HISTORY GONE WRONG? 403
and fleeing Hebrews before them.* Turkish government had changed
the country litde, but the invasion in 1798 by a French expeditionary
force under General Bonaparte shook Egypt to the core. A Mameluke
army was simply brushed aside, while Bonaparte proclaimed French
revolutionary slogans to a population that had no idea what he was
talking about. The French were followed by the British—more tech
nological humiliation—and with them came a new Turkish intrusion
designed to remind the Egyptians of their fealty to Istanbul. One of the
detachments so dispatched was under the command of Mehemet Ali—
we met him earlier—who used the Mamelukes to unseat the Ottoman
governor and made himself master of Cairo. Faced with reality, the sul
tan in Istanbul named Ali his viceroy in Egypt. In return, Mehemet Ali
made war on Turkey, in the best Turkish tradition.
Mehemet Ali (now Muhammad Ali in Arabic as against Turkish
style) was clearly a man of force and ambition. But he differed from
conventional warlords in having a larger vision and the imagination to
go with it. No isolation in the palace for him. AH knew from personal
experience how far the Ottoman empire had fallen behind, how much
there was to learn. So no one of interest visited Egypt without talking
with him. Ali also saw Egypt not as a term appointment, but as a per
sonal estate and field for development. Normally the Ottomans moved
officials about from post to post to prevent them from taking root. Ali
converted Egypt into a hereditary fiefdom.
What is more, Muhammad Ali envisioned this development as a
total process, encompassing advances in agriculture and industry, new
technologies, innovations in schooling (what the economist would call
improvements in human capital); also, and unfortunately, an arms pro
gram and the inculcation of martial virtues. To accomplish all this, he
brought in foreign technicians, some of whom left Christianity for
Islam. Although Britain clearly led the world in manufacturing, most
of these experts were French, perhaps because the collapse of the
Napoleonic empire had freed up talent, perhaps because France's de
feat made it less redoubtable, perhaps because Muhammad Ali cor-
recdy saw Britain as an opponent of Egyptian industry.
Among the expats, the most important was probably Louis-Alexis
Jumel, a French mechanic-cotton manufacturer turned agronomist.
- In the earlier discussion of China, I expressed surprise and skepticism that the Chi
nese had managed to forget earlier superior technologies. But such retrogression is
clearly possible. The question is, how and why.