hey there on July 1st 1798 Napoleon
Bonaparte landed in Egypt at the head of
a large French army Napoleon won a
series of impressive victories across
Egypt and Syria before abandoning his
army to disease and capture the
disastrous expedition ended in 1801
without too much impact on political
events in Europe but those 3 years were
a political social and religious
earthquake for the Middle East
comfortable ideas about Islamic
superiority were blown away as a
succession of Ottoman and Egyptian
armies failed to dislodge the French
until another European military the
British came to their aid what the
Egyptians did next was extraordinary
Egypt's 19th century represents one of
history's most tantalizing missed
opportunities in the aftermath of the
infidel invasion a soldier arrived from
Ottoman Europe to try to help
reestablish that empires control of
Egypt Mohammed Ali would go on to found
one of the most promising dynasties of
the 1800s for a little while there it
looked like Egypt was about to take its
place alongside the world's great powers
instead Egypt ended the century
subjugated to the British Empire today
we ask what happened with a major
exception we will get into for the
century between 1805 and 1914 Muhammad
Ali's dynasty actually represented a
reassertion of Ottoman power in Egypt in
1517 the ottomans had wrested control of
the territory from the mom looks a
military caste
over the course of the 1700s however as
the Ottoman Sultans floated away on a
cloud of decadence their grip on the
territory got weaker Egypt's incredible
story in the eighteen hundreds is very
much wrapped up with the Ottoman
Empire's frantic but failed attempt to
save itself even when Egyptian soldiers
were defeating Ottoman armies and after
Istanbul Sultan's had conceded a degree
of Egyptian independence many of the
Egyptian people still saw themselves as
loyal ottomans Muhammad Ali was a truly
epic reformer on the level of Turkey's
Ataturk or Japan's
a restoration in the chaotic aftermath
of Napoleon's invasion Muhammad Ali was
able to reorder Egyptian politics and
society in ways that the Ottoman Sultans
wouldn't be able to pull off for decades
if ever Muhammad Ali's story was not a
democratic one though the reforms that
he put in place allowed those
aspirations to grow in later decades he
was an authoritarian leader focused on
military modernization above all else
Egypt was well positioned for this
project the waters of the Nile had made
the region an agricultural breadbasket
for millennia Egypt had fed Rome in
ancient times and was still feeding
Istanbul in other parts of southern
Europe in the 19th century dynamic
leadership was all that was necessary to
turn the region's wealth into power and
that is what muhammad ali provided
textile mills were booming across
northern england making cotton the
petroleum of the 19th century Muhammad
Ali and his successors shaped the
country to take advantage of this
resource rush unlike his successors
Muhammad Ali set up factories as well
and refused to let foreign merchants
manage the trade Ali built canals roads
and other infrastructure he set up
Egypt's first modern educational
institutions as well and introduced a
professionalized bureaucracy above all
else he put together a modernized army
and navy with munitions and ships
manufactured in Egypt all accounts
agreed that the country's transformation
during this era was impressive over the
course of Muhammad Ali's reign one
estimate holds that the population of
Alexandria Egypt main port went from
eight thousand to a hundred and ten
thousand British businessman were
clamoring for government protection from
Egypt's low cost high quality
manufacturing to be clear this was more
of a successful reign than a happy one
it wasn't quite as brutal as what the
United States was up to at the time but
Muhammad Ali's success was based on
ruthless centralization and a lot of
forced labor also his invasion of the
Sudan in the 1820s set what is now two
countries
to a very unstable path and Muhammad
Ali's prioritization of the military
above all else is something that still
haunts Egypt today in the 2020s
regardless Muhammad Ali turned Egypt
into a force to be reckoned with in the
1810s he sent his armies to Arabia to
crush a Wahhabi insurrection and restore
the Ottoman Sultans power there in the
1820s he sent his navy to crush a revolt
in Greece which his son Ibrahim had
managed to do almost entirely before the
British intervened and sunk all of Egypt
ships at the Battle of Navarino in the
1830s out of contempt for Ottoman
weakness or perhaps just anger over the
loss of his Navy Muhammad Ali turned his
armies against the Sultan himself this
dynamic of a more successful province
taking on a region's historic but
decayed imperial center is one we see
over and over in the modernization
process this is how many of the world's
richest and most powerful countries got
started in the 1600s the Netherlands won
their independence from the Habsburg
super state through mercantile
innovation and the power of freer
institutions Japan was never officially
subject to China but its emergence as a
military and industrial power in the
latter 1800s and early 1900s was very
much at China's expense Prussia the
country that forged modern Germany used
its hyper professionalized army to
cannibalize the ancient Austrian Empire
for over a century these countries all
managed to achieve battlefield success
while also shaking up their regions and
forcing massive progress in the 1830s
during its attack on the Ottomans Egypt
was doing all of this so why didn't eat
it to end up like these other countries
as one of the wealthiest societies on
the planet well there's a number of
reasons first off Egypt was
significantly poorer than those other
countries were during their rises to
power also the Egyptian public had yet
to attain a high degree of literacy also
dating back to at least the Mamluk
dynasties of the 1200s egypt had been
ruled by a foreign Turkish and circus
in elite it's possible that Egypt didn't
have the Solidarity that had made those
other political and economic miracles
possible but the most important thing
that Muhammad Ali didn't have was the
British British support wasn't as
important in the 1600s as it would be
later but the Dutch certainly had it
against the Habsburgs Japan was a full
treaty ally of the United Kingdom
between 1902 and 1921 a period of rapid
Japanese expansion into the Chinese
sphere of influence without British
support the Prussian state that became
Germany would not have survived the
1760s or the 1810s the Egyptians never
had the support of the British
especially after helping the Greeks win
their independence the British wanted to
keep the weakened Ottoman state propped
up to block other European powers the
British certainly weren't interested in
a resurgent Muslim power in the region
but between 1831 and 1833 that's what
they got Egypt's armies of rampaged
across the Middle East more than
fulfilling the dreams of later Arab
nationalists
and pushing deep into the territory of
modern Turkey itself responding to
British and Russian pressure
Muhammad Ali pulled back to the Arab
super state he had created six years
later when the Ottomans sent an army to
take the territory back it was
annihilated the Sultan's fleet actually
defected to Egypt the Ottoman world
could see were the more promising future
lay but the British refused to let it
happen they used their naval superiority
to blockade the region and they occupied
Beirut an acre Mohamed Ali had the
support of the French but as we pointed
out earlier in this series by the middle
of the 19th century that support was
essentially worthless Egypt was forced
to back down at a promising future for
the Middle East evaporated instead they
got another 70 years of Ottoman chaos
followed by division and further foreign
subjugation Muhammad Ali had shown that
it was hopeless
to resist the British directly so in the
third quarter of the 19th century his
successors opted to see what they could
get through cooperation as we will cover
next time
it didn't go very well thanks for
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in the 19th century you can read my book
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