Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Bloomsbury Publishing (2019), Edition: 1, 577 pages
Description
In August 1765 the East India Company defeated and captured the young Mughal emperor and forced him to set up in his richest provinces a new government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of a vast and ruthless private army.0The 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 half a century it had trained up a private security force of around 260,000 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 relentlessly until almost all of India south of the Himalayas was effectively ruled from a boardroom in London. 0'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 and answerable only to its 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.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member rivkat
How did a private company conquer a subcontinent? The British East India Company, not “Britain,” took over and extracted untold wealth from India, and it did so by taking advantage of political disunity and by delivering massive profits to its shareholders. It’s a stunning story of corporate
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power, a reminder that dystopia already came—and only went away provisionally and in some places. Show Less
LibraryThing member john257hopper
This is a detailed and well researched account of the rise and (in briefer form) fall of probably the most powerful corporate entity in world history - and it's not a familiar name to 21st century ears, but one that ceased to exist 150 years ago. In the author's words "the East India Company
The company had modest beginnings in 1600 as a relatively modest late Elizabethan attempt to improve its position in the growing spheres of exploration and economic expansion relative to its key rivals, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Dutch - it was a joint stock company, "one of Tudor England’s most brilliant and revolutionary innovations". The first century or more of its activity was relatively modest and it wasn't until well into the 18th century that it came to acquire more power, against the backdrop of growing ethnic and regional challenges to the Mughal Empire, the dominant polity in the Indian sub-continent. So for 200 or more years, the growing British influence and power in India was not the government "but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by a violent, utterly ruthless and intermittently mentally unstable corporate predator – Clive. India’s transition to colonialism took place under a for-profit corporation, which existed entirely for the purpose of enriching its investors".
Through the course of some half century of warfare, not only with Indians, but also in imperial rivalry with the French, the company came to acquire a huge private army and security force that by 1803 numbered some 200,000 men, twice the size of the British army, had "seized control of almost all of what had once been Mughal India, created a sophisticated administration and civil service, built much of London’s docklands and come close to generating half of Britain’s trade". But it was not all plain sailing - during the nadir of this period, the company survived only through massive loans from the British government. Its economic exploitation of Bengal exacerbated the effects of the terrible famine in West Bengal in 1769-70, caused by successive failures of harvests and extreme drought. Following this, people in Britain began to sit up and take notice and attempts were made to exercise greater state control over the company's activities.
During the Napoleonic era, the new governor general of India was Richard Wellesley, elder brother of the future Duke of Wellington and with ruthless determination he both beat the French in India and largely subjugated the Indian states under the nominal rule of the ineffective and long-suffering Mughal Emperor Shah Alam. After his recall, and as the 19th century gathered pace, the British Parliament took greater control of the situation, firstly allowing economic competition from other companies in trade with the East, ending the company’s monopoly, and later removing the company's right to trade altogether. Finally, after the crushing of the Great Uprising/Indian Mutiny/First War of Independence in 1857, the company's final functions were subsumed by the British state, thus creating the Raj, the form of British India for the next years until independence, presided over by Queen Victoria as Empress of India.
There are some colourful characters whose careers are traced here, most notably in my view Robert Clive, Warren Hastings and the ineffective and weak but personally honourable Shah Alam. Overall, it was a good read, though I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the author's Last Mughal, about the events of 1857.
