TY - BOOK AU - Dalrymple,William AU - Fraser,Olivia TI - The anarchy: the relentless rise of the East India Company SN - 9781635573954 AV - DS465 .D35 2019 U1 - 954.03/1 23 PY - 2019/// CY - New York PB - Bloomsbury Publishing KW - East India Company KW - History KW - fast KW - British Occupation of India (1765-1947) KW - International business enterprises KW - Great Britain KW - Government policy KW - Economic history KW - India KW - British occupation, 1765-1947 KW - Economic conditions N1 - Includes bibliographical references (407-496) and index; 1599 -- An offer he could not refuse -- Sweeping with the broom of plunder -- A prince of little capacity -- Bloodshed and confusion -- Racked by famine -- The desolation of Delhi -- The impeachment of Warren Hastings -- The corpse of India N2 - In August 1756 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish in his richest provinces a new administration run by English merchants who collected taxes through means of a ruthless private army--what we would now call an act of involuntary privatization. The East India Company's founding charter authorized it to "wage war" and it had always used violence to gain its ends. But the creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional international trading corporation dealing in silks and spices and became something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business. In less than four decades it had trained up a security force of around 200,000 men--twice the size of the British army--and had subdued an entire subcontinent, conquering first Bengal and finally, in 1803, the Mughal capital of Delhi itself. The Company's reach stretched until almost all of India south of the Himalayas was effectively ruled from a boardroom in London. The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world's most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting book to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power. -- Dust jacket flap ER -