Description
Bloomsbury introduces “The Anarchy” by William Dalrymple, narrated by Sid Sagar, which has secured a spot in the top five Sunday Times bestsellers list.
Highlighted as one of Barack Obama’s top books of 2019, “The Anarchy” has also been longlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2019.
Recognized as a book of the year by prominent publications such as the Financial Times, Observer, Daily Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, and The Times, this gripping narrative explores the pivotal events of August 1765. During this period, the East India Company triumphed over the young Mughal emperor, compelling him to establish a new administration in his wealthiest provinces, managed by English merchants. This administration, backed by a ruthless private army, essentially marked an involuntary privatization.
The East India Company, originally an international trading corporation, transformed into an aggressive colonial power with the authority to ‘wage war,’ using violence to achieve its goals. Within four decades, it built a security force larger than the British army and successfully subdued the entire subcontinent, culminating in the conquest of Bengal and, in 1803, the Mughal capital of Delhi. The Company’s influence extended to the point where nearly all of India south of the Himalayas was effectively governed from a boardroom in London.
“The Anarchy” narrates the fascinating account of how one of the world’s grandest empires crumbled, making way for an unchecked private company located thousands of miles away in a modest office, five windows wide, accountable solely to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious work to date, William Dalrymple unfolds the story of the East India Company in a unique and cautionary manner, revealing the rise of the first global corporate power.
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