The Anarchy Paperback – 3 September 2020

Just finished reading the latest offering from the master storyteller William Dalrymple, "The Anarchy". It narrates the events that allowed the East India company to overthrow the declining Mughal empire in India and become the masters themselves. You will meet many interesting characters in this book including Siraj-ud-Daula, Robert Clive, Shah Alam, Mir Qasim, Tipu Sultan, Warren Hastings, Corwallis and many more.But most importantly it tells us in great details how could a small group of merchants from a far away land capture the richest and most powerful empire in the world of that era.From what I understood the reasons were too1) Our rulers were all megalomaniac and myopic with no one capable of looking beyond their ego and uniting with others for the greater good2) The continuous financial support by the indian business class to the East India Company in their endeavors to overthrow existing rulers. So Jagat Seth helped Clive overthrow Siraj and Gopaldas helped Welseley against Tipu. Why? For all that mattered to these individuals was greater financial returns, even if that meant accepting a foreign invasion!300 years later what has really changed? Are our leaders truly United even on issues of National importance?Are our business class morale enough to not sell the country for a greater return on investment?Sorry for the long post but, I do hope friends that you read this most important book 😊

The media could not be loaded.  I am a great fan of William Dalrymple sir. I like his sharp thought of mind and excellent scholarly researched materials which he described in an attractive way. Admittedly his writings have genereated in me the interest for history which is indomitable now. I was eagerly waiting for History of Murshidabad and now Very elated to get it in this Book. The way he described the Indian corporate torture by a four window room of British East India Company and betrayal by our own natives in connection with EIC for their selfish motives beggard description. Thank you sir for your wonderful contributions.....

The praise showered by Salman Rushdie(That rarity, a scholar of history who can really write) seems well placed going by the simple and lucidly attractive style of writing. The introduction sets the pace when it is told that the Company , though thought mostly as a 'Mission Civilisartice': a benign national transfer of knowledge, railways and arts of civilisation from West to East, was actually authorised by its founding charter to 'wage war'. It indeed captured a Portuguese vessel on its maiden voyage in 1602(Pg xxiv). It goes on to narrate the story of one of the wealthiest polities of the world looted by a company. It is the story of a mighty Mughal empire being replaced by a company.

