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William Dalrymple

The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Hardcover – 10 September 2019

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'Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India . A book of beauty' - Gerard DeGroot, The TimesIn August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish in his richest provinces a new administration run by English merchants who collected taxes through means of a ruthless private army - what we would now call an act of involuntary privatisation.The East India Company's founding charter authorised it to 'wage war' and it had always used violence to gain its ends. But the creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional international trading corporation dealing in silks and spices and became something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business. In less than four decades it had trained up a security force of around 200,000 men - twice the size of the British army - and had subdued an entire subcontinent, conquering first Bengal and finally, in 1803, the Mughal capital of Delhi itself. The Company's reach stretched until almost all of India south of the Himalayas was effectively ruled from a boardroom in London.The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world's most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting book to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.

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576 pages
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English
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Bloomsbury Publishing
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10 September 2019
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20.3 x 25.4 x 4.7 cm
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1526618508
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978-1526618504
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Popular Highlights in this book

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The idea of a joint stock company was one of Tudor England’s most brilliant and revolutionary innovations.
Highlighted by 612 Kindle readers
By 1803, when its private army had grown to nearly 200,000 men, it had swiftly subdued or directly seized an entire subcontinent.
Highlighted by 420 Kindle readers
One of the very first Indian words to enter the English language was the Hindustani slang for plunder: loot.
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Product description

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing (10 September 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 576 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1526618508
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1526618504
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 890 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 20.3 x 25.4 x 4.7 cm
Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ United Kingdom
Net Quantity ‏ : ‎ 1.00 count
Generic Name ‏ : ‎ Book

Best Sellers Rank: #1,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Colonialism & Imperialism History
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William Dalrymple

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William Dalrymple FRSL, FRGS, FRAS (born William Hamilton-Dalrymple on 20 March 1965) is a Scottish historian and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a prominent broadcaster and critic.

His books have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Hemingway, the Kapuściński and the Wolfson Prizes. He has been four times longlisted and once shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.

In 2012 he was appointed a Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow in the Humanities by Princeton University. In the Spring of 2015 he was appointed the OP Jindal Distinguished Lecturer at Brown University.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Premkudva (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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4.6 out of 5

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Indraneel Majumdar

Panoramic view of the British Empire 1750 - 1857

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 22 March 2023

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East India Company was a trading company. With a difference. It had its own army and had sanction to wage wars.

William Dalrymple sets out to write this compelling story with a huge cast of characters from Siraj-ud-daula to Lord Wellesley and brings to us the complete theatre of what happened in those years.

Blessed to have this historian-author among us!

Brilliant book!!

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 9 March 2023

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Well researched, enlightening and insightful.
History as it should be without taking any sides and impartisan.
Good learning of colonial history.

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Nathik

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 2 October 2019

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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 fighting men anywhere in the world- all up for sale to the highest bidder. Warfare become a business enterprise and substantial section of peasants spent part of their time year as mercenaries. EIC were better off financially and were able to pay the sepoys the promised wage on time than many local rulers. EIC were using as much as 80% Indian sepoyts in many of their battles.

The British very really lucky:

Although popular theories propose that the success of the EIC can be attributed to the fragmenting to Mughal India into tiny competing states; the military tech of the Europeans and innovation of banking, taxing and administration of the Anglo-saxons, one of the recurring themes that I found is how lucky in the may of the battles. Yes, the above theories are probably true and East India Company troop were more disciplined than their Indian rivals; but its incredible how consistently lucky the British were.

Break the Rules:

Warfare in India were actually done in gentlemanly manner. The Mughals. Marathas and other local rulers pursued negotiation, bribery and paying tribute. In case of actual conquest, there are rules by which they abide by. The Company men, especially Robert Clive, who committed suicide at the age of 49(Hope someone soon writes a biography on this truly appalling character), constantly breaking the rules like attacking at night and attacking at thunderstorm etc.

Why we need to learn to negotiate?

Mughals were completely clueless about who corporation functions or how unsavory Clive operates as an Profiteer. Ghulam Hussain Khan says a sale of jackass would have taken up more time than the time taken for the Treaty of Allahbad. Post Treaty of Allahabad, EIC used Indian tax revenue to purchase textiles and spies. Even at the time of famines EIC enforces tax collection to maintain their revenue and growing military expenditure. At the height of the famine, English merchants engaged in grain hoarding, profiteering and speculation.