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remains today history’s most ominous warning about the potential for the abuse of corporate power – and the insidious means by which the interests of shareholders can seemingly become those of the state". He describes its "conquest of India [as] almost certainly .......the supreme act of corporate violence in world history. For all the power wielded today by the world’s largest corporations – whether ExxonMobil, Walmart or Google – they are tame beasts compared with the ravaging territorial appetites of the militarised East India Company".The company had modest beginnings in 1600 as a relatively modest late Elizabethan attempt to improve its position in the growing spheres of exploration and economic expansion relative to its key rivals, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Dutch - it was a joint stock company, "one of Tudor England’s most brilliant and revolutionary innovations". The first century or more of its activity was relatively modest and it wasn't until well into the 18th century that it came to acquire more power, against the backdrop of growing ethnic and regional challenges to the Mughal Empire, the dominant polity in the Indian sub-continent. So for 200 or more years, the growing British influence and power in India was not the government "but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by a violent, utterly ruthless and intermittently mentally unstable corporate predator – Clive. India’s transition to colonialism took place under a for-profit corporation, which existed entirely for the purpose of enriching its investors".
Through the course of some half century of warfare, not only with Indians, but also in imperial rivalry with the French, the company came to acquire a huge private army and security force that by 1803 numbered some 200,000 men, twice the size of the British army, had "seized control of almost all of what had once been Mughal India, created a sophisticated administration and civil service, built much of London’s docklands and come close to generating half of Britain’s trade". But it was not all plain sailing - during the nadir of this period, the company survived only through massive loans from the British government. Its economic exploitation of Bengal exacerbated the effects of the terrible famine in West Bengal in 1769-70, caused by successive failures of harvests and extreme drought. Following this, people in Britain began to sit up and take notice and attempts were made to exercise greater state control over the company's activities.
During the Napoleonic era, the new governor general of India was Richard Wellesley, elder brother of the future Duke of Wellington and with ruthless determination he both beat the French in India and largely subjugated the Indian states under the nominal rule of the ineffective and long-suffering Mughal Emperor Shah Alam. After his recall, and as the 19th century gathered pace, the British Parliament took greater control of the situation, firstly allowing economic competition from other companies in trade with the East, ending the company’s monopoly, and later removing the company's right to trade altogether. Finally, after the crushing of the Great Uprising/Indian Mutiny/First War of Independence in 1857, the company's final functions were subsumed by the British state, thus creating the Raj, the form of British India for the next years until independence, presided over by Queen Victoria as Empress of India.
There are some colourful characters whose careers are traced here, most notably in my view Robert Clive, Warren Hastings and the ineffective and weak but personally honourable Shah Alam. Overall, it was a good read, though I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the author's Last Mughal, about the events of 1857.
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LibraryThing member breic
I read this at the same time as Stephen Platt's "Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age," which also covered the EIC's trading in China (mostly neglected here). Both books were occasionally interesting, but usually gave far more detail than I cared to know.
> the
> A trading corporation had become both colonial proprietor and corporate state, legally free, for the first time, to do all the things that governments do: control the law, administer justice, assess taxes, mint coins, provide protection, impose punishments, make peace and wage war. … now the Company no longer had to ship anything from Britain in order to pay for the textiles, spices and saltpetre it wished to buy and export: Indian tax revenues were now being used to provide the finance for all such purchases
> By June 1770, the devastation was unfolding across the entire province. Five hundred a day were now dying of starvation in the streets of Murshidabad. 8 Rice was scarce even in Calcutta, where 76,000 died on its streets between July and September. "The whole province looked like a charnel house," reported one officer. The total numbers are disputed, but in all perhaps 1.2 million – one in five Bengalis – starved to death that year in what became one of the greatest tragedies of the province's history
> We have outdone the Spaniards in Peru! They were at least butchers on a religious principle, however diabolical their zeal. We have murdered, deposed, plundered, usurped – say what think you of the famine in Bengal, in which three millions perished, being caused by a monopoly of the provisions by the servants of the East India Company?
> In America, Britain had lost its colonies not to Native Americans, but to the descendants of European settlers. Cornwallis was determined to make sure that a settled colonial class never emerged in India to undermine British rule as it had done, to his own humiliation, in America. … In 1786 an order had already been passed banning the Anglo-Indian orphans of British soldiers from qualifying for service in the Company army. In 1791 the door was slammed shut when an order was issued that no one with an Indian parent could be employed by the Civil, Military or Marine branches of the Company
> Western imperialism and corporate capitalism were born at the same time, and both were to some extent the dragons' teeth that spawned the modern world.
