The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
Sep 2019 · Bloomsbury Publishing
4.4star
40 reviewsreport
Ebook
544
Pages
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About this ebook
THE TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
THE TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR
FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019
A FINANCIAL TIMES, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, WALL STREET JOURNAL AND TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India ... A book of beauty' – Gerard DeGroot, The Times
In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish a new administration in his richest provinces. Run by English merchants who collected taxes using a ruthless private army, this new regime saw the East India Company transform itself from an international trading corporation into something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business.
William Dalrymple tells the remarkable story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
THE TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR
FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019
A FINANCIAL TIMES, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, WALL STREET JOURNAL AND TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India ... A book of beauty' – Gerard DeGroot, The Times
In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish a new administration in his richest provinces. Run by English merchants who collected taxes using a ruthless private army, this new regime saw the East India Company transform itself from an international trading corporation into something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business.
William Dalrymple tells the remarkable story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
Ratings and reviews
4.4
40 reviews
Vinay Kumar
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October 31, 2019
The fast-paced tumultuous history of the conquest of India by a brutally rapacious company in the face of a hopelessly fractured Indian polity. Digging up enormous amounts of archival evidence, Dalrymple weaves a shocking yet fascinating account of post-Mughal India being devoured relentlessly mile after another mile by East India Company, plundering the wealth of India without compunctions, playing the Bengal and Avadh Nawabs, the Maratha rulers, Deccan Nizam, the Carnatic dynasts and the enfeebled Mughal Emperor one off against another and using India's own revenue and Indian sepoys in this adventure. Fiercely unbiased and dispassionate, Dalrymple's history is a great and illuminating read. Extraordinary work of diligent research and brilliant scholarship.
41 people found this review helpful
peeush kumar
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September 29, 2023
Exceptional research structured about EIC. The book tapers out with a global perspective about corporations and imperialism; this would be my prized takeaway indeed
Samantha Roberts-Golding
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January 9, 2025
Found out we're related, just wanted to send love and say hi! ❤️
About the author
William Dalrymple is one of Britain's great historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapuscinski Prize-winning Return of a King. A frequent broadcaster, he has written and presented three television series, one of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA. He has also won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the FPA Media Awards, and been awarded five honorary doctorates. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has held visiting fellowships at Princeton and Brown. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker and the Guardian. In 2018 he was presented with the prestigious President's Medal by the British Academy for his outstanding literary achievement and for co-founding the Jaipur Literature Festival. William lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.
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