William Dalrymple’s *The Anarchy* is a sweeping, richly sourced account of how a London trading corporation gradually seized control of an entire subcontinent, and by most critical measures it succeeds brilliantly as both popular history and serious scholarship. Readers looking for a single, authoritative entry point into the story of the East India Company’s rise will be hard-pressed to find a more compelling or better-informed guide.
About the Book
Published in 2019, *The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company* covers the history of the East India Company from its humble origins — it received a royal charter in 1599 granting a monopoly on trade between England and Asia — through to its extraordinary territorial conquests in the second half of the eighteenth century. Dalrymple structures the narrative around a central dramatic arc: the collapse of Mughal imperial authority and the rise of regional powers created a power vacuum into which the Company, driven by commercial ambition and backed by private military force, ruthlessly expanded. The book opens with the Company’s early trading bases in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, and its main body begins in earnest with the Battle of Plassey in 1757, which delivered Bengal — described as the richest province of Mughal India — into Company hands. By 1803, the book shows, this corporation commanded a private army and effective control over the entire subcontinent.
One of the book’s notable scholarly contributions is its use of sources beyond the standard English-language archive. Dalrymple draws on previously untranslated or little-known materials, including the *Shah Alam Nama*, a biography of Shah Alam II — the Mughal emperor whose long reign spans much of the period covered — as well as the biography of Louis Laurent de Féderbe, a French military officer described as one of the earliest chroniclers of European involvement in India. This reach into non-Anglophone sources gives the narrative a dimensionality that histories relying solely on British records cannot achieve.
The book received considerable recognition. It was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2019, shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, the Tata Book of the Year (Non-fiction), and the Historical Writers Association Book Award 2020, and was a finalist for the prestigious Cundill Prize for History. It ultimately won the 2020 Arthur Ross Bronze Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations. Former US President Barack Obama also included *The Anarchy* on his list of favourite books of 2019 — a distinction that speaks to the book’s appeal well beyond academic circles. A television adaptation is also in development, with Dalrymple serving as creative consultant on what is planned as a three-series international production.
What It Does Well
The book’s most celebrated quality is its narrative drive. Maya Jasanoff, writing in *The Guardian*, called it an “energetic pageturner that marches from the counting house on to the battlefield, exploding patriotic myths along the way.” That phrase — “exploding patriotic myths” — points to something important: Dalrymple is not simply retelling a familiar imperial adventure story but actively dismantling the self-congratulatory mythology that has long surrounded British India. By foregrounding the corporate, profit-driven nature of the Company’s expansion, the book reframes what is sometimes presented as civilisational mission as something closer to organised plunder dressed in administrative language.
Tirthankar Roy, reviewing the book in the *Times Literary Supplement*, described Dalrymple as “a terrifically good storyteller” who “makes the reader see how events unfold and observe the personalities up close,” adding that *The Anarchy* is “one of the best books on Indian history published in a long time.” This is high praise from a demanding venue, and it reflects the book’s ability to render large geopolitical forces through vivid individual lives — emperors, generals, merchants, and soldiers — without losing sight of the structural story. Mukund Padmanabhan, writing in *The Hindu*, captured the same quality: the book reads, in his description, with “the compulsive pull of a thriller, the erudition of a significant piece of non-fiction, and the loveliness of a piece of literature.”
Perhaps most importantly for readers who care about historical rigour, the book is grounded in genuine archival depth. Dalrymple’s use of the *Shah Alam Nama* and the Féderbe biography allows Indian and French perspectives to complicate and enrich the narrative, countering the tendency of British imperial historiography to treat the subcontinent’s own actors as a backdrop to European agency. By restoring Mughal, Maratha, Sikh, and other South Asian voices and viewpoints to the story, *The Anarchy* makes a meaningful contribution to how this period is understood, not only in popular terms but in scholarly ones.
Where It Falls Short
Even strong admirers of the book should acknowledge some real limitations. *The Anarchy* is explicitly a work of narrative history aimed at general readers, and that ambition shapes what it can and cannot do. Readers seeking quantitative economic analysis of the Company’s operations, close attention to administrative and legal structures, or sustained engagement with historiographical debates will need to look elsewhere — to specialist academic histories that trade pace for depth. The book’s strength as a “pageturner” is also, in a certain sense, its constraint: the momentum of narrative can smooth over complexity.
There is also the question of scope. The book concentrates on the second half of the eighteenth century and closes around 1803. Readers expecting a full account of Company rule through to the 1857 uprising and the subsequent transfer to Crown authority will find that *The Anarchy* is a prequel rather than a complete history. This is not a flaw exactly — Dalrymple is clear about his focus — but it is worth flagging for readers who come to the book hoping for end-to-end coverage.
Finally, while the book has been widely praised, its popular success and its author’s high public profile mean that some specialists have questioned whether narrative accessibility comes at a cost to nuance — particularly around questions of Indian agency and resistance, which, though present in the book, may receive less systematic treatment than a dedicated academic study would provide. None of the reviews surfaced by available sources make this a damning criticism, but curious readers would do well to pair *The Anarchy* with more analytically focused works on the period, such as Nick Robins’s *The Corporation That Changed the World*, listed in the book’s own further reading, for a fuller picture.
Who Should Read It
*The Anarchy* is ideal for the engaged general reader who wants serious history told with genuine literary craft. No prior knowledge of Indian history or Mughal dynastic politics is required; Dalrymple is a patient and skilled contextualiser. Those with some background in the period will find the non-Anglophone sources and the Company’s military campaigns rendered freshly and with new detail, but even a complete newcomer should find the narrative accessible and absorbing.
Students of imperial and colonial history, business history, and South Asian history will all find value here — though they should treat it as a starting point for deeper inquiry rather than a final word. The book also speaks directly to contemporary readers interested in the politics of corporations, globalisation, and the long history of economic extraction dressed as governance. Madhumita Mazumdar’s description in *The Telegraph* — “a unique meditation on corporate avarice told with the deftness of a scholar and the charm of a raconteur” — neatly summarises the book’s appeal to readers who want history that feels urgently relevant.
Where to Buy
*The Anarchy* is widely available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook editions from major Canadian retailers, including Amazon.ca. For the easiest purchasing path, see the affiliate link in the disclosure block associated with this review. Prices vary by format and retailer and are not listed here.
*Sources: This review is grounded in the Wikipedia article on The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchy:_The_Relentless_Rise_of_the_East_India_Company) and the publicly available description of the work.*
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