Michael: The British Empire didn't conquer India. That's the story we're often told, but it's wrong. The truth is far stranger and more terrifying: India was conquered by a private corporation, run by a handful of merchants from a tiny office in London. Kevin: Hold on, a corporation? You mean like a company, with shareholders and a board of directors? Not a king or a government? That sounds like a sci-fi plot. Michael: It does, but it's the explosive, true story at the heart of William Dalrymple's masterpiece, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. Kevin: Right, and Dalrymple is no lightweight. He's a renowned historian who spent years digging through original sources in multiple languages, not just the English records. It gives the book this incredible, multi-faceted feel. Michael: Exactly. He brings the Indian voices—the emperors, the bankers, the generals—to the forefront. It’s not just a British story. And that's where we have to start: with the shocking identity of this conqueror. Kevin: I’m still stuck on the idea. A company with its own army? How is that even possible? Michael: Well, let's unpack that. It’s the first, most mind-bending idea in the book.

Michael: The East India Company, or EIC, wasn't born a monster. It started in 1599, pretty humbly. Imagine a group of Elizabethan entrepreneurs in London, seeing the Dutch getting rich off the spice trade, and deciding they want a piece of the action. They pool their money—the original crowdfunding—and petition Queen Elizabeth I for a royal charter. Kevin: So it was basically a startup. A very, very old startup with a mission to get pepper. Michael: A perfect way to put it. For its first 150 years, that's mostly what it was. A trading company. They were scrappy, often outmaneuvered by the Dutch and Portuguese, and seen by the mighty Mughal Emperors in India as little more than a curiosity. A Mughal official at the time famously complained about having to take orders from "a handful of traders who have not yet learned to wash their bottoms." Kevin: Wow. So they weren't exactly seen as a major threat. What changed? How do you go from being mocked for your hygiene to running a subcontinent? Michael: One word: opportunity. And one man: Robert Clive. Clive is one of history's most audacious characters. He starts as a company accountant—a writer, a clerk—in India. But he’s ambitious, ruthless, and a brilliant military strategist. Kevin: An accountant-turned-warlord. That’s quite the career change. Michael: In the mid-1700s, Bengal is the richest province in India, but its leadership is weak and fractured. The local ruler, Nawab Siraj ud-Daula, is young, volatile, and deeply suspicious of the British. He attacks the Company's base in Calcutta. Clive sees his chance. Kevin: To defend the company's honor? Or its assets? Michael: Both, but mostly its assets. Clive, with a tiny force, doesn't just recapture Calcutta. He marches on the Nawab's capital. At the Battle of Plassey in 1757, he faces an army more than ten times the size of his own. And he wins. Kevin: How? Superior technology? Michael: Technology helped, but the real weapon was corporate maneuvering. Clive had secretly struck a deal with one of the Nawab's key commanders, Mir Jafar, promising to make him the new ruler if he betrayed his master on the battlefield. Mir Jafar’s forces stood by and did nothing during the fight. It was a corporate coup disguised as a battle. Kevin: That is just stunning. So they didn't just defeat the ruler, they installed their own puppet. A hostile takeover of a country. Michael: Precisely. And what happened next is the crucial moment. The EIC forces the new puppet Nawab to grant them the Diwani—the right to collect all the tax revenue of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, three massive, wealthy provinces. This was all formalized in a treaty signed by the captive Mughal Emperor, Shah Alam. A contemporary historian, Ghulam Hussain Khan, wrote that this transfer of an entire kingdom's treasury was "done and finished in less time than would usually have been taken up for the sale of a jack-ass." Kevin: Unbelievable. So the company now has the tax revenue of an entire country flowing directly into its corporate coffers in London. It's not just trading anymore; it's governing. And taxing. Michael: It's a game-changer. Suddenly, the EIC can fund its own massive private army using Indian money. By 1803, its private army has 200,000 soldiers—twice the size of the actual British Army. It's an empire within an empire, a state in the guise of a merchant, as Edmund Burke would later say. It's accountable not to the British people, but to its shareholders. Its prime directive is profit, and it now has an army to enforce it. Kevin: That is terrifying. But it raises a huge question. The EIC was clearly a ruthless predator. But why was India so vulnerable? They couldn't have pulled this off in a strong, unified country. There had to be something else going on. Michael: You've hit on the second, equally important part of the story. The company was a shark, but it was swimming in a sea of blood. It rose to power during a period of chaos that Dalrymple titles the book after: The Anarchy.

