Nationalists claim conscripts discovered an Egyptian identity through warfare

Evidence

The first supposes that the soldiers of this army were fighting in what they believed to be national wars, wars that were waged to defend “Egypt” or to expand its borders. In spite of some isolated acts of resistance to the novel practices of the modern army, these peasant-conscripts, it is commonly argued, came to realize that by participating in these wars they discovered their true sentiments, viz. that they were Egyptians first and foremost, and not Muslims or Ottoman subjects, for example. In this manner the nationalist argument assumes that the army was only a catalyst that helped Egyptians discover their true identity – something that was bound to happen, but which in the absence of that “national” army might simply have taken a longer time to materialize. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 88

Categorization

• XREF: This is the classic ‘army as nation-builder’ thesis; connects to Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities and to militarized-nationalism historiography more broadly.