The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

by William Dalrymple

At that time England was a relatively impoverished, largely agricultural country, which had spent almost a century at war with itself over the most divisive subject of the time: religion.

The idea of a joint stock company was one of Tudor England’s most brilliant and revolutionary innovations.

India then had a population of 150 million – about a fifth of the world’s total – and was producing about a quarter of global manufacturing; indeed, in many ways it was the world’s industrial powerhouse and the world’s leader in manufactured textiles.