Napoleon's invasion and Muhammad Ali's new Egypt
A French invasion shatters the old order, and an Ottoman officer, Muhammad Ali, seizes power and forces Egypt into the modern world with a conscript army, factories and schools.
- Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East — Juan Cole, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
- All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt — Khaled Fahmy, Cambridge University Press (1997)
- Modern Egypt: The Formation of a Nation-State — Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., Westview Press (2004)
- The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 2: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century — M. W. Daly (ed.), Cambridge University Press (1998)
- The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)
In July 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte landed at Alexandria with some 35,000 soldiers and more than 150 scholars and scientists. France wanted to strike at Britain’s route to India and to build an empire in the East. On 21 July, at the Battle of the Pyramids (fought near Imbaba, within sight of Giza), French infantry squares cut down the famous Mamluk cavalry, and Napoleon entered Cairo.
- Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East — Juan Cole, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
- The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)
Occupation
Napoleon presented himself as a friend of Islam and liberator from the Mamluks, but Egyptians experienced a foreign occupation. Cairo rose in revolt in October 1798, and the French shelled al-Azhar and rode horses into the mosque; a second uprising followed in 1800. The great Cairene chronicler Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti recorded both his curiosity about French science and his disgust at their arrogance. Britain’s navy destroyed the French fleet at Aboukir Bay in August 1798, trapping the army, and in 1801 British and Ottoman forces made the French leave.
- Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East — Juan Cole, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
- The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)
- Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East — Juan Cole, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
The pasha
In the chaos that followed, an Albanian officer in the Ottoman army, Muhammad Ali (Mehmed Ali), won the support of Cairo’s religious leaders and merchants, and in 1805 the sultan recognised him as governor. In 1811 he invited the remaining Mamluk leaders to a ceremony at the Cairo Citadel and had them massacred, leaving himself master of Egypt.
- All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt — Khaled Fahmy, Cambridge University Press (1997)
- Modern Egypt: The Formation of a Nation-State — Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., Westview Press (2004)
He set out to build a modern army on the European model and the state to pay for it. From the 1820s he conscripted Egyptian peasants, for the first time in centuries, into a force that reached well over 100,000 men. He took control of land and trade, forced farmers to grow long-staple cotton for export, set up factories, arsenals and a printing press at Bulaq, and sent student missions to France. Schools of medicine, engineering and languages trained a new Egyptian elite, among them the scholar Rifa’a al-Tahtawi, whose account of Paris introduced many Egyptians to European ideas.
- All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt — Khaled Fahmy, Cambridge University Press (1997)
- Modern Egypt: The Formation of a Nation-State — Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., Westview Press (2004)
- The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 2: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century — M. W. Daly (ed.), Cambridge University Press (1998)
Empire and limits
Muhammad Ali’s army fought for the sultan in Arabia, destroying the first Saudi state in 1818, and conquered Sudan from 1820. It fought in Greece, then turned against the sultan himself: in the 1830s his son Ibrahim Pasha took Syria and defeated Ottoman armies deep in Anatolia. The European powers, led by Britain, intervened in 1840 and forced him back to Egypt, but granted his family the hereditary governorship.
- Modern Egypt: The Formation of a Nation-State — Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., Westview Press (2004)
- The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 2: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century — M. W. Daly (ed.), Cambridge University Press (1998)
- A History of Saudi Arabia (2nd edition) — Madawi Al-Rasheed, Cambridge University Press (2010)
The price
The cost to ordinary Egyptians was huge. Peasants were dragged into the army in chains; families fled their villages; some men cut off fingers or blinded an eye to escape service. Forced labour dug canals, including the Mahmudiyya canal to Alexandria, at great loss of life.
- All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt — Khaled Fahmy, Cambridge University Press (1997)
Muhammad Ali died in 1849, and his descendants ruled Egypt as khedives, sultans and kings until 1952. His mosque, with its Ottoman domes and pencil minarets, still dominates the Cairo skyline from the Citadel, a reminder of the man who, for good and ill, began modern Egypt.
- Modern Egypt: The Formation of a Nation-State — Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., Westview Press (2004)
- Cairo — André Raymond, Harvard University Press (2000)
Muhammad Ali gave Egypt an army, industry, schools, translations of European science and a real measure of independence from Istanbul, making it a regional power. Nationalist and official histories long honoured him as the father of the modern nation.
- Modern Egypt: The Formation of a Nation-State — Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., Westview Press (2004)
- The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 2: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century — M. W. Daly (ed.), Cambridge University Press (1998)
Khaled Fahmy and others argue Muhammad Ali was an Ottoman dynast building power for his family, not an Egyptian patriot. His reforms rested on forced conscription, corvée labour and state monopolies that brought terrible suffering to the fellahin, some of whom maimed themselves to escape the army.
- All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt — Khaled Fahmy, Cambridge University Press (1997)
French tradition long celebrated the expedition for its scholars, the Description de l'Égypte and the Rosetta Stone, as the moment modern Egyptology and Western science reached the Nile. Historians such as Juan Cole stress instead the violence of an imperial occupation.
- Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East — Juan Cole, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
Why it matters today
Egyptians date their modern history from these fifty years. Muhammad Ali is widely seen as the founder of modern Egypt, and the idea he embodied, a strong, centralising state that drives the country forward from above, still shapes how Egyptians think about government and how their rulers present themselves.