I think that was self-congratulation on the part of Protestants speaking of the Catholics. No, I think that has got very little to do with it. The crucial moment to me is 1799, which is when the Company’s army becomes double the size of the British Army.Ĭan the success of the EIC and Dutch VOC (Dutch East India Company) at trade, commerce and capitalism be ascribed to their belonging to Protestant nations? What Max Weber later called the ‘Protestant Work Ethic’? So what was completely new about the EIC in the 1750s was they militarised at an unprecedented level, starting off with a few thousand sepoys, growing to 20, then a 100, then a 199. It had always been, as I say, both with the Company and the other trading houses - the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Cholas - trade was usually armed in that there were so many pirates and predators on the seas in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Periods that no one went to seas trading unarmed. What changed was in the 1750s when the EIC militarises on a previously unprecedented scale. People often forget the Indian armed colonies on the coast of Southeast Asia but you are quite right this is an exact parallel to the first stage of EIC activity. In both cases, they were armed and fortified enclaves. Chola navies set up armed factories in Southeast Asia very similar to the early EIC factories in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta.

I think all trade in antiquity was armed trade. What was so different about the traders of the EIC?

We had the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean, the traders of the Silk Route in Eurasia and Indian traders in East Africa and Maritime Southeast Asia. So the Opium Wars, which were in the 1840s, are way out of the scope of this book. This book is not about the East India Company per se. It is about the EIC’s conquest of India between 17. Why did you decide to focus on just its South Asian theatre of operations? The East India Company (EIC) was also involved in the Opium Wars with China and the colonisation of Malaya. And so being Scottish as well as part-Bengali and part-Mughal, I am well-placed to see all sides of the story. Along the way, I have acquired trickles of Bengali and Mughal blood. I mean not just that guy (Stair Dalrymple) but generations of my family were involved, first in the Company and then in the Raj. What made you embark on the project? Does the death of one of your ancestors in the Black Hole of Calcutta have anything to do with it?Ībsolutely nothing except in the much wider sense that I do feel that this is my family history as much as everything else. The historian-author spoke to Down To Earth about the East India Company and the factors that led to its ascent in South Asia. The Anarchy focuses on how a joint-stock company, established by London merchants, took over practically the entire Indian subcontinent between 17. William Dalrymple is habituated to his books creating a buzz, as his new volume is doing now.

William dalrymple books in hindi