The Anarchy: The Rise and Fall of the East India Company - William Dalrymple
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Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, softcover, illustrated, index, 522 pages, 15.5 cms x 23.5 cms x 4.7 cms, condition: as new.
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.
'Outstanding. William Dalrymple has the most felicitous ability to turn extensive research into a riveting narrative. And unlike a historian such as, say, James Mill, who wrote his History of British India (1818) - a standard work for generations of British students - without ever once setting foot in India, Dalrymple is scrupulous in using a variety of sources, not just the Company's own archives in the National Archive of India, but also contemporary Mughal historians such as Ghulam Hussain Khan, or Fakir Khair ud-Din. He is, too, scrupulous in his portrayal of the innate and rather ludicrous sense of superiority entertained by envoys to the fabulously wealthy and cultivated Mughal court, a sense that led them to believe the Emperor must surely be desperate to do trade with a foggy nation so far away. Having already failed to impress Jahangir a couple of times, in 1615 the East India Company persuaded King James to send a royal envoy.
The man chosen was a courtier, MP, diplomat, Amazon explorer, Ambassador to the Sublime Porte and self-described 'man of quality', Sir Thomas Roe. Roe was suitably dazzled by the unimaginable splendour and sumptuous riches of the Mughal court, describing it at length in his diaries. He struggled to interest the Emperor in trade, but managed, after three years at court to obtain permission to build a trading station in Surat. Dalrymple gives us this telling insight: For all the reams written by Roe on Jahangir, the latter did not bother to mention Roe once in his voluminous diaries.
But for all the supple and engaging style, the tale Dalrymple presents is a shocking one of barbarity, extortion and pillage. It cannot be an accident that the word 'loot' is of Hindi origin. And sometimes I could have wished for a less scrupulous portrayal of the stomach-churning violence inflicted, say, by the Rohilla Ghulam Qadir in revenge for his capture after the siege of Pathargarh.'
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