However efficient these new tactics might have been, the authorities continued to suffer from the critical lack of any reliable information about the population: its size, its age composition, location, professions, etc. From the early years of the “conscription waves” the authorities in Cairo knew that no consistent conscription policy could properly be implemented without such information, however vague it might be. … Believing that “the welfare of the people depends on a good census” the Pasha as early as 1827 ordered the drafting of a general census for the Northern Provinces. Eventually, this process of gathering detailed information about the population and categorizing it under different headings culminated in 1845 in the drafting of the first national census based on the number of households.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims about surveillance techniques (loc 481) and the modern state's administrative reach (loc 119), extending the theme of state knowledge-gathering as a governance tool. Builds on: "Surveillance techniques curbed peasants fleeing conscription in Egyptian villages."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 483