Today we should celebrate the 150th anniversary of surrender of a gang of armed insurrectionists at Appomatox. Since he’s rerunning the piece today, and because a. I’ve read it and it’s fascinating and b. it’s in line with the kind of stuff I like to do around here when I have a chance, I’m sending you all to read Michael Collins Dunn’s piece on Union and Confederate officers who wound up serving in the Egyptian army after the Civil War. The Egyptian Khedives Ismaʿil Pasha and Tewfik Pasha, who together ruled the country (under nominal Ottoman suzerainty) from 1863-1892, were very interested in modernizing the Egyptian military, which in the 19th century invariably meant inviting some European officers in to professionalize the ranks and train the soldiers in the latest military tactics and technologies. But Ismaʿil Pasha decided to look to America for his military advisers rather than Europe, for reasons that Dunn explains:
It’s not hard to understand why the Khedive was interested in Americans. He hoped to keep up the expansionist policies of his predecessors Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha and Ibrahim Pasha, especially in the Sudan; the country was already incurring large debts in Europe, that would ultimately lead to a British (unofficial but de facto) protectorate, and therefore France and Britain were not a good source of military advice since you don’t want your potential colonizers to have intimate knowledge of your military. The United States, on the other hand, had no visible interests in the Middle East (except for Christian missions) in those days.
And having just fought the bloodiest war in its history (which proved a temporary boon to Egypt since Southern US cotton was blockaded from the world market), the US also was a source of experienced and underemployed military officers. To the Egyptians, which army they had served in was moot. It would be nice to say it was moot to the Americans as well, but there was one notorious shootout in Alexandria between ex-Rebs and ex-Yanks.
Please go read the whole thing, it’s great. One Union general, Charles Stone, wound up serving as Ismaʿil Pasha’s chief of staff and was known as Ferik Pasha (“Stone Pasha”).
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 