The conscript army did not aim at Egyptian national independence.

Evidence

This chapter has attempted to challenge the received wisdom that the Pasha, by founding his army and conscripting Egyptians into it, was trying to gain independence for Egypt as meaning a nation-state. While it is acknowledged that the Pasha himself was Turkish-speaking and that he might not have seen his army or his policies in general in an Egyptian nationalistic light, it is sometimes claimed that, nevertheless, he and “his new administration inevitably put Egypt on the path of independent statehood and self-recognition as having a separate identity from other Muslims and Ottomans… [and that] without his efforts it might have taken Egyptians much longer to be able to call Egypt their own.” We have yet to deal with the Pasha’s own personal feelings towards and thoughts about Egypt; in this chapter we questioned the effect of the army on Egyptian nationalism by looking at Ibrahim Pasha’s policies towards his Arabic-speaking soldiers, by investigating the composition of the officer corps and the relationship between soldiers and officers, and finally by trying to sketch the reaction of the men to the brutal regime of the Pasha that they came to experience and confront in a very physical way. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1392

Categorization

• QUESTION: The chapter attacks the nationalist reading of the Pasha’s army but defers his own feelings - whether this revisionist position fully holds awaits the next chapter.