campaign against Zabita Khan here
and Ghulam Qadir here
treatment of prisoners here
takes control of Delhi here
breakdown of Maratha alliance here
achievements here, here
poetry and songs here, here, here, here, here
and the siege of Agra Fort here
court intrigue here
court re-established here
piety here, here
Polier on here
faults here, here
Modave on here
appeals to Hastings for funds here
lack of funds here, here
Hastings ceases all payments to here
appoints Najaf Khan Regent here
goodbye to Najaf Khan here
territorial gains lost here
seeks Scindia’s protection here
Ghulam Qadir imprisons here
blinding of here
mutilation here, here
Scindia’s rescue operation here
ceases to worry about this world here
Tipu Sultan breaks off relations with here
in old age here
Maratha protection here
taken into EIC protection here
and Maratha War here, here, here
and the Battle of Dehli here
EIC as regent here
Shah Alam Nama here, here, here, here
Shahamat Jang here
Shahdara here
Shahjahanabad here, here, here, here, here
Shaista Khan, Nawab of Bengal here, here
Shakespeare, William here
Macbeth here
Shakir Khan here, here, here
share price here, here, here, here, here, here, here
shareholders here, here, here
Sharia law here
Shaukat Jung of Purnea here
Shell here
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley here, here
Shipman, Sir Abraham here
Shitab Rai here
Shivaji Bhonsle here, here, here
Shuja ud-Daula, Nawab of Avadh here, here
reputation for treachery here
strength here
appearance here
vices here
and grand Mughal alliance proposal here, here
ultimatum to the EIC here
siege of Patna here, here
withdrawal to Buxar here
takes Mir Qasim prisoner here
Battle of Buxar here
escape from Buxar here
resistance here
surrender here
reinstated here
meeting with Clive here
Rohilla War here
meeting with Shah Alam here
Shushtari, Abdul Lateef here
Siddons, Sarah here
Sierra Leone Company here
Sikander Jah here
Sikandra here, here
Sikhs here, here, here, here
silver here, here
Siraj ud-Daula, Nawab of Bengal here, here, here
character here, here
reputation here
sexuality here
alienates the Jagat Seths here
hold over Aliverdi Khan here
named heir here
EIC fails to cultivate here
siege of Kasimbazar here
demands for Drake here
advance on Calcutta here, here
takes Calcutta here
enters Calcutta here
declaration of war on here
Clive’s night attack here
Clive’s offensive against here
retreat here
signs Treaty of Alinagar here
and the fall of Chandernagar here, here
attempt to win the friendship of Clive here
plot to remove here
Clive’s ultimatum here
Clive’s campaign against here
and Plassey here
escape from Plassey here
flight here
body paraded through streets here, here
capture of here
death of here
family murdered here
Sivabharata here
Skinner, James here, here, here
slave trade here, here
smallpox here, here
Smith, Adam here, here
Smythe, Sir Thomas here, here, here, here, here
Soame, Sir Stephen here
Sobel, Dava here
Spain here, here, here
Spanish Armada here
Spice Islands here
Spice Routes here
spice trade
attempts to break into here
profit here, here
Srirangam here
Srirangapatnam here, here, here
fortifications here
assault on here
Revolutionary Jacobin club here
siege of here
fall of here
rape of here
looting of here
remains here
Stein, Burton here
Stevens, Fr Thomas here
Stevenson, Colonel here
Stewart, Captain James here
Strachey, Jane here
Strachey, Richard here
Stretham here
subprime bubble, 2007–9 here
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay here
subscription book here
Sulaiman, Prince here
Sumru here, here, here, here, here
Sumru, Begum here, here, here, here, here
Surat here, here, here
Susan here
Suvali here
Suvarnadurg here
Swaroop Chand here
Swinton, Archibald here
Tagore, Dwarkanath here
Talegaon here
Tamil culture here
Tangier here
Tanjore here
coup attempt, 1749 here
Tarikh-i Muzaffari here, here
tax collectors here
tax defaulters here
taxes here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
tea here, here
tea tax here
textiles industry here, here, here
Third Anglo-Mysore War here
Thomas, George here
Thorn, Major William here, here, here
Tipu Sultan here, here
campaign tent here
Madras raid, 1767 here
Battle of Pollilur here, here
treatment of prisoners here
character here
takes over throne here
appearance here
father’s advice on good government here, here
military skill here
commercial department here
reforms here
patronage of Hindus here
as a champion of Islam here
British portrayal here
culture of innovation here
library here
violence here
flaws here
breaks off relations with Shah Alam here
Third Anglo-Mysore War here
speed of advance here
army strength here
troops desert here
peace treaty here
embassy to Napoleon here
French support here
Wellesley’s letter to here
Wellesley’s campaign against here
propaganda against here
spies here
support here
forces here
resources here
French corps here
defence of Srirangapatnam here
last stand here
body found here
tomb here
people’s love for here
throne here
