FINISHED READING - The Anarchy by William Dalrymple

" The East India Company 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."*

The Anarchy, The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, is a part of William Dalrymple's quartet of history books about the British in India. This reads like an exciting, but particularly tawdry adventure romp. It demonstrates how without moral principles underpinning it, everyone was cravenly in search of making themselves insanely rich, very quickly, then taking the first ship home. The whole idea of sending your delinquent, depraved and troublesome offspring out to the colonies to make something of themselves, starts here. So much of Edwardian hero worship and daring do, on show in Boy's Own Annuals and Rider Haggard stories is feeding off this type of Colonial Empire behaviour. 

How did a small venture set up in the last years of Elizabeth 1st's reign, modelled on, and as rival to, the Dutch East India Company, become this gargantuan Corporation? Single handedly building itself a complex civil service and administration, to construct the London Dockyards we see today. Add to that the creation of its own city and trading centre in Calcutta. The company came near to generating half of Britain's trade, spending eight and a half million pounds a year in Britain alone, funding a quarter of the British government's total expenditure. They referred to themselves without any sense of irony as ' the grandest society of merchants, in the Universe.'

The history that Dalrymple lays out in this volume, shows just how much the East India Company initially had a completely free hand wherever it went to trade. British governmental oversight was extremely hands off. As long as profits came home, no one thought to check how they had come about, nor how much was syphoned off to enrich a Company employees pockets. The Company was extraordinarily lucky in that it arrived in India, just as the supremely rich and opulent Mughal Empire was at its most fragile, and would fragment, if given a little push. And in the anarchy which ensued, the East India Company became very effective in seizing, but more often creating, opportunities for business advancement when they came it's way. 

The French, were there too, playing one Mughal prince off against another, as were the British, both angling to obtain, extend or retain influence. The British government became concerned the French would use their superior military force to push the East India Company out. So they encouraged the Company to hugely increase the armed capacity of the East India Company itself.  Which overtime became 200,000 strong, twice that of the British army at the time, and with little to rival it in any other  country. Through this initiative, they became the first Corporation in the world ever to hold its own military force. 

As the Mughal Empire slowly imploded into precarious vassal states, the Company opportunistically stepped in offering protection, with the obligatory trading arrangements on the side. Mughal princes and Emporers became puppet administrations. Whilst in the background reprobate individuals like Robert Clive, fought battles for control of territory that further enabled the asset stripping of the Mughal economy. Over a series of adventures in India, Clive amassed, then lost a fortune, and then proceeded to amass yet another fortune. Each time becoming ever more pumped up and self aggrandise, until he attained the top job in the Company - Governorship. Through sheer moral indifference and brutality, combined with luck and military chutzpah, Clive kicked off the process whereby the Company could take full control of whatever it wanted, in what was left of Mughal India. Able to pick up the priceless pieces of its broken states, and then run the rest it into the ground.

The Company taxed the citizens mercilessly and despite warning signs that the Bengal economy was at the point of collapse, as famine struck, they continued taxing the poor starving Indian population. So long as money was still funnelled back to Britain, no one investigated how in the middle of a catastrophe, this was even possible. As the famine bit deeper and wider, the Company found itself with unmanageable debts and had to go cap in hand to the British government for huge loans. The Company was by then, far too big to fail. The government could do nothing else but cough up the money, but did demand it take charge of the Governorship and administration of the Companies operations in India. This move would eventually lead to the the East India Company's closure, the founding of the British Raj and Queen Victoria becoming Empress of India.

What they soon discovered, was the Companies financial rape of Indian resources, the standard but essentially corrupt practices of the Company, and the greed, immorality and cruelty of its administration. This was exposed for all to see, shocking and appalling the gentle folk back home. Robert Clive came close to being imprisoned over the inhumanity of his transgressions, retreating to his multi million pound estates in Claremont and Walcott, his reputation left in tatters. No longer the poster boy for the superiority of the East India Company and Empire. The Company's trading activities were directed increasingly via government dictat.The precedence of military interventions, taking over areas of India in order to secure their trading market and investment, did, however, continue. With the rise of Napoleon's interest in India, they sent Richard Wellesley to be the new Company Governor and defender of its Indian assets. He came with the deliberate intent of clearing the French out of India, and placing the entirety of the country under the Company's rule and military control. This he proceeded to do.

Though you might be inclined to think of Dalrymple's history as another example of British Empire revisionism, think again. This sorry tale of capitalist entrepreneurship and moral depravity is salutary and uncomfortably true. Heavily documented by people at the time, in the British press, within the Company, the Mughal Empire itself, and the British government. All expressing their disgust at the moral depravity the Company had sunk to. And though there was certainly a campaign that generally cleaned up its trading operation, the asset stripping 'mafia lite' protection racket continued, but in a more gentlemanly manner. Because everyone understood that the money the East India Company generated was keeping Britain, and the British Empire, in the status and manner to which it had now grown very accustomed.

" In both India and Britain, people still talk about the British conquering India, but, as this book has attempted to show, that phrase disguises a much more ominous and complex reality. Because it was not the British government that seized India in the middle of the eighteenth century, but a private company. India's transition to colonialism took place through the mechanisms of a for-profit corporation, which existed entirely from the purpose of enriching it's investors."*

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

* Taken from the Epilogue of The Anarchy, by William Dalrymple, Published by Bloomsbury 2019