A saga of corporate greed and plunder

The Anarchy derives its subaltern flavour from its liberal use of non-official sources - multi-lingual accounts by contemporary observers spiced with judicious dollops of bazaar gossip

William Dalrymple’s expansive and enormously rewarding new book The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence and the Pillage of Empire (Bloomsbury; Rs 699) starts, oddly enough, with a word and a work of art. The Hindi word is “loot”, which long ago passed into the English lexicon for plunder. The artwork is more complex: It is a lavish painting of an enthroned Mughal passing a scroll to a bewigged Englishman. Hanging in Powis Castle in Wales, home to the Clive family and stuffed to this day with some of the EIC’s priceless loot, it portrays the momentous turning point