wealth here
possessions distributed here
Tiruvannamalai here
Tooke, William here
Tower of London here
Travancore Lines, the here
Trichinopoly here, here
Trinomalee here
Turkey Company here
Twining, Thomas here
Tyger here, here
Udaipur here
Udhua Nullah, siege of here
Valentia, Lord here
van Neck, Admiral Jacob Corneliszoon here
Vaneshwar Vidyalankar here
Vansittart, Henry here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Vellore here, here
Venice Company here
Verelst, Henry here
Victoria, Queen here, here
Victorian period
official memory here
sense of embarrassment here
Vijayanagara empire here
village republics here
Virginia here, here, here
Vitoji Rao here
Vizagapatam here
VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), Dutch East India Company here, here, here, here, here
Voltaire here
Volton, Joseph de here, here
Wadgaon, Treaty of here
Wadyar dynasty, restoration here
Walcott here
Walmart here
Walpole, Horace here, here, here, here, here
Waqi’at-i Azfari here
War of Austrian Succession here, here
Warid here
Washington, George here, here
Watson, Admiral here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Watts, William here, here, here
Wellesley, Colonel Arthur (later Duke of Wellington) here
background here
welcomes brother here
Tipu Sultan campaign here
and the attack on Srirangapatnam here
and Tipu Sultan’s throne here
Maratha War preparations here
Battle of Assaye here
Wellesley, Richard Colley, 1st Marquess Wellesley here
arrival in India here
appearance here
background here
character here
attitude to the EIC here
goals here
and French threat here
neutralises French forces in Hyderabad here
letter to Tipu Sultan here
campaign against Tipu Sultan here
propaganda against Tipu Sultan here
spies here
army strength here
war against the Marathas here, here, here
and Shah Alam here
military expenses here
cunning here
conception of British Empire in India here
EIC nervousness about here
ultimatum to Daulat Rao Scindia here
achievement here
almost bankrupts EIC here
accusations against here
recalled here, here
West, Benjamin here
Yorktown, Battle of here
Young, Arthur here
Yusuf Ali Khan here
Zabita Khan Rohilla here, here, here, here, here, here
Zaman Shah here
Zeenat Mahal here
Zinat Mahal here
A Note on the Author
William Dalrymple is one of Britain’s great historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapucinski Prize-winning Return of a King. A frequent broadcaster, he has written and presented three television series, one of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA in 2002. He has also won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the FPA Media Awards, and has been awarded five honorary doctorates. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has held visiting fellowships at Princeton and Brown. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker and the Guardian. In 2018, he was presented with the prestigious President’s Medal by the British Academy for his outstanding literary achievement and for co-founding the Jaipur Literature Festival. William lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.
Plates Section
The first subscription list of 101 well-fleeced London names gathered by ‘Auditor Smythe’ for ‘the voiag to the Easte Indes’, on 22 September 1599, two days before the first public meeting at the Founder’s Hall, Moorgate Fields.
Sir Thomas ‘Auditor’ Smythe, the founder of the East India Company, in 1616.
Sir James Lancaster, who commanded the Company’s first voyage in 1601, shown five years earlier, on his return from his first disastrous journey east.
Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of James I who led Britain’s first official diplomatic mission to India in 1615.
Jahangir as the Millennial Sultan Preferring the Company of Sufis, by Bichitr. Jahangir is sitting enthroned with the halo of majesty glowing so brightly behind him that one of the putti has to shield his eyes from his radiance; another pair of putti are writing a banner reading ‘Allah-o Akbar! Oh king, may your age endure a thousand years!’ The Emperor turns to hand a Quran to a sufi, spurning the outstretched hands of the Ottoman Sultan. James I, meanwhile, is relegated to the bottom corner of the frame, below Jahangir’s feet, and only just above Bichitr’s own self-portrait. The King shown in a three-quarter profile – an angle reserved in Mughal miniatures for the minor characters – with a look of vinegary sullenness on his face at his lowly place in the Mughal hierarchy.
New East India House, the East India Company headquarters in London’s Leadenhall Street, after its early eighteenth-century Palladian facelift. A Portuguese traveller noted in 1731 that it was ‘lately magnificently built, with a stone front to the street; but the front being very narrow, does not make an appearance in any way answerable to the grandeur of the house within’. Like so much about the power of the East India Company, the modest appearance of East India House was deeply deceptive.
