The Egyptian nation is a construction of nationalist historiography, not a primordial given

Evidence

Moreover, the main criticism that this book has leveled against the nationalist version of Egyptian history is its assumption that “Egypt” has always had a unified, self-contained, clearly recognizable identity, and that its inhabitants have always realized – through their strong attachment to its soil, and through their conscious links to its history that they are, and have always been, clearly and exclusively “Egyptians.” In other words, the main problem of Egyptian nationalist historiography, like all nationalist historiographies, is the assumption that Egypt is an undivided subject and that the Egyptian nation is a primordial, eternal entity possessing a unified, conscious will potentially capable of autonomy and sovereignty. Studying the army of Egypt in the first half of the nineteenth century, an army that is supposed to have been the national institution par excellence, this book found no evidence that this central institution functioned along national lines. Not only did the idea of the army as being a national one never cross anyone’s mind from the Pasha all the way down to any of his soldiers, there was not even a pretense at portraying the wars that the men were dying in as national wars waged to defend “Egypt” or to deliver her from foreign tyranny. As such, this book has attempted to show that the nation has been written into existence by nationalist historians and that it is partly an outcome of nationalist historiography and not a given that already existed prior to it. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1691

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Hobsbawm’s invented traditions and parallels how colonial-era nationalisms were retroactively projected backward; also resonates with the reader’s interest in how the army’s actual functioning departs from later nationalist framing.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the nation is an outcome rather than a cause of nationalist historiography is paradigm-level, but this chapter states it as summation rather than developing it fresh.