The Anarchy is a popular history book on the East Indian Company(EIC) in 18th Century India. Dalrymple regale us the rise of the EIC from a Tudor privateering operation full of ex-Caribbean privates to an imperial power. Considering that the British were pretty late to the spice trade in India compared to the Portuguese, Dutch, and the French, their raise as an imperial power is extraordinary.Rise of of the first Multinational Corporation:East Indian Company(EIC) basically invented corporate lobbying, insider training and first corporate bail out, and all the other things we loathe about modern corporation. EIC developed a symbiotic relationship with the British Parliamentarians. Company men like Clive used the looted money from India to buy both MPs and parliamentary seats. The Parliament backed the Company with state power because many MPs were shareholders of EIC and any action against the company will affect their personal wealth.Silk, Spices and Sepoy:Thanks to the dwindling military and financial power of the Mughals, a huge military labor market sprang up all across India. Dalrymple describes this as one of the most thriving free markets of fighting men anywhere in the world- all up for sale to the highest bidder. Warfare become a business enterprise and substantial section of peasants spent part of their time year as mercenaries. EIC were better off financially and were able to pay the sepoys the promised wage on time than many local rulers. EIC were using as much as 80% Indian sepoyts in many of their battles.The British very really lucky:Although popular theories propose that the success of the EIC can be attributed to the fragmenting to Mughal India into tiny competing states; the military tech of the Europeans and innovation of banking, taxing and administration of the Anglo-saxons, one of the recurring themes that I found is how lucky in the may of the battles. Yes, the above theories are probably true and East India Company troop were more disciplined than their Indian rivals; but its incredible how consistently lucky the British were.Break the Rules:Warfare in India were actually done in gentlemanly manner. The Mughals. Marathas and other local rulers pursued negotiation, bribery and paying tribute. In case of actual conquest, there are rules by which they abide by. The Company men, especially Robert Clive, who committed suicide at the age of 49(Hope someone soon writes a biography on this truly appalling character), constantly breaking the rules like attacking at night and attacking at thunderstorm etc.Why we need to learn to negotiate?Mughals were completely clueless about who corporation functions or how unsavory Clive operates as an Profiteer. Ghulam Hussain Khan says a sale of jackass would have taken up more time than the time taken for the Treaty of Allahbad. Post Treaty of Allahabad, EIC used Indian tax revenue to purchase textiles and spies. Even at the time of famines EIC enforces tax collection to maintain their revenue and growing military expenditure. At the height of the famine, English merchants engaged in grain hoarding, profiteering and speculation.North vs South India?Even after Battle of Plassey, Cavalry was the dominant form of warfare in northern India and continued to fight each other despite the growing domination of the British. However the south was every quick to copy and learn the military innovations of the Europeans. Haider Ali had a modern infantry and his troops were more innovative and tactically ahead of EIC. They mastered the art of firing rockets long before the English. Nana Phadnavus, ‘the Maratha Machiavelli’, after the Treaty of Wadgaon, proposed a Triple Alliance between the Marathas, Haider and the Nizam of Hyderabad.Indian Bankers love the Company:The rise of EIC as an imperial power would not be possible with out the Indian bankers. The Indian financiers saw greater advantage in keeping the Company in power than they did supporting their own. By 1803, Indian bankers were competing with one another to back the company’s army.In the end its the Company’s ability to mobilize money have them the edge over the Marathas and Tipu Sultan. It was no longer the superior European military technology. Bengal alone was annually yeilding a steady revenue surplus of Rs 25 million at the time when Scindia struggled to net Rs 2 million. The biggest firm of the period – the houses of Lala Kashmiri Mal, Ramchand-Gopalchand Shahu and Gopaldas-Manohardas – helped the military finance of the British. The Company duly rewarded the invaluable services in 1782 by making the house of Gopaldas the government’s banker. Richard Wellesley managed raise Rs 10 million with the support of Marwari bankers of Bengal to fight the Fourth Anglo-Mysore war.Final nail in the coffin:Following the victory of the Battle of Delhi, EIC defeated the last indigenous power. Now linked Bengal, Madras and Bombay while imposing itself as Regent under the Mughals.My only complaints is that the book doesn’t drive into the financial details of the Company despite the wealth information available. A bit of financial history of the Company would have helped us understand the nature of the Company better. Overall an entertaining history book. highly recommended.

Virtually I have been taken to 16th,17th and 18th century

Exhaustive and exhausting book. Main stream is detail of EIC's violence on India and of the loot of India. There are many substreams within. Sometimes substream has enough detail (of Nader Shah) sometimes hop skip (impeachment of Harings). The content itself is covered by many books in the past (books like the Honourable Company by John Keay). After I read & closed the book, I felt it added nothing new to what I know already. Overall, it is story of greed and violence of EIC at one place. I also felt that the book ended suddenly without covering much ground on sepoy mutiny,

This book is the authentic documented story of the beginning and expansions of Corporate imperialism in India . The saddest part of modern Indian history is written in such a manner that you will not stop going through it until it is finished. History flows like water in the writings of Dalrymple. You read it , reread it more. For me this book a winner on every aspect. Four hundred and twenty years of Sufferings definitely needed a place in history and this book ruthlessly exposes.

