1801–1849: (Muhammad Ali’s Egypt — The Macedonian Who Destroyed the Mameluke Aristocracy, Created a Huge Army Used Against the Wahhabis, Expanded the Taxatio…

1801–1849: (Muhammad Ali’s Egypt — The Macedonian Who Destroyed the Mameluke Aristocracy, Created a Huge Army Used Against the Wahhabis, Expanded the Taxation System, Enforced Cotton Production, Set Up Technical Schools, and Created a New Landowning and Bureaucratic Middle Class Whose Scions Would Later Embrace Anticolonial Nationalism): In the wake of the French invasion, Egypt embarked on dramatic change largely through the creation of Muhammad Ali. A ruthless, far-sighted officer in the Ottoman army that expelled the French in 1801, he had positioned himself as Cairo’s most powerful military leader by 1805 and was appointed governor by the Ottoman sultan the following year. He established a military dynasty and achieved de facto independence from Istanbul. Employing European advisors, he created a huge army initially used against the Wahhabis in the Red Sea area — within a few years his forces cleared the Wahhabis from the Hijaz and restored the holy places to their Ottoman rulers. Egyptian hegemony was extended down the Red Sea, and in 1846 the ports of Suakin and Massawa were leased to Cairo. Muhammad Ali sought to reform Egypt’s economic and industrial base, expanding taxation and enforcing cotton production through extensive irrigation programs. He set up technical schools, sent an elite to Europe for training, and imported European technology to lay the foundations for an industrial revolution. Egypt witnessed the creation of a new landowning and bureaucratic middle class that over generations would become involved in politics, administration, law, and journalism — a modernizing class underpinned by a peasantry marshaled to grow cotton. In later decades, the scions of this middle class would find their status undermined by the British and embrace anticolonial nationalism.