The Anarchy: Exploring the Impact of the East India Company and its Corporate Violence on the Pillage of an Empire

James Carter: William Dalrymple has done a masterful job of recasting the period of British Empire in India and showing its true origins and impacts. It is a profound and riveting work, which dispelled any remaining positive notions I may have had of the legacy of the British and the East India Company in India.
The attention to detail, and the deep knowledge of Mughul culture reflect the author’s intimacy with his subject.
I went to private school in England, and was fed all the vainglorious propaganda about the brilliance of the Empire and its protagonists, especially Clive. This book felt like closure on that and washed out any dregs of that brainwashing (every country uses history in education to brainwash its citizens).
I think the epilogue needs refreshing, as we have veered into a new politicised era, where Empire is being re-interpreted (e.g. by the PRC, the US, etc), and corporations are having to abide by new geopolitical dynamics.
We also have a more assertive India itself, whose actions and policies over the next decades will be fascinating to witness. The contrast with the period of decline in power told in this book will not be lost on the reader.

United States on Nov 08, 2023

Sam: Loved how this was beautifully written. Such an amazing and important time in history.

Australia on Nov 02, 2023

Mr. Lee D. Rolls: Excellent, readable and comprehensive history of East India Company. Game of Thrones meets the world of international corporate business with high finances, banking bailouts and corporate genocide.

United Kingdom on Oct 18, 2023

John adams: A topic of this magnitude and scope could become quite ponderous and stifling in the wrong hands. The author has managed to write a detailed history of the EIC while keeping the style engaging and easy to read. The story is well-told. To his credit, Dalrymple has used Indian sources and historians making this a much more balanced work than one that could have been very Eurocentric. After reading this, do we place all the blame at the feet of the EIC? What about the Mughals, Persians, and Marathas?

United States on Sep 23, 2023

Vir Kumar YadavVir Kumar Yadav: Good

India on Sep 06, 2023

John Hopper: This is a detailed and well researched account of the rise and (in briefer form) fall of probably the most powerful corporate entity in world history - and it's not a familiar name to 21st century ears, but one that ceased to exist 150 years ago. In the author's words "the East India Company remains today history’s most ominous warning about the potential for the abuse of corporate power – and the insidious means by which the interests of shareholders can seemingly become those of the state". He describes its "conquest of India [as] almost certainly .......the supreme act of corporate violence in world history. For all the power wielded today by the world’s largest corporations – whether ExxonMobil, Walmart or Google – they are tame beasts compared with the ravaging territorial appetites of the militarised East India Company".

The company had modest beginnings in 1600 as a relatively modest late Elizabethan attempt to improve its position in the growing spheres of exploration and economic expansion relative to its key rivals, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Dutch - it was a joint stock company, "one of Tudor England’s most brilliant and revolutionary...

United Kingdom on Aug 24, 2022

GAkkin: I have been reading William Dalrymple’s books for the last few years - White Mughals, Return of a King, The Last Mughal, and now this book - The Anarchy.

It was a fantastic read, gripping, though sometimes comes across biased, especially when narrating stories of war strategies, exploits, and plundering by British East India Company’s Generals and Governor Generals. Speaking of war, this book has a large dosage of it - to be clear, the war strategies and wins by the EIC.

Sometimes History becomes irrelevant for what is not being told, speaking of which, the loot and plunder of EIC become monotonous in this book, halfway through, as it was not balanced with wins of native rulers. Though I was not looking for a feel-good book, I was looking for a balanced narrative.

I skipped some of the gory details about how the psychotic Ghulam Qadir tortured Shah Alam.

The author did write about how Burke and Charles James Fox and other parliamentarians who tried to bring some sense of accountability to the anarchist EIC. This was revealing. However, the fact that Indian revenues propped up the entire British society for decades, came in the way of the Crown...

United States on Sep 09, 2020

Nathik: The Anarchy is a popular history book on the East Indian Company(EIC) in 18th Century India. Dalrymple regale us the rise of the EIC from a Tudor privateering operation full of ex-Caribbean privates to an imperial power. Considering that the British were pretty late to the spice trade in India compared to the Portuguese, Dutch, and the French, their raise as an imperial power is extraordinary.

Rise of of the first Multinational Corporation:

East Indian Company(EIC) basically invented corporate lobbying, insider training and first corporate bail out, and all the other things we loathe about modern corporation. EIC developed a symbiotic relationship with the British Parliamentarians. Company men like Clive used the looted money from India to buy both MPs and parliamentary seats. The Parliament backed the Company with state power because many MPs were shareholders of EIC and any action against the company will affect their personal wealth.

Silk, Spices and Sepoy:

Thanks to the dwindling military and financial power of the Mughals, a huge military labor market sprang up all across India. Dalrymple describes this as one of the most thriving free markets of...

India on Oct 02, 2019

dmiguer: William Dalrymple tells how a single business operation replaced the Mughal empire to rule the Indian subcontinent. The East India Company was a first major multi-national corporation, and an early example of a joint stock enterprise. Most events occur between 1756-1803, around the time of the American and French revolutions. The story begins in 1599 with the charter of the Company, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and the lifetime of Shakespeare.

The Company was preceded by Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake and included veteran Carribean privateers, state sponsored pirates who attacked the Spanish armada for gold and silver. The first Company voyage brought back spice from Indonesia by robbing a Portuguese ship. Outdone by the Dutch in the spice trade, the Company began trade in India with the benefits of a British monopoly, license to raise an army and seize territory, all endorsed by the Crown.

At the time of the Company's expansion of power the Mughal Empire had been weakened by a series of invasions and internal conflicts. Increasing intolerance had pushed Maratha rebels under Shivaji to strike north from the Deccan plateau in the late 17th century. Sikhs...

United States on Sep 30, 2019