The Anarchy By William Dalrymple

The Anarchy
The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal and NPR

“Superb … A vivid and richly detailed story … worth reading by everyone.” ―The New York Times

Book Review
From the bestselling author of Return of a King, the story of how the East India
Company took over large swaths of Asia, and the devastating results of the corporation
running a country.
In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and set up,
in his place, a government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of
a private army.
The creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company
ceased to be a conventional company and became something much more unusual: an
international corporation transformed into an aggressive colonial power. Over the course
of the next 47 years, the company’s reach grew until almost all of India south of Delhi was
effectively ruled from a boardroom in the city of London.

The Anarchy tells one of history’s most remarkable stories: how the Mughal Empire―which dominated world trade and manufacturing and possessed almost unlimited resources―fell
apart and was replaced by a multinational corporation based thousands of miles overseas,
and answerable to shareholders, most of whom had never even seen India and no idea about
the country whose wealth was providing their dividends. Using previously untapped sources, Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before and
provides a portrait of the devastating results from the abuse of corporate power.