WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, by William Dalrymple
Timely exposure of rapacious imperialist plunder in India
Uncivilising mission: Painting of Robert Clive, EIC official and military commander, after the battle of Plassey in 1757, where many Bengalis
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THIS excellent chronicle of the rise and fall of the East India Company has real global resonance today.
The East India Company (EIC) was in many ways the first transnational corporation, starting life as a trading company in 1599 although, as author William Dalrymple notes, for some time the company struggled to get a foothold in India and the region.
That all changed in the mid-18th century. Over the 35 years to 1798 the EIC was effectively transformed from a trading company to an aggressive military combatant in the region, a privately owned imperial power with a standing army of 200,000 and territorial possessions far larger than that of its parent country.
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