Training manuals reduced soldiers to interchangeable standardized cogs

Evidence

Training manuals, nevertheless, were the tools by which this goal was finally reached. By specifying the detailed manner in which the most basic acts were to be performed, these texts brought about a much stricter way of disciplining the soldiers. Through observing and controlling the most simple act (the glance) of the soldiers, and by manipulating their actions, breaking them down to their constituent units, and then ordering them to be executed according to the signals issued by the officers in the form of the command shouts, the body of the soldier was finally reduced to performing a function similar to that of a cog in a machine. The soldier ceased to be an individual, an integral human being and instead he came to occupy a unified slot, a standard position that did not, in fact, should not differ from that of any other soldier. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 743

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Training manuals reduced the Egyptian soldier to a machinelike interchangeable component. (similarity 0.89)
• Egyptian drill manuals reduced soldiers to interchangeable functioning cogs. (similarity 0.88)
• Early Egyptian military training began by standardizing soldiers’ physical appearance. (similarity 0.81)
• The training manuals’ robotic ideal never matched real soldiers’ behavior (similarity 0.81)
• Egyptian training manuals required officers to physically rectify recruits’ bodily differences (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Egyptian training manuals required officers to physically rectify recruits’ bodily differences #complicates (0.70) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 736
• Training manuals and penal codes reveal little about how the army actually worked #contradicts (0.60) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 909