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

by William Dalrymple

Now the Company was transformed a second time, not just as a vehicle of trade operating from a scattering of Indian coastal enclaves, but as the ruler of a rich and expansive territorial empire extending across South Asia. For this, above all, was the moment this corporate trading organisation succeeded in laying the ground for its territorial conquest of India. A business enterprise had now emerged from its chrysalis, transformed into an autonomous imperial power, backed by a vast army, already larger than that of the British Crown, and was poised now to exercise administrative control over 20 million Indians. A body of merchants had been transformed into the de facto sovereign rulers of much of northern India.