The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

by William Dalrymple

Overview

Finalist for the Cundill History Prize

ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal and NPR

“Superb … A vivid and richly detailed story … worth reading by everyone.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the bestselling author of Return of a King, the story of how the East India Company took over large swaths of Asia, and the devastating results of the corporation running a country.

In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and set up, in his place, a government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of a private army.

The creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional company and became something much more unusual: an international corporation transformed into an aggressive colonial power. Over the course of the next 47 years, the company’s reach grew until almost all of India south of Delhi was effectively ruled from a boardroom in the city of London.

The Anarchy tells one of history’s most remarkable stories: how the Mughal Empire—which dominated world trade and manufacturing and possessed almost unlimited resources—fell apart and was replaced by a multinational corporation based thousands of miles overseas, and answerable to shareholders, most of whom had never even seen India and no idea about the country whose wealth was providing their dividends. Using previously untapped sources, Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before and provides a portrait of the devastating results from the abuse of corporate power.

Bronze Medal in the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635573954
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	37,955
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

William Dalrymple is the author of nine books about India and the Islamic world, including Return of a King, which won the Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, PEN Hessell-Tiltman, and Duff Cooper Prizes. He writes regularly for the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the Guardian and is one of the founders and a codirector of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Table of Contents

Maps ix

Dramatis Personae xiii

Introduction xxiii

1 1599 1

2 An Offer He Could Not Refuse 59

3 Sweeping With the Broom of Plunder 99

4 A Prince of Little Capacity 137

5 Bloodshed and Confusion 173

6 Racked by Famine 215

7 The Desolation of Delhi 259

8 The Impeachment of Warren Hastings 307

9 The Corpse of India 335

Epilogue 393

Glossary 399

Notes 407

Bibliography 469

Image Credits 497

Index 503

Editorial Reviews

11/18/2019

Historian Dalrymple (Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond) delivers a sweeping account of the East India Company’s conquest of India in this vivid and accessible narrative. Founded in 1599 by a “motley” group of London investors, the joint stock company received a royal charter ambiguous enough to allow its future directors to “claim jurisdiction over all English subjects in Asia,” Dalrymple writes. He sketches the East India Company’s first 150 years before focusing on the period from 1756 to 1803, when it committed “the supreme act of corporate violence in world history” by seizing control of nearly all of the Indian subcontinent from the Mughal Empire. He traces the conquest’s roots to the French and Indian War in North America, and profiles such notable figures as Robert Clive, a former accountant who recruited a private army of Indian soldiers and led them into battle against the nawab of Bengal, and Siraj ud-Daula, a Mughal ally who briefly captured Calcutta in 1757. Dalrymple nimbly chronicles both sides of the ensuing war while never losing sight of just how bizarre and problematic it was for a profit-driven company to become a colonial ruler or create an army. Readers on the lookout for warning signs about the dangers of today’s megacorporations will find them in this vibrant, revisionist history. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Brilliant. . . . The fullest and most powerful description of the West’s first encounter with Afghan society." - The New York Times Book Review on RETURN OF A KING

"Magnificent. . . . [Dalrymple’s] histories read like novels. . . . This latest book delights and shocks." - The Wall Street Journal on RETURN OF A KING

"Masterful. . . . Dalrymple makes an important contribution by including recently discovered Afghan accounts of the war." - The Washington Post on RETURN OF A KING

"In Return of a King, Dalrymple has done again what he did magnificently for two other telling episodes of British imperial history in White Mughals(2002) and The Last Mughal (2006). . . . Dalrymple has a narrative gift." - The Huffington Post

From the Publisher

2019-07-28
The often nasty history of the British company that grew to rule India in the 18th century.

Veteran historian Dalrymple (Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 2013, etc.) reminds readers that the Spice Islands, around what is now Indonesia, were a source of lucrative trade, dominated in the 16th century by the Dutch. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth granted envious British merchants a monopoly in the region. Ships of the fledgling East India Company made some profitable voyages, but the Dutch defended their territory violently. Consequently, Britons turned their attention to India, then an open market mostly ruled by the Mughal Empire, considered the wealthiest in the world. The EIC established thriving trading settlements along the coast and respected Mughal authority. Matters changed after 1707, when the last competent ruler died and the empire dissolved into chaos and war between ambitious men and principalities. This was no secret to the EIC, which began training its own armies and expanding its influence by taking sides. Perhaps the key event was the pugnacious Robert Clive's 1757 victory at the Battle of Plassey, which gave the company control of Bengal, the richest province in India. The result, as characterized in Dalrymple's unsparing account, was a feeding frenzy in which fortune-seeking Britons forcibly ejected native merchants and landowners, took over tax collection, and literally stripped the land bare. In 1770, Bengal suffered its first disastrous famine, and others followed. The author diligently recounts decades of violence ("the Anarchy") that followed, ending just after 1800 with the defeat of the last local Indian potentate. "In less than fifty years," writes Dalrymple, "a multinational corporation had seized control of almost all of what had once been Mughal India. The author concludes gloomily that the EIC has no exact modern equivalent, but Walmart, Apple, and other massive corporations do not need their own armies; governments are happy to protect their interests.

A depressing but expert account of the rise of the first great multinational corporation.

Kirkus Reviews

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