This is an automatically translated description

Common perceptions of the British colonisation of India are based on the idea of efficient imperial expansion and civilisational superiority of Europeans over the backward inhabitants of the 'East Indies'. William Dalrymple skilfully refutes these myths. When the ambassador of King James I of England arrived in the Mughal Empire in 1614, he was treated almost like a savage at the imperial court. At that time, India was the largest economic and cultural centre in the world, uniting about a hundred million people in one state, who created almost a quarter of the world's product. How did this majestic empire come to be ruled by an island kingdom on the other side of the planet? The real colonisation of India was different from what is usually believed. Before it came under the control of the British Crown, India was in the hands of a private firm - a joint-stock company of merchants, whose headquarters in London had only a few dozen employees. And by the mid-eighteenth century, the East India Company had become the world's first transnational corporation, which not only controlled the lion's share of world trade but also started wars, overthrew rulers, staged coups, bought politicians, and committed numerous crimes against ordinary people with impunity.

William Dalrymple tells the complex and astonishing story of how a group of yesterday's pirates and adventurers created a commercial organisation whose ruthless thirst for profit, backed by military might, ultimately changed the course of world history and laid the foundations for "the empire that never set."

For a wide range of readers.