Book excerpt: While previous scholarship has viewed Mehmed Ali Pasha as the founder of modern Egypt, Khaled Fahmy offers a new interpretation of his role in the rise of Egyptian nationalism, locating him in the Ottoman context as an ambitious Ottoman reformer. Basing his work on previously neglected archival material, the author demonstrates how Mehmed Ali sought to develop the Egyptian economy and to build up the army, not as a means of gaining Egyptian independence from the Ottoman Empire, but to further his own ambitions for hereditary rule over the province. In its analysis of nation-building and the construction of state power, the book makes a significant contribution to the larger theoretical debates. It will therefore be essential reading for students in the field, as well as for Ottomanists, military historians and those interested in the development of the modern nation-state.