Within roughly a decade Egypt replaced Mamluk-style warriors with a trained modern army

Evidence

Gradually the authorities came to realize that what was needed was a system of control and surveillance that would be similar to that reached to circumvent the role of the village shaykhs reviewed in the last chapter. Rather than depending on sentry guards and bedouin patrols catching deserters, the aim was to imprint on the minds of the soldiers the idea of internment in the first place and to subject them to a regime of surveillance that would make obedience and discipline seem natural and be habitually practiced. That system, it was hoped, would target the minds of the recruits and not only their bodies; a system that would, in the words of an eighteenth-century French military thinker, bind them “by the chain of their own ideas” rather than “constrain them with iron chains.” — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 664 (#expands, via linked claim)

This narration will not start at the beginning, as he would have liked, with his childhood in Albania or with his arrival in Egypt, or at the end, as some nationalist historians would have preferred, highlighting his showdown with Great Britain, but in the middle of his long career as governor of Egypt, and precisely in the year AH 1236/AD 1820–1. This is the year that Mehmed Ali started to found a modern army in Egypt, an army which was based on conscription and which relied on the institutions of the modern state that he founded mainly to serve that army. It is this army, rather than Mehmed Ali’s character or his person, that is the subject of this book, and it is this central institution that is studied below in order to analyze the nature of Egyptian society in the first half of the nineteenth century. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 70 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Egyptian peasant conscription began as a three-year substitute for Turkish troops; Egyptian infantry discipline replaced the Mamluks’ cavalry-based personal valor model.; Egyptian army discipline shifted from brutal force to abstract internalized controls (+2 more)

Related

• Mehmed Ali founded a conscription-based army in Egypt in 1820 (similarity 0.91)
• Mehmed Ali conscripted even self-maimed men into his army and projects (similarity 0.90)
• The modern army built in 1820-1 enabled Ali’s expansion. (similarity 0.90)
• Mehmed Ali’s army founded Egyptian nationalism through control practices, not enlightenment. (similarity 0.89)
• Egyptian peasant conscription began as a three-year substitute for Turkish troops (similarity 0.89)
• Ali founded his conscript army in 1820-1 to secure his rule against Istanbul (similarity 0.89)
• Egypt’s modern army was founded through conscription in 1820–21 (similarity 0.89)
• The army’s surveillance and control practices, not enlightenment ideas, founded modern Egypt (similarity 0.86)
• Mehmed Ali’s army was an institution of coercive power that transformed Egyptian society (similarity 0.86)
• Syria’s two million people attracted Mehmed Ali’s conscription plans (similarity 0.85)
• The Egyptian army replaced spectacular punishment with rehabilitative discipline (similarity 0.85)
• The Egyptian army coerced conscripts for the Pasha’s dynastic wars (similarity 0.85)
• Mehmed Ali’s army shifted from guarding against desertion to imprinting discipline on soldiers’ minds (similarity 0.85)
• Conscription transformed the relation between Egyptian government and governed (similarity 0.85)
• Mehmed Ali’s conscript army drove the creation of the modern Egyptian state (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Mehmed Ali’s army shifted from guarding against desertion to imprinting discipline on soldiers’ minds #expands (0.80) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 664
• Mehmed Ali founded a conscription-based army in Egypt in 1820 #corroborates (0.75) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 70
• Egyptian army discipline shifted from brutal force to abstract internalized controls #expands (0.70)