> the
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Company had trained up a private security force of around 200,000 – twice the size of the British army – and marshalled more firepower than any nation state in Asia … the East India Company really was too big to fail. So it was that the following year, in 1773, the world’s first aggressive multinational corporation was saved by one of history's first mega-bailouts – the first example of a nation state extracting, as its price for saving a failing corporation, the right to regulate and severely rein it in> A trading corporation had become both colonial proprietor and corporate state, legally free, for the first time, to do all the things that governments do: control the law, administer justice, assess taxes, mint coins, provide protection, impose punishments, make peace and wage war. … now the Company no longer had to ship anything from Britain in order to pay for the textiles, spices and saltpetre it wished to buy and export: Indian tax revenues were now being used to provide the finance for all such purchases
> By June 1770, the devastation was unfolding across the entire province. Five hundred a day were now dying of starvation in the streets of Murshidabad. 8 Rice was scarce even in Calcutta, where 76,000 died on its streets between July and September. "The whole province looked like a charnel house," reported one officer. The total numbers are disputed, but in all perhaps 1.2 million – one in five Bengalis – starved to death that year in what became one of the greatest tragedies of the province's history
> We have outdone the Spaniards in Peru! They were at least butchers on a religious principle, however diabolical their zeal. We have murdered, deposed, plundered, usurped – say what think you of the famine in Bengal, in which three millions perished, being caused by a monopoly of the provisions by the servants of the East India Company?
> In America, Britain had lost its colonies not to Native Americans, but to the descendants of European settlers. Cornwallis was determined to make sure that a settled colonial class never emerged in India to undermine British rule as it had done, to his own humiliation, in America. … In 1786 an order had already been passed banning the Anglo-Indian orphans of British soldiers from qualifying for service in the Company army. In 1791 the door was slammed shut when an order was issued that no one with an Indian parent could be employed by the Civil, Military or Marine branches of the Company
> Western imperialism and corporate capitalism were born at the same time, and both were to some extent the dragons' teeth that spawned the modern world.
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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
I have recently started a new job as a consequence of which I walk down ‘Clive Steps’ and past the statue of Robert Clive every day. I hadn’t really thought about Clive much. I vaguely remember being taught, rather perfunctorily, about him at school, probably nearly fifty years ago, at a time
I had certainly never appreciated the extent to which British expansion into India was undertaken by the East India Company. The armies of occupation were primarily despatched and deployed by that commercial leviathan rather than directly by the British state. Of course, some distinctions can be obscured, and British national interests were so closely bound up in those of the East India Company as to become difficult to disaggregate.
Clive’s own experiences are intriguing. Having proved to be a disastrously disruptive element at school, frequently punished for poor performance and dreadful behaviour (including frequent fighting and bullying), he passed into life as a trainee accountant, in which guise he found himself sent east. In the febrile atmosphere of the East India Company’s fractious relationships with local potentates across the subcontinent, Clive came to prominence, emerging as a surprisingly competent military strategist and leader of men.
Corruption and exploitation were endemic, with the East India Company despoiling India on a broad scale as quickly as it could, while prominent figures within the Company siphoned off their own personal fortunes., in fact, Clive did so twice. Having returned from service in India with his first fortune, Clive tried (but failed) to buy his way into politics through the purchase of a rotten borough. He returned to India, and found himself even more successful in his second stint, returning to Britain with a fortune that would now be estimated at several millions. This second foray proved significantly more successful than his first expedition, and Clive was eventually ennobled as the Rt Hon Lord Clive, in which guise he was installed as first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency.
