ANARCHY. The ruthless rise of the East India Company | William Dalrymple

"VIAE HUMANAE" series.

Common ideas about the British colonization of India are based on the thesis of effective imperial expansion and civilizational superiority of Europeans over the "backward" inhabitants of the "East Indies". William Dalrymple expertly debunks these myths. When in 1614 the ambassador of the English King James I arrived in the empire of the Great Mughals, he was perceived almost as a savage at the imperial court. At that time, India was the largest economic and cultural center of the world, uniting about a hundred million people who created almost a quarter of the world product.

How did it happen that this great empire came under the rule of an island kingdom from the other side of the planet? The actual colonization of India took place differently than is commonly believed. Before passing under the control of the British Crown, India was in the hands of a private firm - a joint-stock company of merchants, whose headquarters in London had only a few dozen employees. By the middle of the 18th century, the East India Company had become the world's first transnational corporation, which not only controlled the lion's share of world trade, but also started wars, overthrew rulers, started rebellions, bought off politicians, and committed numerous crimes against ordinary people with impunity.

William Dalrymple tells the difficult and surprising story of how a group of yesterday's pirates and adventurers created a commercial organization whose ruthless lust for profit, backed by military might, eventually changed the course of world history and laid the foundations of "an empire on which the sun never sets."

For a wide range of readers.