Kevin: Okay, so what was this 'Anarchy'? What did it look like on the ground? Michael: For centuries, India had been dominated by the Mughal Empire. At its peak, it was the richest, most powerful empire in the world, producing about a quarter of all global manufacturing. But by the early 1700s, it was rotting from the inside. A series of weak emperors, endless succession wars, and costly rebellions were tearing it apart. Kevin: The classic story of imperial decline. The center cannot hold. Michael: Exactly. And then came the event that shattered the illusion of Mughal power for good. In 1739, the Persian ruler, Nader Shah, invaded. He wasn't trying to conquer India; he was a plunderer on a colossal scale. Kevin: So this is a raid, not an invasion. Michael: A raid of apocalyptic proportions. The Mughal army that met him was a joke—a decadent, disorganized mess. Nader Shah crushed them, captured the Emperor, and marched into Delhi, the magnificent capital. For a few weeks, things were tense but calm. Then, a rumor spread that Nader Shah had been assassinated. The citizens of Delhi rose up and killed a few hundred of his soldiers. Kevin: Oh no. I can see where this is going. Michael: Nader Shah’s response was chilling. He drew his sword, stood on the roof of a mosque, and gave the order for a general massacre. For one day, his troops rampaged through the city. A Dutch eyewitness wrote, "it seemed as if it were raining blood, for the drains were streaming with it." At least 100,000 people were killed. When it was over, Nader Shah looted the city for 57 days. He took everything. The treasury, the jewels, and the single most spectacular symbol of Mughal power: the Peacock Throne. Kevin: The Peacock Throne... I've heard of it. It was legendary, wasn't it? Michael: Covered in gold and priceless gems. He had to break it apart to transport it back to Persia. The sack of Delhi was a profound psychological trauma. It proved to everyone, from the lowest peasant to the highest noble, that the Mughal Emperor could not protect his own people in his own capital. The spell was broken. Kevin: And into that power vacuum steps the East India Company. Michael: And everyone else. The empire fragments. Regional governors become de facto kings. Warlords from the Maratha confederacy carve out their own territories. It becomes a free-for-all. In this chaotic, violent world, a well-funded, militarily efficient, and utterly ruthless organization like the EIC suddenly looks very appealing as an ally. Indian bankers, like the incredibly wealthy Jagat Seths, start funding the Company. Local princes start hiring the Company's armies. They all think they can use the EIC for their own ends. Kevin: But they get it backwards. The Company ends up using them. Michael: Every single time. The Company plays them off against each other, indebting them, making them dependent, and then consuming them. Kevin: Okay, but this is where some critics push back on Dalrymple, right? I've read reviews that say he frames the EIC as the cause of the anarchy, when in reality, as you've just described with Nader Shah, the chaos was already in full swing. They argue the EIC just stepped into the turmoil. Is that a fair criticism? Michael: It's a very important point, and Dalrymple addresses it. He's not arguing the EIC created the anarchy out of thin air. The Mughal decline was real and catastrophic. But his core argument is that the EIC, as a for-profit corporation, had a vested interest in perpetuating and exploiting that chaos. A stable, peaceful India was bad for business. War was profitable. It created debt, which led to territorial concessions. It allowed them to seize assets. So while they didn't start the fire, they poured gasoline on it with ruthless efficiency, all to maximize shareholder value. Kevin: So it’s a subtle but crucial distinction. They weren't nation-building; they were asset-stripping amidst a crisis. Michael: Exactly. They weren't a state actor that might have an interest in long-term stability. They were a corporate raider with an army, and the entire subcontinent was the target company.

Michael: When you put the two pieces together, you see the perfect storm. On one hand, you have this unique and dangerous new entity—a multinational corporation with the power of a state but none of the accountability. Kevin: The corporate predator. Michael: And on the other hand, you have the collapse of one of the world's great empires, creating a power vacuum of immense proportions. Kevin: The anarchy. It’s the combination that’s so explosive. Michael: It is. The real "anarchy" Dalrymple describes isn't just the political chaos on the ground. It's the moral and legal anarchy of a private company, driven by a fiduciary duty to maximize profit for its shareholders, being allowed to wage war, collect taxes, and rule over millions of people. There were no ethics committees. There was no meaningful government oversight for decades. There was only the bottom line. Kevin: It's a chilling cautionary tale. It's impossible to hear this story and not think about the power of modern mega-corporations. It makes you ask... what are the guardrails now? Michael: Exactly. Dalrymple forces us to see that the line between corporate interest and state power can get terrifyingly blurry. He wrote this book as a warning, showing how the first great multinational corporation, unchecked, led to one of the greatest acts of plunder in history. It's a question that's more relevant today than ever. Kevin: It really is. We'd love to hear what you think. Does this story change how you see corporate power today? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels. It’s a conversation worth having. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.