The anarchy: the relentless rise of the East India Company

Abstract

Thomas Twining, the tea merchant, visiting the site of the battle of Buxar in the 1790s pondered how a group of merchants—the British East India Company—had achieved dominion over India. ‘Results so disproportionate to the means which produced them seem quite inexplicable’ (p. 202). How did a joint stock company with a modest headquarters in Leadenhall Street come to rule most of India and to have an army of almost 200,000 soldiers? William Dalrymple has brought his powers of scholarship and his fascination with India (where several of his ancestors served both company and Raj) to this curious phenomenon. He draws on many unpublished Indian and Persian sources, as well as familiar British texts, to focus on that brutal century of Indian history known as the anarchy, a period of internecine strife which lasted from the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 until General Lake's final victory over the Marathas in 1803.