William Dalrymple chronicles Clive’s feats as part of his comprehensive account of the history of the East India Company. This is an impressive, if sobering work, and lays bare the world’s first global corporation. It was formed in 1599 by a group of Elizabethan merchants, eager to establish a means of robust competition with their European counterparts who seemed to have stolen a march on the exploitation of the riches of the East. Within a century, it had established itself as the largest, and most profitable British trading body.
In 2008 the world’s economies were brought to their knees by the near collapse of banks that seemed to have become ‘too big to fail’. The East India Company was an early precursor to that sort of commercial and corporate hubris. Within years of its first trading ventures, its shareholders were so widespread, and so heavily committed, that when the company was threatened with financial disaster, the government had to step in. its reinvestment was soon liberally repaid, but a dangerous precedent had been established, and one that would be repeated on a wider scale nearly three centuries later.
Dalrymple has a pleasing facility for conveying a lot of complex financial material in an open and accessible manner. Although this was not an area of history with which I was at all conversant, Dalrymple’s explanations led me through it painlessly.
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when today’s sensitivities about imperial aggression and oppression were less prevalent. Then, Clive’s feats in bringing the Indian subcontinent under British rule were seen as heroic, rather than exploitative.I had certainly never appreciated the extent to which British expansion into India was undertaken by the East India Company. The armies of occupation were primarily despatched and deployed by that commercial leviathan rather than directly by the British state. Of course, some distinctions can be obscured, and British national interests were so closely bound up in those of the East India Company as to become difficult to disaggregate.
Clive’s own experiences are intriguing. Having proved to be a disastrously disruptive element at school, frequently punished for poor performance and dreadful behaviour (including frequent fighting and bullying), he passed into life as a trainee accountant, in which guise he found himself sent east. In the febrile atmosphere of the East India Company’s fractious relationships with local potentates across the subcontinent, Clive came to prominence, emerging as a surprisingly competent military strategist and leader of men.
Corruption and exploitation were endemic, with the East India Company despoiling India on a broad scale as quickly as it could, while prominent figures within the Company siphoned off their own personal fortunes., in fact, Clive did so twice. Having returned from service in India with his first fortune, Clive tried (but failed) to buy his way into politics through the purchase of a rotten borough. He returned to India, and found himself even more successful in his second stint, returning to Britain with a fortune that would now be estimated at several millions. This second foray proved significantly more successful than his first expedition, and Clive was eventually ennobled as the Rt Hon Lord Clive, in which guise he was installed as first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency.
William Dalrymple chronicles Clive’s feats as part of his comprehensive account of the history of the East India Company. This is an impressive, if sobering work, and lays bare the world’s first global corporation. It was formed in 1599 by a group of Elizabethan merchants, eager to establish a means of robust competition with their European counterparts who seemed to have stolen a march on the exploitation of the riches of the East. Within a century, it had established itself as the largest, and most profitable British trading body.
In 2008 the world’s economies were brought to their knees by the near collapse of banks that seemed to have become ‘too big to fail’. The East India Company was an early precursor to that sort of commercial and corporate hubris. Within years of its first trading ventures, its shareholders were so widespread, and so heavily committed, that when the company was threatened with financial disaster, the government had to step in. its reinvestment was soon liberally repaid, but a dangerous precedent had been established, and one that would be repeated on a wider scale nearly three centuries later.
Dalrymple has a pleasing facility for conveying a lot of complex financial material in an open and accessible manner. Although this was not an area of history with which I was at all conversant, Dalrymple’s explanations led me through it painlessly.
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LibraryThing member mcdenis
Dalrymple never disappoints. His scholarly historical narrative paints a sordid picture of a small group of greedy men who geared to profit formed the East India Company. They siphoned the wealth of India, recruited their own army and became a corporate giant weilding vast sums of money and
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creating eventally huge amounts of debt. Officers of the Company sent to India came back to England very wealthy at the expense of the Indian leaders. Quotations from historical documents from the Company’s archives in Britain and resources in India add a travelogue flavor to the corporate violence and pillage. Eventually the Company’s wings were clipped by British Parliament. The seductive danger of Western imperialism and corporate venality run through each of the chapters as a lesson for us today. Dalrymple treats the Indian players in this drama with respect and cultural sensitivity. Readers interested in military warfare will find much to interest them. Show Less
LibraryThing member dhmontgomery
In 1686, the English East India Company sent a fleet to its trading city of Calcutta to try to teach a lesson to the nominal rulers of India, the Mughal Empire. The Mughals crushed the English like flies, seizing most of their trading ports, and then generously gave most of it back to them.