North vs South India?

Even after Battle of Plassey, Cavalry was the dominant form of warfare in northern India and continued to fight each other despite the growing domination of the British. However the south was every quick to copy and learn the military innovations of the Europeans. Haider Ali had a modern infantry and his troops were more innovative and tactically ahead of EIC. They mastered the art of firing rockets long before the English. Nana Phadnavus, ‘the Maratha Machiavelli’, after the Treaty of Wadgaon, proposed a Triple Alliance between the Marathas, Haider and the Nizam of Hyderabad.

Indian Bankers love the Company:

The rise of EIC as an imperial power would not be possible with out the Indian bankers. The Indian financiers saw greater advantage in keeping the Company in power than they did supporting their own. By 1803, Indian bankers were competing with one another to back the company’s army.

In the end its the Company’s ability to mobilize money have them the edge over the Marathas and Tipu Sultan. It was no longer the superior European military technology. Bengal alone was annually yeilding a steady revenue surplus of Rs 25 million at the time when Scindia struggled to net Rs 2 million. The biggest firm of the period – the houses of Lala Kashmiri Mal, Ramchand-Gopalchand Shahu and Gopaldas-Manohardas – helped the military finance of the British. The Company duly rewarded the invaluable services in 1782 by making the house of Gopaldas the government’s banker. Richard Wellesley managed raise Rs 10 million with the support of Marwari bankers of Bengal to fight the Fourth Anglo-Mysore war.

Final nail in the coffin:

Following the victory of the Battle of Delhi, EIC defeated the last indigenous power. Now linked Bengal, Madras and Bombay while imposing itself as Regent under the Mughals.

My only complaints is that the book doesn’t drive into the financial details of the Company despite the wealth information available. A bit of financial history of the Company would have helped us understand the nature of the Company better. Overall an entertaining history book. highly recommended.

37 people found this helpful

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Prashant

शानदार किताब

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 7 March 2023

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Must read

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 4 May 2021

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Book Review

The Anarchy follows a long line of illustrious books by Historian and travel writer William Dalrymple. I fell in love with Non Fiction thanks to WD and his seminal works White Mughals and The Last Mughal. Then took to reading nearly everything he has written, the last one being the story of The Kohinoor.

Don't let the size of The Anarchy intimidate you, thick as it is because nearly one fourth of the book is citations and references. After all the Book has taken seven years to research and put together.

Dalrymple is very clear as to the purpose of the Book: "This Book does not aim to provide a complete history of the East India Company, still less an economic analysis of its business operations.

Instead it is an attempt to answer the question of how a single business operation, based in one London office complex, managed to replace the mighty Mughal Empire as masters of the vast subcontinent between the years 1756 and 1803."

One by one the company engaged , warred with and defeated its principal rivals- the nawabs of Bengal and Avadh, Tipu Sultan's Mysore Sultanate and the great Maratha Confederacy.

The leading cast of characters include several noteworthy Company Officials and Governor Generals starting with Robert Clive who laid the foundations of British Rule in India uptil the two Wellesleys (Richard and Colenl Arthur). Then there is the French who lost the wars and ceded Indian territories to the EIC, the Mughals whose decline began on the death of Aurangzeb, the Nawabs of Bengal and Avadh who were betrayed by their own. The fierce Rohillas, the Sultans of Mysore who put up formidable resistance to the EIC defeating them initially and the Marathas who despite their bravery, modern army, guerilla tactics could not unite

Formed in 1599 with an objective to target the promising sectors of the trade of Asia all of which were in India, the first EIC ships and representatives to land on Indian coast in 1608 were barely able to make any headway with Mughal emperor Jehangir and in fact their ships were driven away by the Portuguese. By the time the Book ends, the blind and old Mughal emperor Shah Alam is the puppet Emperor subservient to British EIC's rule who now have almost the entire Indian peninsula under their control.

The EIC grew in riches and revenues to become the largest corporation of its time guzzling vastly rich and prosperous provinces like Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Madras but also very nearly bankrupted itself, running up huge debts causing the Crown to takeover fully much later.

In the Epilogue Dalrymple writes eloquently of why the story of the East India Company and the way corporations subvert State power for monopoly and immense profits is relevant even today.