The book opens with a list of characters, beginning with Lord Robert Clive, whom Mr Dalrymple hates. It's followed by Warren Hastings whom he loves. Clive, he describes as a 'genuinely...a ruthless unprincipled plunderer,' p 311 and yet on p 312 we read of Hasting's excesses, which appear to have included 'judicial murder,' and yet still he loves him. He'll forgive him anything, and is very happy to remind us that upon impeachment Warren Hastings was cleared of all charges but is pretty quiet about Clive who was cleared of all charges that had been levelled against him long before. The book is a chronology of the Mughals and the how the British gained India, the heavy-handed, brutal antics of the East India Company and its British officers. He singles out Lord Robert Clive. He attacks him in a personal, vindictive way, which not only smacks of amateurism but reads as though he's trying to appease a little gang somewhere. It made me focus on it. He makes him the villain of the piece. Yet from Clive's correspondence, (not quoted in this book), we read that this same man, upon purchasing of land in Wales and on the Welsh borders, pored over the maps to ask which tenant farmed what type of land and, where they were farming marginal hill land, reduced their rent to a 'homage rent,' peppercorn, which is not consistent with the bigoted picture Mr. Dalrymple paints. He's equally rude about the Powis family, but I notice, but didn't have the grace to visit any of them during his research, as Bence Jones had in his book Clive of India, who went to see the Earl of Plymouth and gathered a lot of personal information thereby. Obviously Mr Dalrymple considers himself above common courtesy.Later in the book, he accuses Henrietta Clive who went to India to join her husband Edward, Governor of Madras, of carrying off jewels looted from Tipu Sultan's palace after his defeat by Richard Wellesley in 1799 (p 353). She paid for them. Had she not bought them where would they be now? Not in an Indian museum for certain. They'd have been lost. Today they form part of a collection of the National Trust in Powys Castle. It's reminiscent of the Elgin Marbles: had Elgin not recovered these, where would they have been now? In Greek hands? Or more likely, become target practice, smashed up and turned into foundation rubble for a block of flats. Had Robert Clive, Lord Robert Clive's great-grandson, not gone as watercolour artist to record the excavations at of the Assyrian reliefs in Nimroud and imported to England The Assyrian King Tukul-apil-esharra III (Tiglath-pileser III) bas relief, (which now hangs in the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum), where would that be now? Robert Clive painted the lamassu - the monolithic stone sculptures of human headed winged bulls - which Layard shipped to England, which were exhibited in a the British Museum this year. The ones that remained ISIS blew up and defaced, whose shattered remains vividly demonstrate. Perhaps it might have been a little less spiteful to thank Henrietta Clive for saving these treasures. And Lady Clive, Lord Robert Clive's wife, Margaret Maskelyne - whose character he attempts to assassinate by first of all attempting to demonise her brother, Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal, whom Dava Sobel turned into the blockhead of her book Longitude, then secondly by telling us of a report from The Salisbury Journal that her 'pet ferret had a diamond necklace £2,500' (p 140). It was a joke Mr Dalrymple, a satirical joke. She didn't really have a pet ferret with a diamond necklace, you see. To try to pass that one off as fact is a bit cheap. And another, if a beggar asked charity of Clive, he reputedly responded: 'Friend, I have no small brilliants about me,' is another joke, Mr Dalrymple: a skit. It's depressing to encounter an historian so unfamiliar with 18th Century satire and humour as to miss it again and again. It might explain why his own book is so shorn of it. Usually I look forward to my bed time read but not this one. I slogged on to encounter yet more dubiously executed insults of Clive. We are told that after Plassey Clive 'wore six or seven bracelets, every one of a different species of gem; and he also had hanging from his neck, over his breast, three or four chaplets of pearls, every one of inestimable value...He at the same time amused himself with listening to the songs and looking at the dances of a number of singers, who he carried around with him wherever he went on elephants.' Pull the other one - it's way out of character. Moreover, given that Mr Dalrymple assures us how much Clive hated India and the Indians it seems pretty unlikely that he would go around dressed or behaving like one. As a source he quotes Ghulam Hussan Khan, whoever he is, it reads to me that Ghulam Hussan Khan cracked another satirical joke, another Mr Dalrymple missed. On page 263, he delivers another twist of spite where Shah Alam writes a letter to his fellow monarch George III in England, sending along a nazr (ceremonial gift) of rare jewels worth Rs100,000 (£1M today we are advised). Neither letters nor gift reached their destination. The inference being Clive stole them. Ships sunk, Mr Dalrymple. Cargoes never reached England. Many fortunes were lost at sea. Including gifts from potentates, one to another. Check your shipping and you'll find out.This book is a slog. There are no insightful little cameos of what it must have been like to have been a sepoy, or gunner or mahoot in the Indian army, or in the EIC army for that matter, no insight into the daily fare. For me, Dalrymple falls into the category of the dusty academic who manages to cram in every historical detail while missing the human story. It makes for heavy going: the book is thick, it's hard to hold in bed at night, the only place to read it is on a desk or table, I'd advise anyone thinking of buying it to get the Kindle version at you'll be spared the struggle.The best line in the book comes right at the end when Shah Alam dies, which tells us that he was the last of the Timurid line, beginning with the lame and ending with the blind - but even they're not his words. They come from a quote by William Fraser, Ochterlony's deputy. p 387. Shah Alam had awarded the Diwani with Clive and his end was as a 'chessboard' king, with a pension paid by the EIC under the protection of Richard Wellesley, who 'conquered more of India than Napoleon did of Europe', become power-mad and turned into a something of a despot himself before being recalled to England for his excesses. His brother Arthur, later the Duke of Wellington, returned from India a very wealthy man as well. Do we hear any criticism of these? How they came by their loot?The East India Company was a rotten business, and as he fairly states, an example of irresponsible corporate greed at its very worst but then so had been the South Sea Company, which very nearly brought down the entire British economy in the 1720s. Commerce, it would appear, does not learn.All told, I found the book turgid and prejudiced. I'll certainly not pick it up again nor recommend it.