Half a
By the late 18th Century, Indian forces were capable of standing toe-to-toe with the EIC's armies (which were largely Indian in composition, too), but by this point it was too late: the EIC was too well established, and had access to too much money, to be truly stopped. Even when canny princes like Tipu Sultan beat EIC contingents, the Company simply raised more troops, bribed away the most dangerous enemy components, and tried again. It was a battle of attrition that the rich but isolated princedoms of India were not in a position to win.
Dalrymple's book, detailed but very readable, tells the story of this conquest, up to the EIC's final ascendancy over the subcontinent during the Napoleonic Wars. He also tells the story of the devastating cost the EIC's conquests had for ordinary people of India, who found themselves oppressed and starved by the company's normal governance as well as by the devastation its wars unleashed.
Interestingly, Dalrymple notes, the directors of the EIC were often opposed to expanding the company's land holdings. Rather, it was usually their delegates on the ground, men like Robert Clive and Richard Wellesley, who exercised their own initiative to make war and peace without the Company's London offices having any say in the matter at all. Sometimes these wars were initiated for the personal profit of these local leaders, other times for ideological reasons (as with Wellesley using the Company's armies to pursue his anti-French beliefs), but when all the dust settled, the Company often found itself unwillingly richer and more powerful (and often more indebted). They often tut-tutted at their freelancing men on the ground, but never gave any of the conquests back, of course.
A fascinating read about a period of history that's drastically overlooked in the United States today.
Half a
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century later, matters had changed utterly. Europe had undergone a military revolution, sparked by development in artillery and infantry, which left its disciplined armies capable of routing less-trained armies 10 times their numbers or more. This advantage didn't last long, just a few decades until Indian leaders caught up (often with the help of bringing in European military drillmasters) but it was a crucial delay. Over those decades, the East India Company leveraged its military edge and financial resources to establish a dominant position on the Indian subcontinent.By the late 18th Century, Indian forces were capable of standing toe-to-toe with the EIC's armies (which were largely Indian in composition, too), but by this point it was too late: the EIC was too well established, and had access to too much money, to be truly stopped. Even when canny princes like Tipu Sultan beat EIC contingents, the Company simply raised more troops, bribed away the most dangerous enemy components, and tried again. It was a battle of attrition that the rich but isolated princedoms of India were not in a position to win.
Dalrymple's book, detailed but very readable, tells the story of this conquest, up to the EIC's final ascendancy over the subcontinent during the Napoleonic Wars. He also tells the story of the devastating cost the EIC's conquests had for ordinary people of India, who found themselves oppressed and starved by the company's normal governance as well as by the devastation its wars unleashed.
Interestingly, Dalrymple notes, the directors of the EIC were often opposed to expanding the company's land holdings. Rather, it was usually their delegates on the ground, men like Robert Clive and Richard Wellesley, who exercised their own initiative to make war and peace without the Company's London offices having any say in the matter at all. Sometimes these wars were initiated for the personal profit of these local leaders, other times for ideological reasons (as with Wellesley using the Company's armies to pursue his anti-French beliefs), but when all the dust settled, the Company often found itself unwillingly richer and more powerful (and often more indebted). They often tut-tutted at their freelancing men on the ground, but never gave any of the conquests back, of course.
A fascinating read about a period of history that's drastically overlooked in the United States today.