The book reads like a racy thriller with a fast paced narrative and details of many of the wars, military tactics, weaponry used by all sides in battles. Several historical translated works have been referred and they provide a rich insightful glimpse into both the thinking of East India officials and Governors stationed in India and corrspondence of the various Indian rulers.

All in all, a brilliant read , one that is sure to keep you awake late into the night

6 people found this helpful

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South Asian

A wonderful read on colonization of India by a corporate entity

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 17 January 2023

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Well researched history with facts and a balanced view. A must read for those interested in Indian history of colonization by Britain.

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Mihir

Every person who loves history should read it

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 23 January 2023

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It's amazing

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Top reviews from other countries

D. J. B. James

A prejudiced work

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 17 October 2019

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The book opens with a list of characters, beginning with Lord Robert Clive, whom Mr Dalrymple hates. It's followed by Warren Hastings whom he loves. Clive, he describes as a 'genuinely...a ruthless unprincipled plunderer,' p 311 and yet on p 312 we read of Hasting's excesses, which appear to have included 'judicial murder,' and yet still he loves him. He'll forgive him anything, and is very happy to remind us that upon impeachment Warren Hastings was cleared of all charges but is pretty quiet about Clive who was cleared of all charges that had been levelled against him long before.
The book is a chronology of the Mughals and the how the British gained India, the heavy-handed, brutal antics of the East India Company and its British officers. He singles out Lord Robert Clive. He attacks him in a personal, vindictive way, which not only smacks of amateurism but reads as though he's trying to appease a little gang somewhere. It made me focus on it. He makes him the villain of the piece. Yet from Clive's correspondence, (not quoted in this book), we read that this same man, upon purchasing of land in Wales and on the Welsh borders, pored over the maps to ask which tenant farmed what type of land and, where they were farming marginal hill land, reduced their rent to a 'homage rent,' peppercorn, which is not consistent with the bigoted picture Mr. Dalrymple paints. He's equally rude about the Powis family, but I notice, but didn't have the grace to visit any of them during his research, as Bence Jones had in his book Clive of India, who went to see the Earl of Plymouth and gathered a lot of personal information thereby. Obviously Mr Dalrymple considers himself above common courtesy.
Later in the book, he accuses Henrietta Clive who went to India to join her husband Edward, Governor of Madras, of carrying off jewels looted from Tipu Sultan's palace after his defeat by Richard Wellesley in 1799 (p 353). She paid for them. Had she not bought them where would they be now? Not in an Indian museum for certain. They'd have been lost. Today they form part of a collection of the National Trust in Powys Castle. It's reminiscent of the Elgin Marbles: had Elgin not recovered these, where would they have been now? In Greek hands? Or more likely, become target practice, smashed up and turned into foundation rubble for a block of flats. Had Robert Clive, Lord Robert Clive's great-grandson, not gone as watercolour artist to record the excavations at of the Assyrian reliefs in Nimroud and imported to England The Assyrian King Tukul-apil-esharra III (Tiglath-pileser III) bas relief, (which now hangs in the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum), where would that be now? Robert Clive painted the lamassu - the monolithic stone sculptures of human headed winged bulls - which Layard shipped to England, which were exhibited in a the British Museum this year. The ones that remained ISIS blew up and defaced, whose shattered remains vividly demonstrate. Perhaps it might have been a little less spiteful to thank Henrietta Clive for saving these treasures. And Lady Clive, Lord Robert Clive's wife, Margaret Maskelyne - whose character he attempts to assassinate by first of all attempting to demonise her brother, Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal, whom Dava Sobel turned into the blockhead of her book Longitude, then secondly by telling us of a report from The Salisbury Journal that her 'pet ferret had a diamond necklace £2,500' (p 140). It was a joke Mr Dalrymple, a satirical joke. She didn't really have a pet ferret with a diamond necklace, you see. To try to pass that one off as fact is a bit cheap. And another, if a beggar asked charity of Clive, he reputedly responded: 'Friend, I have no small brilliants about me,' is another joke, Mr Dalrymple: a skit. It's depressing to encounter an historian so unfamiliar with 18th Century satire and humour as to miss it again and again. It might explain why his own book is so shorn of it. Usually I look forward to my bed time read but not this one. I slogged on to encounter yet more dubiously executed insults of Clive.
We are told that after Plassey Clive 'wore six or seven bracelets, every one of a different species of gem; and he also had hanging from his neck, over his breast, three or four chaplets of pearls, every one of inestimable value...He at the same time amused himself with listening to the songs and looking at the dances of a number of singers, who he carried around with him wherever he went on elephants.' Pull the other one - it's way out of character. Moreover, given that Mr Dalrymple assures us how much Clive hated India and the Indians it seems pretty unlikely that he would go around dressed or behaving like one. As a source he quotes Ghulam Hussan Khan, whoever he is, it reads to me that Ghulam Hussan Khan cracked another satirical joke, another Mr Dalrymple missed.
On page 263, he delivers another twist of spite where Shah Alam writes a letter to his fellow monarch George III in England, sending along a nazr (ceremonial gift) of rare jewels worth Rs100,000 (£1M today we are advised). Neither letters nor gift reached their destination. The inference being Clive stole them.
Ships sunk, Mr Dalrymple. Cargoes never reached England. Many fortunes were lost at sea. Including gifts from potentates, one to another. Check your shipping and you'll find out.

