📖 peek insideThe Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
by William Dalrymple
William Dalrymple tells the remarkable story of how the East India Company transformed from a small trading enterprise into an aggressive imperial power that conquered the Indian subcontinent. Through vivid prose and deep archival research, Dalrymple exposes the corporate greed, political maneuvering, and military violence that fueled the company's rise. He highlights the devastating impact of unregulated corporate power on a global scale. This gripping narrative is a cautionary tale about the intersection of commerce and empire, essential for understanding modern South Asia.
A well-known book with a dedicated readership.
Notable Quotes
"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like. Edward, First Baron Thurlow"
"In many ways the East India Company was a model of commercial efficiency: one hundred years into its history, it had only thirty-five permanent employees in its head office. Nevertheless, that skeleton staff executed a corporate coup unparalleled in history: the military conquest, subjugation and plunder of vast tracts of southern Asia. It almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history."
"Ultimately it was the East India Company, not the Marathas or the Sultans of Mysore, that the financiers across India decided to back."
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