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LibraryThing member gottfried_leibniz
The Thesis of this book is similar to one which I read, “The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational” by Nick Robins.
I wasn’t surprised, the Board of Directors of English East India company wanted to rake profits in England. As a result,
Growing up in India, I was fed the usual Indian narrative in High School. I can barely recall if teachers recommended reading list from both West and Indian Scholars. The usual Indian narrative is popularized by Shashi Tharoor.
I think, When I left India — I realized about the incomplete Indian narrative. There were many Indians involved alongside with the EIC. Dalrymple’s contributing to the Indian side of the story is that Indians were alongside with EIC.
Overall an Impressive book. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in India.
Dalrymple’s writing is vivid and clear. Someday, I’ll write about Tamil Nadu, India.
Deus Vult,
Gottfried
I wasn’t surprised, the Board of Directors of English East India company wanted to rake profits in England. As a result,
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EIC went on-board into India. They saw an opportunity to expand their treasure chest and wield political influence. Growing up in India, I was fed the usual Indian narrative in High School. I can barely recall if teachers recommended reading list from both West and Indian Scholars. The usual Indian narrative is popularized by Shashi Tharoor.
I think, When I left India — I realized about the incomplete Indian narrative. There were many Indians involved alongside with the EIC. Dalrymple’s contributing to the Indian side of the story is that Indians were alongside with EIC.
Overall an Impressive book. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in India.
Dalrymple’s writing is vivid and clear. Someday, I’ll write about Tamil Nadu, India.
Deus Vult,
Gottfried
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LibraryThing member motorbike
Excellent coverage of a dark period that mainstream likes to bypass. It is a warning to the modern world to keep a close eye on Transnational corporations.
LibraryThing member Kavinay
Books like this are tough to read. Not because Dalrymple's writing is hard to follow or the history suspect, but rather the opposite: it's just such a clear and depressing march towards atrocity.
The running theme is Dalrymple's comparison of EIC era looting with modern sums of wealth. It helps wrap
The only major fault would be Dalrymple's treatment of EIC Governor-general William Hastings and Shah Alam is relatively sympathetic to their openly rapacious brethren. No matter how kind their sentiment to the Indian population was compared to the likes of Clive, rampant exploitation with a kind hand is hardly redemptive. There are no heros in charge during the anarchy.
The running theme is Dalrymple's comparison of EIC era looting with modern sums of wealth. It helps wrap
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the mind around just what a tantalizing target India was for corporate looting. The tactics and escalating scale of the EIC are scrutinized in the own words of British politicians and powerbrokers and care is taken to depict the Mughal leaders whose collaboration and conflict with a corporation would decapacitate their own empire.The only major fault would be Dalrymple's treatment of EIC Governor-general William Hastings and Shah Alam is relatively sympathetic to their openly rapacious brethren. No matter how kind their sentiment to the Indian population was compared to the likes of Clive, rampant exploitation with a kind hand is hardly redemptive. There are no heros in charge during the anarchy.
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LibraryThing member RajivC
Overall, this book is excellent if you want to understand the events of India in the 18th century and the early part of the 19th century and, the factors helping the rise of the East India company.
William Dalrymple has done an excellent job in writing about these events, and combining the various
The British do not come off with honor in this telling. Neither do the Indian merchants who betrayed Siraj ud-Daulah, allowing the British to gain power in India. I believe that this is a story that must be spread. I also think William was unjust in his assessment of Siraj ud-Daulah, and failed to understand the motivation for his actions against the British.
He has, however, done much to repair Tipu Sultan's reputation.
On the whole, an excellent book. This book will give you a good launch pad if you want to study the events of the times, and the East India Company.
William Dalrymple has done an excellent job in writing about these events, and combining the various
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threads of narrative - international and Indian - into one coherent tale. The British do not come off with honor in this telling. Neither do the Indian merchants who betrayed Siraj ud-Daulah, allowing the British to gain power in India. I believe that this is a story that must be spread. I also think William was unjust in his assessment of Siraj ud-Daulah, and failed to understand the motivation for his actions against the British.
