I have been reading William Dalrymple’s books for the last few years - White Mughals, Return of a King, The Last Mughal, and now this book - The Anarchy.

It was a fantastic read, gripping, though sometimes comes across biased, especially when narrating stories of war strategies, exploits, and plundering by British East India Company’s Generals and Governor Generals. Speaking of war, this book has a large dosage of it - to be clear, the war strategies and wins by the EIC.

Sometimes History becomes irrelevant for what is not being told, speaking of which, the loot and plunder of EIC become monotonous in this book, halfway through, as it was not balanced with wins of native rulers. Though I was not looking for a feel-good book, I was looking for a balanced narrative.

I skipped some of the gory details about how the psychotic Ghulam Qadir tortured Shah Alam.

The author did write about how Burke and Charles James Fox and other parliamentarians who tried to bring some sense of accountability to the anarchist EIC. This was revealing. However, the fact that Indian revenues propped up the entire British society for decades, came in the way of the Crown taking any manful action to control the suffering of the natives.

The details about the Bengal famine will make anybody’s heart sink. In today’s age, Clive would be prosecuted and hanged in the town square for all his misdeeds and greed. As fate would have it, he shot himself to death.

The chapter on Tipu will make you wonder that the propaganda started by the British about Tipu’s fanaticism is still finding followers. Tipu consulting Brahmin astrologers for conducting wars, his generous donations to temples, and the general love of his people towards their ruler Tipu were all in a new light. Tipu however was not as sagacious as his illustrious dad, Haider, who foresaw what EIC would do to native kingdoms and forged alliances to defeat EIC. Perhaps some of the negative narratives we hear about Tipu were real to some extent but they seem very exaggerated. He had enmity with Marathas, who peddled the same propaganda that EIC did.

In the end, history is history, whether we like it not, but the final words by the author making it appear as a result of greed by a corporation has totally missed the point. This was and will remain forever as, misdeeds and greed of European imperialist powers. EIC is just a symptom of such greed and unbridled supremacy and arrogance. Someday all of those criminals must be prosecuted.

One other interesting fact about EIC was that their expansionist and degutting policies were foreseen by American patriots in 1773.

From the book:

Patriot John Dickinson described EIC tea as ‘accursed Trash’, and compared the potential future regime of the East India Company in America to being ‘devoured by Rats’. This ‘almost bankrupt Company’, he said, having been occupied in wreaking ‘the most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions and Monopolies’ in Bengal, had now ‘cast their Eyes on America, as a new Theatre, whereon to exercise their Talents of Rapine, Oppression and Cruelty’.
- Dalrymple, William. The Anarchy (pp. 27-28). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

EIC dumped the tea that they could not sell elsewhere in the American colonies, with jacked up taxes. This event triggered the American Revolution when the tea was dumped in the Boston harbor. It is striking that what American patriots foresaw about EIC was missed by native Indian rulers of that time. As Karma would have it, this lack of vision in the 18th century had contributed in coalescing Indian peoples as one, united under tyranny, leading to the Indian Union of today.

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The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company