The Anarchy

The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

By: William Dalrymple

Narrated by: Sid Sagar

Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

Bloomsbury presents The Anarchy by William Dalrymple, read by Sid Sagar.

The top five sunday times best seller.

One of Barack Obama's best books of 2019.

Longlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2019.

A Financial Times, Observer, Daily Telegraph, Wall Street Journal and Times book of the year.

In August 1765 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 privatisation.

The East India Company’s founding charter authorised 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.

©2019 William Dalrymple (P)2019 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic reviews

"Gloriously opulent...India is a sumptuous place. Telling its story properly demands lush language, not to mention sensitivity towards the country’s passionate complexity. Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India...A book of beauty." (Gerard DeGroot, The Times)

"Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India...A book of beauty." (Gerard DeGroot, The Times)

"An energetic pageturner that marches from the counting house on to the battlefield, exploding patriotic myths along the way...Dalrymple’s spirited, detailed telling will be reason enough for many readers to devour The Anarchy. But his more novel and arguably greater achievement lies in the way he places the company’s rise in the turbulent political landscape of late Mughal India." (Maya Jasanoff, Guardian)

We are story tellers, all of us; this is amazing..

We are all story tellers and this is an amazing story; very deftly told. The narrator increases its impact by his emphatic rendition.

listen and enjoy people. This is good stuff ;)

interesting

interesting. accidentally reviewed the wrong book and now all let me delete a review.

informative but overly reflective

the book was useful to learn about the early history of the EIC and its major conquests that led to it controlling most of India before that was taken over by the British crown. however, it was kind of annoying that almost every 5 minutes it repeated the conclusion "a large corporation did x,y,z which was unheard of before and after". it felt somewhat preachy from start to end.

this book was not as entertaining or engaging as other historical books on Euro-Asian politics of that time like "the great game" (which was an excellent book), and was dry at times. however it filled in a huge gap in my understanding of how the British came to control India, and introduced me to a lot of topics that I might read up on separately now.

An excellent book about global corporations

For anyone wishing to understand how the complex relationship between government and multi-national corporations developed historically.

Exceptionally well-told story of the EIC's rise

My only complaint is that it ended too soon. It goes through the fall of Delhi but I would have loved more of the story of ruling.
Regardless, this is a fascinating take story of the East India Company, particularly as a military power: not just of the battles but of the motivation and characters. It's largely a history of the rulers and leaders, with more emphasis on the British side, but still giving a lot of color to the Indian rulers.
Quite interestingly, this is not just a story of superior European war technology making easy going of local powers. There's a lot of tension in the story because it's often not clear who's going to win.... I mean, we know who wins, but it's not a straight line.

Wow a story that more people should know

I’m a big history guy, meaning that I listen to a lot of history books and pride myself and knowing more than most. However this book opened my eyes to a part of history that has for all intensive purposes been swept under the rug. This is a fascinating peak under that rug and a must read for anyone interested in British history in India

Dalrymple Does It Again

Wonderfully written book wonderfully narrated. Could not stop listening. Much food for thought here comparing and contrasting to today...

The modern equivalent of these sums...

if i ever have to hear that phrase again... give us the rough parameters of conversion rates over this period once at the beginning rather than repeating it so tediously.

won’t please a historian or historical sociologist but a good listen with some colorful details.

Extraordinary.

What a history! Clearly written, well narrated, it gives ably the context of the times and cultures - the why and to who of the “what actually happened”. A splendid achievement. It also made me fall in love with Indian history and culture, much of which was badly damaged by the Company.

Flawed

There are 3-4 fabulous chapters that are insightful, informative and analytical, Unfortunately the rest are just chronicles of battles and palace intrigue. I came away with no sense of how the company affected economic and social life in India; sense of what the company’s remittances meant to the Crown; no sense of whether it’s ultimate domination of the subcontinent sowed the seed of anti-colonialism. Also, I found gratuitos and unhelpful the endless descriptions of torture, dismemberment, rape, flailing and butchery.