The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company (English Edition)

Description

THE TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019

‘Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India … A book of beauty‘ – Gerard DeGroot, The Times

In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish in his richest provinces a new fonction publique run by English merchants who collected taxes through means of a ruthless private army – what we would now call an act of involuntary privatisation.

Cela peut vous intéresser : 3 produits incontournables pour votre bébé

The East India Company’s founding affréteur authorised it to ‘wage war’ and it had always used attaque to obtenu 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 firmes. In less than four decades it had trained up a security ouvert 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 actif 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 diligent, five windows wide, and answerable only to its ailleurs 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 céleste corporate power.

A voir aussi : Les raisons de préférer la LOA pour financer votre bateau