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THE TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019 'Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India . A book of beauty ' - Gerard DeGroot, The Times In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish in his richest provinces a new administration run by English merchants who collected taxes through means of a ruthless private army - what we would now call an act of involuntary privatisation.

The East India Company's founding charter authorised it to 'wage war' and it had always used violence to gain its ends. But the creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional international trading corporation dealing in silks and spices and became something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business. In less than four decades it had trained up a security force of around 200,000 men - twice the size of the British army - and had subdued an entire subcontinent, conquering first Bengal and finally, in 1803, the Mughal capital of Delhi itself. The Company's reach stretched until almost all of India south of the Himalayas was effectively ruled from a boardroom in London.

The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world's most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting book to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.


Rayons : Sciences humaines & sociales > Histoire


  • Auteur(s)

    William Dalrymple

  • Éditeur

    Bloomsbury

  • Distributeur

    Olf

  • Date de parution

    03/09/2020

  • EAN

    9781408864395

  • Disponibilité

    Disponible

  • Nombre de pages

    522 Pages

  • Longueur

    19.9 cm

  • Largeur

    12.8 cm

  • Épaisseur

    3.8 cm

  • Poids

    537 g

  • Support principal

    Poche

William Dalrymple

Historien et journaliste écossais, William Dalrymple parcourt l'Orient depuis une vingtaine d'années. Spécialisé dans la littérature de voyage, il est l'auteur de six livres parmi lesquels Le Moghol Blanc (Noir sur Blanc, 2005) qui a remporté, entre autres, le prestigieux Wolfson Prize for History. La Cité des Djinns (Noir sur Blanc, 2006) a reçu le Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. William Dalrymple est membre de la Royal Society of Literature et de la Royal Asiatic Society. Il vit avec sa femme et leurs trois enfants entre l'Écosse, Londres et New Delhi.

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