Non-European empires like Muhammad Ali’s Egypt also produced imperial geographical knowledge

Evidence

Anna Godlewska, Felix Driver, and J. B. Harley, to name a few, have examined how mapmaking in Asia and Africa was affected by and informed by European imperial campaigns. This literature is important for its exploration of geographical knowledge and the processes by which power is enforced and represented in colonial encounters; but this literature remains situated in one definition of empire—European—which limits the definition of geographical knowledge. Muhammad Alï's Egypt also experienced an exercise in imperial imagination, an exercise that proved to be highly influential on successive generations. Although ultimately Muhammad Alï’s manpower and other resources proved far less effective than those of Great Britain or France, his attempts to colonize the Sudan had great impact on the future of the Nile Valley and on how Egyptians came to draw boundaries in their sense of nationhood and nationalism. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 128

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to postcolonial geography scholarship (Godlewska, Driver, Harley) and to the wider comparative coloniality framework the reader is building around Egypt vs Sudan.
• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘Grafting & Growth’ piece’s broader theme of non-Western infrastructure/imperial projects as underappreciated.