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The Anarchy
- The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
- Narrated by: Sid Sagar
- Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins
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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.
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)
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Overall
- Whole lotta love
- 12-09-20
Great read
Gives entire history of the East India Company abs remains captivating throughout in typical William Darymple style
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- Rahul Chogle
- 31-01-22
An account with astounding details
William must have had to research a lot to come up with a structure that he could fill inwith creative tidbits to make this gigantic storyboard. Fabulous. As he mentioned in the epilogue EIC is an example of the millennia if democracy were to thrive amidst growing profiteering. Thanks, William.
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- Rahul
- 20-08-21
Brilliant
it's very well told story of how one corporation which came for trade took over entire nation . very well narrated .
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- Dinesh Parashar
- 11-12-21
Great learning
Very informative..Interesting to learn a period of Indian history which brought British rule and significant role of EIC.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-11-20
Intriguing and gripping account
Interesting to know that battles between various factions were similar to present day IPL matches where loyalty belong to highest bidder.
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- Arvind Passey
- 27-01-22
Dalrymple defining disruption
The book puts history of tens of decades before Queen Victoria finally stepped in to... well, watch a mighty corporation wither and die. The transfer of power from East India Company to the Crown of England wasn't really the end of anarchists. Well, besides the insights into the birth of power of capitalism, the book tells the story of the push of destiny to bring together big and small rulers in this region to finally create the concept of a country. India. Though with deft surgical amputations on the East as well as the West... but that is an entirely different story. Loved the book. - Arvind Passey - Blog: www.passey.info
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- Premchander
- 18-05-20
British Colonisation of India - an enterprise
Well written and entertaining a perspective of history that is not often taught in schools.
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- Abhi
- 13-07-23
Brilliant
This is a brilliant narrative of the last decades ofthe Mughal rule and the rise of the East India Company in India. It covers the on ground situation of how India was at the time with warring rulers across the country from the Marathas, Tipu Sultan & his father Haider Ali, the fall of the nawab of Bengal - the richest area in the Mughal empire and others.
Extremely well narrated as well.
Anyone loving history would love this.
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- Anand Desai
- 18-06-23
“Page” turner
A well researched book that is written with pace and largely neutral. The epilogue is a very good and objective summary admitting it isn’t merely a history book. I wish the author had covered details of the 1800s up until the mutiny of 1857. While at times the book is too descriptive, it did yield a broader perspective on the various situations.
The only thumbs down was the narrator on audible who had little to no training on how to pronounce Indian names and words.
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- Nishant Kapoor
- 06-02-24
Amusing, emotive & enlightening!
Absolute Must Read! Opened my eyes to the complex modern history of my country and enlightened me on the common misconceptions that people in India have. Most Indians say "The British occupied India". While their citizenship might be that, it was never the government who did that - but a big corporate hungry for money and power. Very well narrated and the story is crafted with finesse. Proud of my country and much love to William Dalrymple for writing this epic book.
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