Jamal Awil

← All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…

The army's operations unwittingly forged Egyptian nationalism through anti-Ottoman resentment [causal]

It could be argued, however, that Mehmed Ali's army was instrumental in propagating the idea of Egyptian nationalism, albeit unwittingly. It did this not because the Pasha, his son, or any of their chief military commanders thought of the various wars they waged as "national"; the dynastic aspect of these successive military confrontations, as was shown above, was clear to all to see, and Ibrahim, in spite of his often-quoted "Egyptian" sentiments, had no doubts about it. … Nevertheless, the army did unwittingly contribute to the rise of Egyptian nationalism by homogenizing the experience of tens of thousands of Egyptians over a period that exceeded twenty years by instilling in them the feeling of hatred of the "Ottomans," and thus helped in their collective "imagination" of the nation. This creation of the "other" that wars are singularly successful at doing was operational in Mehmed Ali's army not in directing the men's sentiments of animosity against the army of the Greek rebels, or the Wahhabi brigands, let alone the army of the Ottoman Sultan, but against their own Turkish-speaking officers. … These feelings of animosity towards the "Ottoman" eventually came to fruition two or three generations later when the frustrated leaders of these fellah-soldiers, the middle-ranking, Arabic-speaking officers, broke out in open rebellion together with other disgruntled members of Egyptian society against Turco-Circassian domination.

XREF: Pays off loc 1368 (anti-Turkish nationalism emerged among fellah officers) by tracing that sentiment back to its army-instilled origins decades earlier. Builds on: "Anti-Turkish Egyptian nationalism emerged first among fellah army officers."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 1371