Years of training failed to transform peasant soldiers’ civilian loyalties.

Evidence

Second, it shows that in spite of years of training, of being subjected to a strict system of surveillance and control and in spite of continuous drills and exercises, the sergeant-major in question did not show signs that all this had had any significant effect on the way he was supposed to think and act – i.e. as a soldier and not as a fellah/civilian. Having come across a fellow villager, it was natural for him to extend him an invitation to stay with him on the camp and he could not see why his commanding officers were so harsh and inhospitable to his visitor. When his friend was arrested he could not see why he was being reprimanded and punished. His body might seem to have been closely controlled, but his heart and mind appeared to still belong to a different world, that of civilian life back in the nostalgically remote lands of Egypt. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1110

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Core to the reader’s question: documentary oversight above, actual army performance in practice.

Related

• Military drill and surveillance failed to overwrite Egyptian soldiers’ civilian loyalties and thinking. (similarity 0.86)
• Conscription aimed to drastically reshape the peasant soldier’s body and daily habits (similarity 0.86)
• Failed Albanian training and slave losses forced reliance on conscripted fellahin. (similarity 0.84)
• Bedouins and sapper regiments proved unreliable as camp guards due to desertion (similarity 0.83)
• Mehmed Ali’s army failed to command its soldiers’ inner loyalties (similarity 0.82)
• Recruits understood soldier-officer authority through personal village ties, not military hierarchy. (similarity 0.79)
• Egyptian conscripts remained emotionally autonomous despite drill (similarity 0.79)
• Battlefield obedience is a poor test of an army’s real discipline (similarity 0.78)
• The training manuals’ robotic ideal never matched real soldiers’ behavior (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Military histories written from commander viewpoint erase soldiers’ humanity #corroborates (0.65)