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

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

William Dalrymple

How the East India Company turned trade, finance and private armies into territorial rule across India.

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12 parts, about 27 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Explains how a trading corporation used revenue, credit, military force and political alliances to become a territorial power
  • Shows why finance, local collaborators and divided rivals mattered as much as battlefield technology in the conquest of India
  • Connects corporate empire, public rescue and weak accountability to enduring questions about business power and the state

Who it is for

  • Readers interested in colonial history and corporate power
  • Students of empire, finance and military history
  • Policy makers examining corporate influence and public accountability

What the summary covers

  1. A Corporation Receives a Country2 min
  2. From Risky Venture to Armed Company2 min
  3. Imperial Fracture and Military Markets2 min
  4. Bengal Before Conquest2 min
  5. Calcutta, Conspiracy and Plassey3 min
  6. A Prince of Little Capacity3 min
  7. Racked by Famine2 min
  8. Shah Alam and Delhi2 min
  9. Accountability and Impeachment2 min
  10. Wellesley's Imperial Turn2 min
  11. Finance, Division and Delhi3 min
  12. From Company Empire to State Rule2 min

Recommended by

  • Barack Obama44th President of the United States

About the author

  • William DalrympleBritish historian and author of The Anarchy
    • Born in Edinburgh on 20 March 1965 and raised in North Berwick on the Firth of Forth.
    • He grew up in Scotland and first reached India at age eighteen, an encounter he described as a lightning strike.
    • A frequent broadcaster, he wrote and presented three television series, one of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA.
    • 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, Brown and All Souls, Oxford.
    • He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker and the Guardian.
    • The British Academy gave him its President's Medal in 2018 for his literary achievement and for cofounding the Jaipur Literature Festival.
    • He lives with his wife and three children on a goat farm outside Delhi.

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