First published 2021
In August 1765, English traders defeat the young Mughal emperor and seize control of his territories. What begins as a commercial victory becomes something far more sinister as the East India Company abandons its role as a trading enterprise. The company establishes a government run by English merchants who deploy a private army to collect taxes from Indian subjects. This corporate takeover marks the birth of an unprecedented entity: a business that governs nations from a London boardroom. Over the following 47 years, company control spreads across the subcontinent until nearly all of India south of Delhi answers to corporate masters. Dalrymple chronicles how unchecked corporate power devastates entire populations and transforms a trading company into an aggressive colonial force that rules through violence and extraction.
Genres: history, 20th-century, non-fiction, 19th-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: corporate-corruption, historical-fiction
Setting: India, London
Period: 1765, 1812
522 pages · Paperback · Bloomsbury Publishing
Content warnings: colonialism