William Dalrymple, "The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company"

India in 1751

William Dalrymple is a British historian and writer who spends his summers in London or Edinburgh and his winters in Delhi. The Anarchy (2019) is the third book of his I have read, and I have enjoyed all of them, so I recommend him if you have any interest in India.

The Anarchy tells the story of how the Honorable East India Company, founded by merchants to trade for money, ended up ruling India. This did not happen gradually, but with stunning suddenness (given the size of India), mostly between 1757 and 1803. The title of the book gives away the story of why that was possible: because the collapse of Mughal rule in India led to an anarchic period of war between dozens of states and semi-independent provinces, coupled with several invasions from Afghanistan and Persia, leaving India ravaged and largely defenseless in the face of any power with organization and stamina.

A Company Official, circa 1760

Dalrymple is an anti-colonial writer and he tried to make this book seem relevant by harping on the dangers of corporate power. The East Indian Company was, he tells us, "The first great international corporation and the first to run amok." It certainly is both weird and important that this one particular corporation ended up conquering an empire with 50 million inhabitants, in order to increase the profits to its shareholders. But what I found most fascinating about the book was Dalrymple's portrayal of the decline and fall of the Mughal Empire.

Bullocks Dragging Siege Guns

The origin of the Mughal Empire is usually placed in 1526, when a warlord from Uzbekistan named Babur defeated the Sultan of Delhi in a great battle and set himself up in the realm that the Muslim conquerors called Hindustan. Other historians think that things were fluid and ad hoc until much later, and they date the real Mughal Empire to the reign of Akbar, Babur's grandson. At their peak in the 1600s the Mughals ruled a state significantly larger than modern India. The Mughals rulers claimed descent from Timur the Lame (Tamerlane), so their dynasty was called the Timurids.

Shah Jahan on Horseback

The Mughals established a glorious court tradition, with wonderful architecture (the Taj Mahal), painting, poetry in Persian and Urdu, and so on. They may have been history's most bejeweled rulers, covering everything they owned with gems, including their famous Peacock Throne. (This is something I have long wondered about; but then most of the world's gems came from India back then, and I imagine the mines must have had a very productive period in 1500 to 1700, which the Mughals appropriated for themselves.) The Mughals also sponsored court historians who created a major scholarly tradition, so their rule is well documented both by outsiders (Persian, Turkish, European) and by writers who personally knew the emperors. Dalrymple makes frequent use of Mughal court writers, and I loved this material.

Aurangzeb, c. 1660

Everyone seems to agree that the empire's decline began under Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), but as to whether he was responsible for the decline, that is much disputed. There is at least a tradition that he reversed the tolerant policy of his forebears and began persecuting both his Hindu subjects and esoteric sects of Islam. Other writers say this isn't true at all, and he actually promoted more Hindus into the upper reaches of his government than anyone ever did before. I imagine this is a difficult topic to write about neutrally in contemporary India, so I won't venture an opinion. But it certainly is true that under Aurangzeb a major Hindu revolt broke out in central India, led by bands of warriors who eventually formed the Maratha Confederacy.

Seal of Aurangzeb

Things continued to decline under the reigns of Aurangzeb's son and grandson, with the Marathas gradually expanding their power and various regional governors declaring themselves independent (see the map at the top). In 1739, the Iranian ruler Nadir Shah launched a rapid invasion of the Mughal realm, seizing their capital of Delhi and extracting a vast tribute from the emperor and his nobles. And he kept coming back on regular raids, until there was pretty much no movable treasure to steal left in northern India. The Mughal state was left bankrupt and completely unable to oppose the expanding Marathas.

Meanwhile the British East India Company had founded their own city in Bengal within the mouths of the Ganges, at a village called Calcutta. They gradually built up their trading operations but their attempts to achieve political or military power in this period were defeated by the essentially independent governors of Bengal.

Shah Alam after his blinding

Then we reach the reign of Shah Alam II (1759–1806). One of the lines Dalrymple cites from Shah Alam's biographer says that when Shah Alam tried to do something – I forget what – "the times were not favorable, so nothing was achieved." This might stand as a motto for Shah Allam's reign. The times were basically horrible, and despite intelligence, charm, and decades of effort, his only real achievement was surviving long enough to become a British ward. 

Meanwhile in Bengal, things were really falling apart, leading in 1757 to open war between the Nawab (governor) and the Company. On paper the Nawab had a much bigger army, but he hadn't paid them in months, and when he turned to Bengali bankers for money they decided the Company would be a better customer and told him to get lost. Hence, most of the Nawab's men refused to fight, and a Company force under the redoubtable Robert Clive defeated him at the Battle of Plassey. The company took his treasure, paid the bankers enough to keep them friendly, and sent the rest back to England, introducing the Bengali word "loot" to the English language.

Shah Alam Grants the Company the Right to Collect Taxes in Bengal

Then in 1761 poor Shah Alam was driven from Delhi by yet more Afghan/Persian attacks and went wandering around India in a cavalcade of elephants, horses, and bullock carts, looking for someone who would take him in. Seeing an opportunity to legitimize their rule in Bengal, the Company offered Shah Alam a refuge and a regular pension in exchange for his blessing on their control of Bengal, and a deal was struck. Thus a joint stock company became the legitimate rulers of Bengal, and their career of conquest was launched.

That was far from the bottom for Shah Alam, though. He eventually left the British and lived for a while with the Marathas, who helped him to return to Delhi. Where he was attacked by yet another Afghan warlord, who raped his wives in front of him and then blinded him with a dagger. The Timurid dynasty, people said, went from the lame to the blind. Eventually he was rescued from the Afghans by the Marathas – including a character known as the One-Eyed Bastard of Indore – and then, when the Company defeated the Marathas, taken in by the Company and pensioned off.

Shah Alam was a highly regarded poet, and even in his blindness he kept composing verses on the wonder and beauty of creation and the unlimited thanks due to the Almighty.

The giant Zumrud Shah falls into a well

and is beaten by gardeners, Mughal painting, c. 1560

The story leaves me reflecting on the mutability of fortune, the way things change in ways nobody can predict or understand. The Mughals were invincible, cultured, insanely rich, and then they fell and were gone. The Company was a band of pirates, then city builders, then empire builders, and then they, too, were swept away, leaving museums full of Indian loot and a legend of the opportunistic businessmen who saw a chance, took the risk, and made themselves the tyrants of India.