India was conquered by Indian soldiers with money raised by Indian financiers: Dalrymple

How does a company go from operating out of a small London apartment to becoming the world’s first great multinational? For historian William Dalrymple, the meteoric rise of the East India Company was about two things – being at the right place at the right time and a sharp business acumen.
Speaking at the Times Litfest about what happens when unchecked corporate greed gets an open field, Dalrymple challenged the myths surrounding colonial expansion.“There were never more than 2,000 white people in Bengal,” Dalrymple said, “India was conquered by Indian soldiers, with money raised by Indian financiers.” What began as a company of 35 people in their head office, was able to loot and plunder these vast resources. How? The East India Company paid sepoys double what any Indian army was offering.
The corporate nature of this operation was central to Dalrymple’s thesis. “Everyone talks about the Raj – Kipling, and Curzon are the only references that come to mind. But the Raj only lasted 90 years. The Company was there from 1599 to 1897. It did not pretend to be about railways or civilization – it was just about profits and asset-stripping.”
In contrast, those painted as “invaders” today are the ones who contributed to the economy. “Today, it’s quite fashionable to look at the Mughals as foreign invaders who wrecked and looted India, but the reality is that it was under the late Mughals that Bengal became the production and industrial centre of the world,” he said, adding that it was this point in 1765 that India controlled just under 30% of the world’s GDP, compared to England’s measly 3%.]
The session, based on Dalrymple’s latest book The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, was chaired by Parvati Sharma, author of Jahangir: An Intimate Portrait of Great Mughal, who noted that while this was an edge-of-the-seat story, it was also one tinged with anger. “It’s just greed – unleashed greed, bolstered by unlimited power, unmitigated and cloaked in anonymity,” said Sharma.
But what does it say of present-day conglomerates consolidating soft power? “Today, no company actually claims sovereign control over a territory the way East India Company did. Not even Google or Facebook. But they are listening to this conversation now – all of you with mobile phones will get East India Company tea adverts in your social media feeds.”