This literature is important for its explo- ration of geographical knowledge and the processes by which power is enforced and represented in colonial encounters; but this literature remains situated in one definition of empire—European—which limits the defini- tion of geographical knowledge. Muhammad Alï's Egypt also experienced an exercise in imperial imagination, an exercise that proved to be highly influential on successive generations. Although ultimately Muhammad Alï's manpower and other resources proved far less effective than those of Great Britain or France, his attempts to colonize the Sudan had great impact on the future of the Nile Valley and on how Egyptians came to draw bound- aries in their sense of nationhood and nationalism.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 128