The Anarchy
The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
The Anarchy is a large-scale narrative history of how the English East India Company evolved from a commercial enterprise into a military and governmental power in South Asia. Its central story runs through the eighteenth century, when Mughal authority fragmented, regional powers competed for territory and revenue, and Company officials learned to exploit both Indian political rivalries and financial resources. The book is not simply a chronicle of British expansion. Dalrymple reconstructs a crowded political field involving the Mughal court, Bengal’s nawabs, the Maratha Confederacy, Mysore, Afghan invaders, Indian bankers and financiers, European mercenaries, Company shareholders and officials in London. Figures such as Shah Alam II, Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, Tipu Sultan and the Maratha leader Mahadji Scindia appear within a history shaped as much by negotiation, credit and revenue collection as by battles. Dalrymple’s organizing argument is that the conquest was extraordinary b…