He has, however, done much to repair Tipu Sultan's reputation.
On the whole, an excellent book. This book will give you a good launch pad if you want to study the events of the times, and the East India Company.
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LibraryThing member Lukerik
Amazing, shocking story, very well told. It’s an account, as per the subtitle, of 1756 – to 1803. But if anyone were so ignorant of the subject as to be surprised to find Madras were on the East coast there’s enough in the opening chapter to orient you to the events from 1599 onwards. Not
It’s based on original research. I hate to think how much Dalrymple had to leave on the cutting room floor, but he’s somehow managed to pare it down into a narrative that at times is almost fast paced. Just enough information to keep you interested and so you know the people and the issues involved. His battle descriptions are particularly well done. It’s not a military history, despite all the fighting, and in sometimes as little as four or five sentences he manages to describe the lay of the land, the disposition of the troops and the deciding factors. Quite brilliant writing.
And a useful story to know, and not just if you’re Indian or English. There’s a warning here about what happens when a company is unrestrained. Dalrymple describes our current crop of companies as tame, and having just seen the ease with which the US government reigned them in to apply sanctions to Russia I can see what he means. It also made me think a bit about China. Judging by their recent behaviour I would guess that the history of the British Empire is compulsory reading for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Unfortunately, where I see a warning in this book, I suspect many people will see an instructional manual.
I see just two problems with the book. The first is the maps. There are three, done in the style of the Belgariad. They look very pretty, but I question the wisdom of using a 1980s fantasy series as the model for historical maps. They don’t show all the places listed and there’s no indication of borders etc. Worse than useless really. The other is the notes. There are footnotes and endnotes. The footnotes are mostly currency conversions with a few asides from the main narrative. The endnotes are mostly references with a few asides from the main narrative so you have to remember the footnote number for when you next need to flip to the end of the book. At one point I was so caught up in the narrative that I forgot to flip for an entire chapter.
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that anyone would be that ignorant. The idea is laughable. And if they were they certainly wouldn’t admit it.It’s based on original research. I hate to think how much Dalrymple had to leave on the cutting room floor, but he’s somehow managed to pare it down into a narrative that at times is almost fast paced. Just enough information to keep you interested and so you know the people and the issues involved. His battle descriptions are particularly well done. It’s not a military history, despite all the fighting, and in sometimes as little as four or five sentences he manages to describe the lay of the land, the disposition of the troops and the deciding factors. Quite brilliant writing.
And a useful story to know, and not just if you’re Indian or English. There’s a warning here about what happens when a company is unrestrained. Dalrymple describes our current crop of companies as tame, and having just seen the ease with which the US government reigned them in to apply sanctions to Russia I can see what he means. It also made me think a bit about China. Judging by their recent behaviour I would guess that the history of the British Empire is compulsory reading for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Unfortunately, where I see a warning in this book, I suspect many people will see an instructional manual.
I see just two problems with the book. The first is the maps. There are three, done in the style of the Belgariad. They look very pretty, but I question the wisdom of using a 1980s fantasy series as the model for historical maps. They don’t show all the places listed and there’s no indication of borders etc. Worse than useless really. The other is the notes. There are footnotes and endnotes. The footnotes are mostly currency conversions with a few asides from the main narrative. The endnotes are mostly references with a few asides from the main narrative so you have to remember the footnote number for when you next need to flip to the end of the book. At one point I was so caught up in the narrative that I forgot to flip for an entire chapter.
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Awards
Arthur Ross Book Award (Bronze Medal — 2020)
Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (Longlist — 2019)
Cundill History Prize (Finalist — 2020)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Nonfiction — 2020)
HWA Crown Awards (Longlist — Non-Fiction — 2020)
NPR: Books We Love (2019)
Language
Original publication date
2019