The Anarchy by William Dalrymple

Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India . A book of beauty‘ – Gerard DeGroot, The Times

In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish in his richest provinces a new administration run by English merchants who collected taxes through means of a ruthless private army – what we would now call an act of involuntary privatisation.