This exciting, brilliant history should really be granted 5 stars but the wearisome white male guilt of the author lessens it to 3. He is critical of the East India's Company's ruthless yet brilliantly conceived takeover of India but remains uncritical of the savage, inhuman torture methods (eyes gouged out etc) and genocidal levels of slaughter by contemporary Muslim and Hindu rulers. After a battle between Mughal and Hindu armies all 30,000 Hindu prisoners of war were executed on the command of the Muslim victors. The East India Company never actually did that. Furthermore, no credit whatever was given by the author for the fact that India today is a stable parliamentary democracy with an Anglophone elite. Would the Islamic Mughal emperors have brought about such a democratic and West-leaning India? Not very likely is it? Moreover, if the East India company had taken over China during the eighteenth century then the Chinese people today might be enjoying life in a benign democratic society instead of the threatening Orwellian one party state that the free world may soon have to confront.

A superb read in the inimitable Dalrymple style backed up by no doubt immense research;BUTIrritated by the constant asterisked conversions of 1600’s pounds to ‘today’s’ money (as if ‘today’ was somehow a fixed time point) but more seriously because the conversion has been made at a fixed factor of 105 which is misleading and taken to ridiculous exactitude. Thus on page 12 we are solemnly advised that £68,373 in 1600 is worth £7,179,165 ‘today’. Internet references suggest a factor range between 200 and 75,000 when comparing 1600 to 2019. At a factor of 105 EIC Directors are not much more recompensed than some FTSE CEO’s (think Persimmon), but in terms of manned militia at their disposal or country estates that could be bought the factor must be much higher.Graham Little

The title of the this book is "The Anarchy - The Relentless Rise of the East India Company." Whilst the rise of the East India Company was certainly relentless its sense of purpose, profit for the shareholders, was hardly anarchic. In fact what it it achieved with relatively few resources was remarkable. In terms of conquest and economic exploitation it was hugely succesful. Dalrymple argues that the conquest and exploitation was an abuse of corporate power and that after 420 years the story of the EIC has never been more current. Shock horror, multinationals will try anything they can get away with to enhance their international profits and they will take their business to wherever the margins are most favourable, exploiting local conditions where they can. As British influence exapanded effective control and governeance could not be exercised by a Parliament several thousand miles and many months sailing distant. Running the Empire worried the Victorians but long before that outsourcing control was essential and, to that extent, the original company charter, given the geographic limits of the time, seems a model of directness. Of course it favoured the exploiters over the exploited. Otherwise Dalrymple fills his copious volume with a great deal of interesting background (most of which was missing from my A Level instruction in 1962) and the book reads well and holds interest. However, I return to the title and judge that the author has failed - I know a lot more about life in India but I dont think I am much the wiser about the self-evident rise of the EIC.

I've read a lot of William Dalrymple's books and, up until now, I've enjoyed them all.This book is essentially on the conquest of India by the East India Company (EIC) during a fifty-year period. It is excellent on the key protagonists in the EIC and on the rulers in Mughal India at the time. It contains many graphic and fascinating descriptions of the political manoeuvring and the military campaigns.But, I had bought this book because I wanted to learn about the EIC and there is relatively very little on the political, organizational and management aspects of the EIC in the UK and not that much in India itself.In addition, the book is too long for the content. It could have been cut by 100 pages by skilful editing and by the elimination of the details of the endless battles.So, at one level, I really enjoyed the book and I managed to read it to the end, just ...At another level, I felt cheated. I wouldn't have bought the book if it had been given a more accurate title. (and, by the way, was the use of the word "anarchy" deliberately ambiguous?)