This book is a slog. There are no insightful little cameos of what it must have been like to have been a sepoy, or gunner or mahoot in the Indian army, or in the EIC army for that matter, no insight into the daily fare. For me, Dalrymple falls into the category of the dusty academic who manages to cram in every historical detail while missing the human story. It makes for heavy going: the book is thick, it's hard to hold in bed at night, the only place to read it is on a desk or table, I'd advise anyone thinking of buying it to get the Kindle version at you'll be spared the struggle.

The best line in the book comes right at the end when Shah Alam dies, which tells us that he was the last of the Timurid line, beginning with the lame and ending with the blind - but even they're not his words. They come from a quote by William Fraser, Ochterlony's deputy. p 387. Shah Alam had awarded the Diwani with Clive and his end was as a 'chessboard' king, with a pension paid by the EIC under the protection of Richard Wellesley, who 'conquered more of India than Napoleon did of Europe', become power-mad and turned into a something of a despot himself before being recalled to England for his excesses. His brother Arthur, later the Duke of Wellington, returned from India a very wealthy man as well. Do we hear any criticism of these? How they came by their loot?

The East India Company was a rotten business, and as he fairly states, an example of irresponsible corporate greed at its very worst but then so had been the South Sea Company, which very nearly brought down the entire British economy in the 1720s. Commerce, it would appear, does not learn.

All told, I found the book turgid and prejudiced. I'll certainly not pick it up again nor recommend it.

455 people found this helpful

Constans

Very good but excess White Male Guilt

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 2 November 2019

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This exciting, brilliant history should really be granted 5 stars but the wearisome white male guilt of the author lessens it to 3. He is critical of the East India's Company's ruthless yet brilliantly conceived takeover of India but remains uncritical of the savage, inhuman torture methods (eyes gouged out etc) and genocidal levels of slaughter by contemporary Muslim and Hindu rulers. After a battle between Mughal and Hindu armies all 30,000 Hindu prisoners of war were executed on the command of the Muslim victors. The East India Company never actually did that. Furthermore, no credit whatever was given by the author for the fact that India today is a stable parliamentary democracy with an Anglophone elite. Would the Islamic Mughal emperors have brought about such a democratic and West-leaning India? Not very likely is it? Moreover, if the East India company had taken over China during the eighteenth century then the Chinese people today might be enjoying life in a benign democratic society instead of the threatening Orwellian one party state that the free world may soon have to confront.

195 people found this helpful

John

Anarchy, what anarchy?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 15 October 2019

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The title of the this book is "The Anarchy - The Relentless Rise of the East India Company." Whilst the rise of the East India Company was certainly relentless its sense of purpose, profit for the shareholders, was hardly anarchic. In fact what it it achieved with relatively few resources was remarkable. In terms of conquest and economic exploitation it was hugely succesful. Dalrymple argues that the conquest and exploitation was an abuse of corporate power and that after 420 years the story of the EIC has never been more current. Shock horror, multinationals will try anything they can get away with to enhance their international profits and they will take their business to wherever the margins are most favourable, exploiting local conditions where they can. As British influence exapanded effective control and governeance could not be exercised by a Parliament several thousand miles and many months sailing distant. Running the Empire worried the Victorians but long before that outsourcing control was essential and, to that extent, the original company charter, given the geographic limits of the time, seems a model of directness. Of course it favoured the exploiters over the exploited. Otherwise Dalrymple fills his copious volume with a great deal of interesting background (most of which was missing from my A Level instruction in 1962) and the book reads well and holds interest. However, I return to the title and judge that the author has failed - I know a lot more about life in India but I dont think I am much the wiser about the self-evident rise of the EIC.

