The jewel in the British crown has always been India. It is not for less, since the riches that the British Empire extracted from it are unspeakable. Nevertheless, the way in which they were made with them is the least questionable. In “Anarchy: the East India Company and the plunder of India”, William Dalrymple will masterfully tell us about the darkest points of the conquest of the subcontinent.
Behind the edition is Desperta Ferro who have done a great job in its edition. In this way, we find a really careful edition, with great care both on the outside (with a careful front and back cover that has also been re-edited in “The Return of a King” so that both books become a bilogy) as inside. When we leaf through the book for the first time, what we find is a large number of color pages that will allow us to observe photographs with great quality, showing the great care that has been shown – as always – by Desperta Ferro.
Data sheet
What we think of “Anarchy: The East India Company and the Plunder of India”
The history of Europe is full of extracontinental adventures. Castile began the colonization of America, the Netherlands settled in what is now South Africa, and the Portuguese established enclaves throughout Africa and Asia. Thus, the history of Europe cannot be understood without the conquest of territories in half the world. The formation of empires generated power relations in which class relations were also established in which the wealthiest Europeans were at the top of the pyramid.
To talk about the imperialist excesses of the United Kingdom, we find William Dalrymple among one of the most brilliant authors. The Scottish author always poses an incredibly original vision of how dependency relationships between metropolises and colonized places were established.
If we talk about the East India Company what we find is that colonization of india It was produced in a practically private setting. A private army of two hundred thousand men, led by London bureaucrats who never set foot on La Joya, were in charge of sowing hunger and misery in one of the richest continents in the world. The company, -which would later go bankrupt- smeared with its tentacles the deepest part of the British bureaucracy. Anyone who wanted to change the harsh situation in the subcontinent was silenced and replaced by the complacent stomach of another bureaucrat. Thus, for dozens of years they were able to maintain an incredible situation and an experience that has never been repeated.
Throughout the book, fundamental figures appear in the history of India and also of Europe, characters who wanted to change things, or who sowed the seed of the natural destruction of the subcontinent. So Dalrymple is incredibly critical of British work in India. The author, supported by a brilliant bibliography and a profuse archive work is fierce when it comes to criticizing the performance of the British Empire.
All this seasoned with a great translation and a vibrant narration of the events that makes this book something very easy to read. Anarchy is read practically alone, something that helps a lot to all those neophytes who are beginning to enter the world of History. For their part, those who are more involved in historical matters will be able to enjoy it enormously thanks to the fact that it combines its simplicity with an enviable high level of disclosure.
So do we recommend it?
We recommend reading “The Anarchy” to anyone who loves the history of colonialism. Of course, do not expect to find an epic story full of heroic acts. William Dalrymple goes down to the mud to bring us a heartbreaking storya narration of the ruin of a Jewel that lost its splendor after being deeply squeezed by a dangerous private company that brought all the evils of colonialism to an indomitable land.
We also recommend reading it together with “The Return of a King” another play by William Dalrymple edited by Awake Ferro. It introduces us to the First Anglo-Afghan War and the colonial disaster that took place in the country.