For him the colonization of Egypt is not to be understood in the traditional manner of the process of structuring Egyptian society after the British military takeover in 1882. Rather, it was a process that had started much earlier and which entailed the complete restructuring of Egyptian society – the government bureaucracy, the military, the schools, cities, towns, streets, houses, families and the body of the individual – in such a way that made Egypt not only more profitable, more productive, but also represented the country in a manner that produced the same division of the world into two domains that had been accomplished earlier in Europe and which made it more accessible to European control.

XREF: Challenges the periodization implied in earlier claims about Muhammad Ali's modernization as an independent Egyptian project (loc 23, 70). Pays off: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 113