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The Anarchy is a masterful, comprehensive, and ultimately frustrating account of how the British East India Company conquered India between the 1757 Battle of Plassey and it's apex at 1803. At it's height, the EIC army was twice the size of the British Army (this during the Napoleonic Wars), and ruled a territory significantly more prosperous and populated than Western Europe. The EIC was in some senses an extension of contemporary standard practice, the EIC was not the first joint stock company nor the first European colonial conquest, but the EIC was unique in it's multinational reach, its corporate sovereignty, its massive bailouts as perhaps the first 'too big to fail' entity, and the brutality of it's operations.
The EIC had been operating since 1600, founded by Elizabethan buccaneers like Sir Francis Drake, and a relatively minor player compared to the Portuguese and Dutch East India Companies. European tensions in the form of the Seven Years War, and the slow decay of the Mughal Empire in India, saw a series of battles that culminated at Plassey, where the brutally efficient Clive defeated the simply brutal Siraj ud-Daulah and took direct control of the rich Bengal provinces. Over the next 40 years, a swirling series of wars between Mughals, Marathas, and Afghans provided further opportunities for the EIC to expand their territories and finally crush all opposition.
The sources and writing are masterful. The frustrating part is that while Dalrymple points to the EIC as a prototype for modern corporate forms, he has little to say about how they managed to conquer India. In one sense, the situation was basically asymmetric. It was British ships anchored off Calcutta, not Mughal ships in the Thames; and who would sail halfway around the world to trade with barbaric and impoverished shepherds anyway? (That's the British, the barbarians there). European military technology, which centered on musket line infantry firing in files, was superior to Mughal armies based around heavy armored cavalry, but it was hardly a situation like Pizarro's gunpowder and steel against New World nations lacking metalworking. Most of the EIC soldiers were sepoys, Indians trained to fight European style, and Indian potentates were quick to adapt European tactics, with French mercenaries serving as a particular nemesis of the EIC. Indian princes were a distinct mixed bunch as commanders, perhaps a third solid, a third interested more in the arts than warfare, and a third absolute incompetents. The EIC was hardly free of problems. Warren Hastings, for decades the most powerful company man in India, fought a duel against his nominal British government overseer and was later impeached for his troubles.
The ultimate reason the company succeed may simply come down to finance. An EIC sepoy was paid three to four times what a Mughal equivalent would get, and that is if the local was paid at all. The EIC made strong pacts with local bankers, and paid its debts on time and in full. Perhaps the greatest irony is that Indian merchants were fully complicit in the conquest, and in draining the wealth of the subcontinent to Europe. Even as General Cornwallis (yes, that Cornwallis) instituted a series of racist laws to prevent the rise of local elites similar to those who had defeated him in North America, enough Indians saw the EIC as no worse than previous overlords to enable their conquest.
The EIC had been operating since 1600, founded by Elizabethan buccaneers like Sir Francis Drake, and a relatively minor player compared to the Portuguese and Dutch East India Companies. European tensions in the form of the Seven Years War, and the slow decay of the Mughal Empire in India, saw a series of battles that culminated at Plassey, where the brutally efficient Clive defeated the simply brutal Siraj ud-Daulah and took direct control of the rich Bengal provinces. Over the next 40 years, a swirling series of wars between Mughals, Marathas, and Afghans provided further opportunities for the EIC to expand their territories and finally crush all opposition.
The sources and writing are masterful. The frustrating part is that while Dalrymple points to the EIC as a prototype for modern corporate forms, he has little to say about how they managed to conquer India. In one sense, the situation was basically asymmetric. It was British ships anchored off Calcutta, not Mughal ships in the Thames; and who would sail halfway around the world to trade with barbaric and impoverished shepherds anyway? (That's the British, the barbarians there). European military technology, which centered on musket line infantry firing in files, was superior to Mughal armies based around heavy armored cavalry, but it was hardly a situation like Pizarro's gunpowder and steel against New World nations lacking metalworking. Most of the EIC soldiers were sepoys, Indians trained to fight European style, and Indian potentates were quick to adapt European tactics, with French mercenaries serving as a particular nemesis of the EIC. Indian princes were a distinct mixed bunch as commanders, perhaps a third solid, a third interested more in the arts than warfare, and a third absolute incompetents. The EIC was hardly free of problems. Warren Hastings, for decades the most powerful company man in India, fought a duel against his nominal British government overseer and was later impeached for his troubles.
The ultimate reason the company succeed may simply come down to finance. An EIC sepoy was paid three to four times what a Mughal equivalent would get, and that is if the local was paid at all. The EIC made strong pacts with local bankers, and paid its debts on time and in full. Perhaps the greatest irony is that Indian merchants were fully complicit in the conquest, and in draining the wealth of the subcontinent to Europe. Even as General Cornwallis (yes, that Cornwallis) instituted a series of racist laws to prevent the rise of local elites similar to those who had defeated him in North America, enough Indians saw the EIC as no worse than previous overlords to enable their conquest.