This book challenges this powerful, monolithic discourse of Egyptian nationalism. It argues that the Pasha's army did indeed turn the population of Egypt into loyal and devoted citizens of Egypt. This it managed to do, however, not by "opening their eyes" to their true identities, or helping them to discover their hidden sentiments, but by subjecting them to a rigorous and tight disciplining regime whereby their bodies and minds were minutely controlled so that the Pasha and his elite could accomplish their own ambitions. In that sense the Pasha's army was crucial for "educating" the population of Egypt to believe that fighting for Mehmed Ali and his family was tantamount to giving one's life for the sake of the "nation," a nation that was now thought to have always already existed and which, moreover, demanded the sacrifices of its own citizens. In other words, this book tries to critique that powerful discourse of nationalism by challenging the assumptions on which it is based and specifically by arguing that the "Egyptian nation" was not a primordial, pre-existing entity waiting to be realized as argued in the nationalist discourse which claims to be only describing it, but that it was a product of that very same discourse which attempted to write it into being.

XREF: Connects to broader constructivist critiques of nationalism (e.g., Anderson's imagined communities, Hobsbawm's invented traditions), contrasting primordialist assumptions. Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 93