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

Historian Dalrymple (Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond) delivers a sweeping account of the East India Company’s conquest of India in this vivid and accessible narrative. Founded in 1599 by a “motley” group of London investors, the joint stock company received a royal charter ambiguous enough to allow its future directors to “claim jurisdiction over all English subjects in Asia,” Dalrymple writes. He sketches the East India Company’s first 150 years before focusing on the period from 1756 to 1803, when it committed “the supreme act of corporate violence in world history” by seizing control of nearly all of the Indian subcontinent from the Mughal Empire. He traces the conquest’s roots to the French and Indian War in North America, and profiles such notable figures as Robert Clive, a former accountant who recruited a private army of Indian soldiers and led them into battle against the nawab of Bengal, and Siraj ud-Daula, a Mughal ally who briefly captured Calcutta in 1757. Dalrymple nimbly chronicles both sides of the ensuing war while never losing sight of just how bizarre and problematic it was for a profit-driven company to become a colonial ruler or create an army. Readers on the lookout for warning signs about the dangers of today’s megacorporations will find them in this vibrant, revisionist history. (Sept.)