Muhammad Ali becomes governor of Egypt
- Date
- 1805
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Egypt (Ottoman Empire)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
In 1805 Muhammad Ali, an Albanian commander in the Ottoman force sent to expel Napoleon's army from Egypt, was confirmed by the Sublime Porte as wali (governor) and pasha of Egypt after Cairo's notables and ulama backed his claim.
Over the following decade he destroyed the rival Mamluk elite, most dramatically in the 1811 massacre at the Cairo citadel, and dismantled the iltizam tax-farming system to seize direct control of Egypt's agricultural revenues. He then drove an ambitious programme of state-led modernisation: a conscript peasant army trained on European lines, a new navy, state monopolies over cash crops such as long-staple cotton, irrigation works, factories, printing presses and Western-style schools for doctors, engineers and officers. Although nominally an Ottoman vassal, Muhammad Ali built a quasi-independent dynastic state powerful enough to challenge the Sultan directly in the 1830s and to occupy Syria. His reforms made Egypt the most formidable indigenous modernising power in the nineteenth-century Middle East, established the dynasty that ruled until 1952, and offered an influential model and cautionary tale of defensive modernisation under European pressure.
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Empires active in 1805
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Mughal Empire1526 CE – 1857 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Britain abolishes the transatlantic slave trade25 March 1807
- Congress of Vienna and the Concert of EuropeSeptember 1814 – June 1815
- The Slavery Abolition Act ends slavery across the British Empire28 August 1833 (in force 1 August 1834)
- The Revolutions of 1848 (the Springtime of Peoples)1848–1849
- Commodore Perry forces the opening of Japan1853–1854 (Treaty of Kanagawa, 31 March 1854)
- Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the birth of the British Raj1857–1858 (rebellion); Government of India Act 2 August 1858
Also relevant
- Napoleon crowned Emperor of the French2 December 1804
- Promulgation of the Napoleonic Code21 March 1804
Further reading
The wider story
Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire
The standard readable single-volume Ottoman history.
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