East India Company ships at Deptford, 1660.
Headquarters of the Dutch East India Company at Hughli by Hendrik van Schuylenburgh, 1665.
Fort William, Calcutta, by George Lambert and Samuel Scott, 1731.
The severe and puritanical Mughal Emperor Alamgir Aurangzeb, whose overly ambitious conquest of the Deccan first brought Mughal dominions to their widest extent, then led to the eventual collapse of the Empire, painted c. 1653.
Below is his nemesis, the Maratha warlord Shivaji Bhonsle, shown at the end of his life c. 1680. Shivaji built forts, created a navy and raided deep into Mughal territory. He was crowned Chhatrapati, or Lord of the Umbrella, at two successive coronation ceremonies at his remote stronghold of Raigad in 1674.
The Persian warlord Nader Shah was the son of a humble shepherd and furrier. He rose rapidly in the Safavid army due to his remarkable military talents, before deciding to take over the Kingdom and then ‘pluck some golden feathers from the Mughal peacock’.
Nader Shah with the effete aesthete Emperor Muhammad Shah Rangila, whom the Persian relieved of his entire treasury, including the Peacock Throne, into which was embedded the great Koh-i-Noor diamond. The sudden impoverishment of Delhi after Nader’s departure meant that the administrative and military salaries could no longer be paid, and, without fuel, the fire went out of the boiler house of Empire.
A Mughal prince, probably the young Shah Alam, on the terrace of the Red Fort being entertained by dancing girls, c. 1739, around the time of Nader’s Shah invasion.
Aerial view down over the Red Fort, c. 1770.
A Leisurely Ride, by Nainsukh. In the aftermath of the fall of Mughal Delhi, the imperial artists fanned out across the Empire, and elegant masterpieces such as this began to be painted in courts as remote as Guler and Jasrota in the Himalayan foothills.
Europeans Besiege a City. As Mughal authority disintegrated, everyone took measures for their own protection and India became a decentralised and disjointed but profoundly militarised society. European mercenaries were much in demand for their military skills, especially as artillerymen.
A scene at a Murshidabad shrine.
Above the Hughli near Murshidabad.
The palaces of Faizabad.
Aliverdi Khan came to power in 1740 in Bengal in a military coup financed by the powerful Jagat Seth bankers. A catloving epicure who loved to fill his evenings with good food, books and stories, after defeating the Marathas he created in Murshidabad a stable political, economic and political centre which was a rare island of prosperity amid the anarchy of Mughal decline.
Above, Aliverdi Khan is shown hawking, and below, a little older, he awards a turban jewel, or sarpeche, the Mughal badge of office, to his nephew, while his grandson, Siraj ud-Daula, looks on.
Left and right: Siraj ud-Daula with his women. ‘This prince made a sport of sacrificing to his lust almost every person of either sex to which he took a fancy,’ wrote his cousin, the historian Ghulam Hussain Khan.
Aliverdi’s son-in-law, Shahmat Jang, enjoys an intimate musical performance by a troupe of hereditary musicians, or kalawants, from Delhi. These were clearly regarded as prize acquisitions because they are all named and distinctively portrayed. Seated waiting to sing on the other side of the hall are four exquisitely beautiful Delhi courtesans, again all individually named.
Siraj ud-Daula rides off to war.
The brilliant historian Ghulam Hussain Khan. The Nawab’s cousin was among the many who emigrated from the ruined streets of Delhi at this time. His Seir Mutaqherin, or Review of Modern Times, his great history of eighteenth-century India, is by far the most revealing Indian source for the period.
Robert Clive in command at the Battle of Plassey, 1757.
Mir Jafar Khan was an uneducated Arab soldier of fortune who had played his part in many of Aliverdi’s most crucial victories against the Marathas, and led the successful attack on Calcutta for Siraj ud-Daula in 1756. He joined the conspiracy hatched by the Jagat Seths to replace Siraj ud-Daula, and found himself the puppet ruler of Bengal at the whim of the East India Company. Robert Clive rightly described him as ‘a prince of little capacity’.
The young Robert Clive, c. 1764, one year before Buxar. Laconic, but fiercely ambitious and unusually forceful, he was a violent but extremely capable leader of the Company and its military forces in India. He had a streetfighter’s eye for sizing up an opponent, a talent at seizing the opportunities presented by happenchance and a willingness to take great risks.
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Page 66