Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, by William Dalrymple
Timely exposure of rapacious imperialist plunder in India
battle of Plassey
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
THIS excellent chronicle of the rise and fall of the East India Company has real global resonance today.
The East India Company (EIC) was in many ways the first transnational corporation, starting life as a trading company in 1599 although, as author William Dalrymple notes, for some time the company struggled to get a foothold in India and the region.
That all changed in the mid-18th century. Over the 35 years to 1798 the EIC was effectively transformed from a trading company to an aggressive military combatant in the region, a privately owned imperial power with a standing army of 200,000 and territorial possessions far larger than that of its parent country.
More from this author
PAUL DONOVAN applauds a timely play that explores the resonances of McCarthyite nationalism in today’s US
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by an account of the long history of Catholic Church’s involvement in espionage
