War urgency made Ibrahim abandon French military methods for speed
Evidence
Ibrahim was repeatedly urging him to send him ammunition and supplies promptly “so as not to suffer from the lack of ammunition as I used to do while in the Morea.” His father answered him by saying that he was doing everything possible to meet his requests. Ibrahim replied by saying that it seemed that Engineer Cerisy, who was in charge of the Arsenal in Alexandria, was very slow in preparing ships and sending them to Syria because he was insisting on doing things the “French way.” He proposed to hand over the task of preparing the ships to Hajj ‘Umar because we do not have time to organize our affairs along French lines. What we need now is to prepare our ships with cannons and other supplies. When we finish our business here, and His Highness becomes the [undisputed] lord of these areas, then we can prepare our ships along French and English lines. Only then will we have ample time to do this. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 917
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Shows pragmatic abandonment of European models under time pressure; connects to the broader debate on Egyptian military modernization preceding the army’s later performance.