Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The title of this book The Anarchy is a lie. Dalrymple describes the English East India Company's seizure of India as leading to Anarchy, when his history in fact shows clearly that the EIC found a crumbling Moghul empire in total anarchy, and, having seized the corpus piece by piece, restored law and order, laying the groundwork for responsible rule by the British government, and leaving a heritage of good governance that enabled the creation of the modern largest democracy in the world. The post-imperial heritage of the British, in all their former colonies, was the strong Anglo-Saxon democratic government model. This is in marked contrast with the post-colonial heritage of the colonies of the Spanish, French, and Dutch empires. The English came for commerce, whereas the other European countries all came for expropriation and exploitation. Dalyrmple at least makes clear at the very beginning his disdain for corporations/capitalism. But his "history" is seriously skewed and distorted by turning the story of the East India Company into an anti-corporation/capitalism rant. As his history shows, India was in total disarray when the Europeans arrived in the 1700s, and was in desperate need of some force to bring law and order. The East India Company and then the Raj did that. Yes, the spoils may be judged egregious by modern standards, but they were more than offset by what the company did to set India on the road to stable self-government. The company did this without conscious intent, but its longeterm legacy speaks for itself.