61 people found this helpful

Graham Little

Great writing - Poor economics

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 22 September 2019

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A superb read in the inimitable Dalrymple style backed up by no doubt immense research;

BUT

Irritated by the constant asterisked conversions of 1600’s pounds to ‘today’s’ money (as if ‘today’ was somehow a fixed time point) but more seriously because the conversion has been made at a fixed factor of 105 which is misleading and taken to ridiculous exactitude. Thus on page 12 we are solemnly advised that £68,373 in 1600 is worth £7,179,165 ‘today’. Internet references suggest a factor range between 200 and 75,000 when comparing 1600 to 2019. At a factor of 105 EIC Directors are not much more recompensed than some FTSE CEO’s (think Persimmon), but in terms of manned militia at their disposal or country estates that could be bought the factor must be much higher.

Graham Little

65 people found this helpful

markb

Powerful account of the development of British power over India

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 18 September 2020

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Dalrymple's "The Anarchy" has certainly attracted a heavy volume of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. These include a significant number of very harsh reviews. These criticisms come mainly from two quarters. Firstly from Hindu (Hindutva) nationalists, who reject any of Dalrymple's suggestions that the Mughal Empire made some positive contributions to Indian culture. Secondly from European market fundamentalists who admire the entrepreneurial enterprise of the East India Company in making its vast fortunes and in dominating world trade. For them, Dalrymple's analysis is mere moralising which fails to see the superiority of capitalism over other kinds of economy. The fact Dalrymple has drawn such intense criticism from these extremist factions serves to demonstrate how history can be co-opted for propaganda.

It is important to note that this book is not, nor is intended to be, a comprehensive history of the East India Company (read "The Honourable Company" by Keay). Rather it is a detailed account of how the EIC exploited the chaos surrounding the decline of the Mughal Empire to achieve dominance over Bengal and ultimately over the whole of India. The period covered is, roughly, from 1755-1803. This is the time of "The Anarchy" which gives the book its title.

As Dalrymple shows the key to the EIC's success was the superiority of its military forces, which became, literally, the best that money could buy on the subcontinent. The EIC's strength was its single-minded focus on profit for its shareholders and, of course, for its officers. This meant EIC armies were available to support whichever of the warring local rulers would best advance the Company's own financial and strategic interests. Whatever short term advantage rulers gained in defeating their immediate enemies rapidly evaporated, as the economic and fund-raising power they had inevitably signed over to EIC in return for its military support enabled the Company to systematically strip local assets and export Indian wealth back to England. Local rulers became mere marginalised figureheads. EIC control over the Indian states, therefore, was achieved through an exercise of involuntary privatisation. Nevertheless despite its massive wealth, the EIC itself rested on fragile financial foundations and within years of achieving power over Bengal it became the first "too big to fail" company requiring a massive bailout from the British government. Parliament got the right to appoint a Governor General and ultimately by 1803 the British state was the effective ruler of India.

Dalrymple gives readers a very detailed account featuring a huge cast of personalities - schemers, self-believers, and occasionally, the principled. He convincingly demonstrates how the colonial takeover of India was not achieved by the exercise of state power but rather by corporate strategy backed up by military force.

The book describes numerous battles, massacres and atrocities. At some points, I found it difficult to keep track of all that was going on given the fast moving, necessarily complicated, narrative. I would have found a chronology and more detailed maps helpful.

It is a real strength of the book that Dalrymple draws on a vast body of contemporary sources from archives in Britain and India. He assembles this wide ranging evidence to support his conclusions. This is a deep work of history which will be studied and discussed for years to come. Dalrymple raises powerful questions about power and colonialism that resonate today - 220 years after the events covered by his book.

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