sudan, drawn by M. Ruppel in 1829. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 191

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels broader literature on how colonial knowledge production (mapping, surveying) was outsourced to European scientific expertise — connects to discussions of cartography as a colonial tool.
• QUESTION: The framing that Egyptians were ‘insufficiently prepared to undertake scientific explorations’ is Bonola’s rationalization — worth interrogating whether this was skill deficit or deliberate dependency politics.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 191