The Anarchy summary

By the 1750s, the Company was the most advanced capitalist organization in the world, generating an eighth of Britain’s import trade. Company officer Robert Clive would go on to oversee its transformation into a political power, usurping the increasingly anarchic Mughal empire.

As a child, Clive had been a violent bully. To keep him out of trouble in England, his father had sent him to India, where he developed a hatred for the country that would stay with him his whole life. 

With his massive army and bad attitude, Siraj set the stage for a Mughal-Company confrontation that would be a critical turning point in Indian history. In 1756, he showed up at the gates of Calcutta with 70,000 soldiers – surprising the incompetent governor Roger Drake and his army of 515. 

Needless to say, Siraj’s troops looted Calcutta. The British prisoners were herded into a tiny cell called The Black Hole, where most of them suffocated to death.

The new arrangement between the Company and the puppet Nawab of Bengal was one of convenience – not of mutual appreciation, or even comprehension. Mir Jafar didn’t understand he was dealing with a corporate board, rather than a single sovereign ruler. In letters Clive referred to him as “the old fool.”

For his part, Robert Clive was smugly reveling in his victory. In 1760, he returned home with a fortune greater than anything Europe had seen since Spanish conquistador Cortès returned from plundering the Americas. He stirred up London gossip with his shopping spree of estates and townhouses. 

Like his father-in-law Mir Jafar, Mir Qasim was a clever military tactician. In advance of the coming battle with the Company, he allied himself with Mughal emperor Shah Alam – whose power was mostly symbolic – as well as with the Nawab of the neighboring Avadh province, Shuja ud-Daula – whose power was very real. Shuja was huge in stature and immensely strong; by 1763 he was past his prime but could still sever the head of a young bull with one stroke of his sword.

Despite almost besting the Company at a siege in Patna, Mir Qasim and his assembled armies lost their ultimate battle at the Buxar river in 1764. Mir Qasim fled; he later died in poverty. Shuja was installed as the Company’s puppet. Shah Alam, knowing his symbolic value, allied himself with the Company. 

In 1770, catastrophe struck. A two-year drought made the price of rice skyrocket. Bengal was racked with famine. The Company did almost nothing to help. In fact, it continued to enforce tax collection – and in some cases even increased it. All in all, 1.2 million Bengalis died of starvation or disease.

As word of the horror made it back to England, public opinion of the Company soured. Then, in the European financial crisis of 1772, Company stock plummeted. Company directors were forced to ask the Bank of England for a bailout of over £1.5 million. 

By 1771, Shah Alam had had enough of the Company’s and the Nawabs’ vain promises to install him back on his ancestral Peacock Throne in Delhi. He knew his worth as the symbolic leader of India, and he was determined to go home.

He made an alliance with the Marathas, who helped him raise an army of 16,000 to escort him on the dangerous journey back to Delhi. The Marathas also promised to support him once he settled on the throne, in a court filled with intrigue and potential usurpers. 

In 1776, the American Revolution shook colonial Britain. Neither the Company nor the Crown could afford the same thing to happen in India. They sent General Cornwallis, who had just been defeated in America, to ensure India remained under British control. 

Cornwallis arrived to boomtown Calcutta – population 400,000 – in 1786. The Company was back in business after a period of uncertainty, which meant it was able to groom its sizable army.

The last Indian challengers to Company dominion were the mercurial Marathas, who had been both allies and foes of the British over the decades. With the support of the French, the Marathas had held onto Delhi – as well as the blind and unhappy Shah Alam, nominal Mughal emperor, whose sole remaining pleasure was writing poetry. 

In 1800, the death of Maratha politician Nana Phadnavis brought chaos. “The Maratha princes,” writes one modern observer, “bore less resemblance to a confederacy than to a bag of ferrets.” 

In London, former Company governor Warren Hastings was impeached by Parliament in 1788. He, and by proxy the Company itself, was accused of nothing less than the “rape of India.” Practically speaking, these crimes included extortion, cruelty, and abuse of power. Company rule, argued the prosecutor, had done nothing for India but asset-strip it, impoverishing and destroying its population in the process.

The trial spectators – including the Queen, as well as commoners who had slept on the streets to catch the scandalous proceedings – were convinced of the Company’s guilt. The trouble was, they had impeached the wrong man.