*****

In 1798 Egypt, at that time a semi-autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire, was occupied by a French force under Napoleon Bonaparte. Muhammad 'Ali went there as part of an Ottoman expeditionary force to oppose the French. With great political skill, he managed by 1805 to be named the wali, the Ottoman sultan's viceroy in Egypt, with the rank of pasha.

Nowhere in the Ottoman Empire was there greater opportunity for a total restructuring of society than in Egypt. The three-year French occupation (1798-1801) had disrupted the country's traditional political and economic structure. Continuing the task begun by the French, Muhammad 'Ali put an end to Egypt's traditional society. He eliminated the Mamluks, the former ruling oligarchy, expropriated the old landholding classes, turned the religious class into pensioners of the government, restricted the activities of the native merchant and artisan groups, neutralized the Bedouins, and crushed all movements of rebellion among the peasants. The task of rebuilding Egypt along modern lines now lay before him.

But, though Muhammad 'Ali had considerable native intelligence and great personal charm, he was a man of limited knowledge and of narrow horizons. He proved insensitive to the possibilities open to him and governed generally according to Ottoman principles. No group within Egyptian society was capable of forcing fundamental changes upon him; elements that might have served as the instruments of change had been crushed at the outset of his regime. Neither was there an ideology capable of bringing together the ruler and the ruled in a great national effort. Finally, Muhammad 'Ali had to devote much of his effort to resisting attempts by his Ottoman overlord to remove him from office. His policies were designed more to entrench himself and his family in Egypt as its hereditary rulers than to create a new society.