The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of East India Company by William Dalrymple covers the rise of East India Company (EIC) from the arrival of Thomas Roe in 1608 at Surat, all the way up to the Battle of Delhi in 1803. It is a fascinating and expansive topic. For Indian readers, it is also a somber read as we know and reflect how the next hundred-odd years unfolded. EIC with its crown-blessed untrammeled monopoly rights subjugated ancient empires, appropriated massive wealth, and dovetailed the direction of a subcontinent forever.
Here are some of my aggregated thoughts.
There has never been a multinational corporation that was as powerful, as nimble, as unregulated, and as successful as the East India Company. The commercial, political, and economic success of EIC surpasses those of the French and Dutch versions. In fact, East India Company may have been the first corporation that was “too big to fail”, when it was rescued by a massive bailout in 1773, by the members of the British Parliament, many of whom owned a stake in EIC.
The beginnings were humble: Thomas Roe came in supplication, and eventually, East India Company usurped power from the Mughals. This experience in fact set up the much more expansive McCartney expedition in 1793 to meet the Qing emperor Qianlong.
Bengal and Intellectual Traditions
Madras and Bombay had already been established by East India Company as their fortified trading posts, but Calcutta was the heartbeat of cross-continental commerce: It was from Calcutta the British exported copious quantities of tea, opium, cotton, and jute. Bengal was a granary of wealth and Calcutta was clearly the crown jewel. Robert Tombs observes in his book, The English and Their History: “Calcutta had about 120,000 people by 1760 — only a few hundred of them British — when New York had a mere 18,000”. Beginning with the battle of Plassey 1757, the British took the central aim of conquering Bengal and headquartering in Calcutta.
The book elides by the economic causes of 1770 Bengal famine. There seems to be a bit of scholarly argument about whether Mughal or British taxation was the predominant cause of the famine.
The emergence of westernized Bengali intelligentsia is very much due to the remarkable length of the English enterprise in Calcutta. In an interview with Tyler Cowen, Abhijit Banerjee alludes to the influence of British adding to the long history of Bengali education, an effect very much visible in the social ethos of Calcutta even today.
COWEN: There’s a long-standing tradition of left-leaning Bengalis being especially important in Indian intellectual history. Why do you think that is?
BANERJEE: I guess why Bengalis — again, it goes back to the fact that Bengalis were the first group of people, maybe a little bit with the Parsis, as being the comprador classes we Marxists one day, once upon a time, used to call them, of the British. The people who worked for the British, with the British, and made a good living.
And I think that class very quickly started absorbing English writers and Scottish writers they read, by 1800 already. This is just 25 years after you’re starting to see people who are writing in Bangla about Hume and about Rousseau. They’re reading European writers mostly in English, but they’ve mastered English. They’re reading all of these things. Contact with the British created this.
This is very controversial, and I’ll get killed by many, many people who have strong views on this, but I think that it’s very hard to imagine exactly what happened then. Maybe something else could have happened that was wonderful. I don’t know the counterfactual, but what happened then was very much people absorbing English 18th-century liberal and conservative discourses, using them. […]
A Tale of Four Cities
While Calcutta remained connected to Madras (now, Chennai) along the Bay of Bengal coast, Madras and Calcutta both remained unconnected to Bombay due to the persistent resistance offered by Marathas and the father-son duo Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. When Tipu’s resistance fell, Madras linked to Bombay through the land. Similarly, when the Maratha Confederacy fell in 1803, Calcutta became connected by land to Bombay (now, Mumbai). Even today, the Maratha families like the Holkars, the Scindias, the Gaekwads, and the Bhosles hold sway over Indian politics.
Mughal Empire, already collapsing under its feckless administration and internal squabbles was a tame shadow of its heyday. Its fall was perfunctory, amidst treacheries and proclivity to extraordinary violence and mayhem. The death of the Mughal empire came through a thousand cuts, culminating in the Fall of Delhi to EIC in 1803. When Delhi fell, the whole of the Indian subcontinent came under the British crown. Occasionally some feuding principalities were either crushed or coerced into cooperation with the EIC.
America and India
US and India histories were deeply intermingled. As Dalrymple notes, when the British lost to the Revolutionary army under Washington, Britain refocused its attention to India. (Tombs also argues in his book, British abolition of slavery, and transfer of Indian control to the British crown were hastened and set in motion by the losses British troops suffered in the American Colonies).
In fact, after Cornwallis surrendered his army to George Washington at Yorktown in October 1781, he was knighted and made the Governor-General of British India by 1786. Cornwallis, eager to not repeat his losing experience in America, re-doubled his efforts in conquering India. British fought their perpetual principal rivals, the French, everywhere including in India. Eventually, the other European forces were pushed back to minor territories: Goa under the Portuguese, Pondicherry under the French, and Tranquebar (now, Tharangambadi) under the Dutch.
Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, who succeeded Lord Cornwallis as the Governor-General expanded the British territory in India, to a geographic expanse exceeding all of the Napoleonic conquests in Europe. Nevertheless, what lasts in English consciousness is his brother Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, who defeated the Marathas in 1803, but more famously, defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. (The Duke of Wellington even makes an important appearance in my favorite English fantasy of the last decade: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell).
Polity and Looming Violence
It is always great when authors provide color on historical events. By drawing historical details from Ghulam Hussein, Dalrymple illuminates the narrative of the Mughal empire’s calm teetering on madness, as Hussein’s Persian viewpoint is unsparing on gory details compared to reticent recollections of contemporary European historians. Yet, nothing matches the diabolical ferociousness of Ghulam Qadir – a Rohilla chief who wreaked havoc on Mughal family and everyone who came his way.
Dalrymple views Robert Clive with derision, Warren Hastings with admiration, and Edmund Burke with skepticism. Warren Hastings got into a duel with Sir Francis, in a scene with seconds, shaking hands and misfires reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Duel Avenue still exists in Calcutta. Hastings-Francis duel took place in 1780, many years before the more famous (and deadlier) Hamilton-Burr duel in Weehawken along the Hudson across from Manhattan in 1804. What’s with intellectual men and duels?
Tipu Sultan is a complex character (as he is both admired and reviled in modern India). Dalrymple focuses on Tipu’s heroism and steadfastness in his skirmishes against the East India Company. A complete critical analysis of Tipu Sultan is worth a deeper study compared to the poor Doordarshan (Indian Govt TV) show that many may have watched.
The Anarchy is a breezy read due to engaging writing, and quite comparable to Dalrymple’s earlier works, City of Djinns: A year in Delhi and Kohinoor.