“ White Mughals is a micro study of Hyderabad from 1795 to 1805 The Last Mughal is miniature of Delhi from 1856 to 1858 Return of the King is Afghanistan, 1839-42.

Several compelling characters people the pages of this history, from Company employees like Robert Clive and Warren Hastings to the Mughal emperor Shah Alam, the Bengal nawabs like Siraj-ud-Daula, Maratha leaders such as Mahaji Scindia and rulers like Tipu Sultan.ĭalrymple points out that although three of his books were set against the background of the East India Company, but he’d never actually written about the East India Company before. The Anarchy is a sprawling history of the East India Company’s conquest of the Indian subcontinent, beginning with a meeting in 1599 in London, to the moment in 1859 in Allahabad, when the then Governor General Lord Canning announced that the Company’s Indian possessions were being nationalised and passing into the British Crown’s control. The Great British Loot: The jewels 'stolen' by the Royals Camilla wears Lahore Diamond at coronation: How the stone was 'stolen' He organised the expedition to go find it, but ended up throwing a hissy fit because the command of the expedition was given to somebody called James Cook! So yes, all the same family.” Alexander Dalrymple was a cartographer who, when the Company captured Pondicherry, put together all the English and French maps and realised there must be one big landmass that he called Australia. Stair Dalrymple was brought up in the same house and place as me, and James was his cousin - so not a direct forebear - who married into the family of Noor Jehan, actually. So it in particular attracted vicars’ sons from Northern Ireland or Scotsmen with larger social aspirations than their pockets or estates could provide for. But those that did come back, did so with very large fortunes.

Three-quarters of the 16-year-olds who went out as writers with the Company never came back. It was never the top aristocrats, the earls and the lords and the dukes and so on. “We’re a very small family, and we are exactly the kind of family from which the East India Company would recruit. Clad in one of the blue shirts he seems to prefer, Dalrymple takes a look at the television in the room - a telecast of Queen Elizabeth II addressing the British Parliament - scoffs, and having gathered the cushions on a large couch into a comfortable, supportive heap, is ready to talk about the book.Ī book that incidentally, contains a fair sprinkling of Dalrymples: A Stair Dalrymple, and a James, and an Alexander. He’s been travelling near incessantly, on a publicity tour for his new book, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire. William Dalrymple walks into the business centre of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in South Mumbai, a little rumpled.

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