William Dalrymple – The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
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Join a master storyteller for the cautionary tale of the first global corporate power – and the supreme act of colonial violence that changed the world forever.
One of Britain’s greatest living historians, William Dalrymple is revered across the globe for his ability to bring the extraordinary history of India to life, whether through award-winning, bestselling books like Return of a King and The Last Mughal, or his chart-topping podcast, Empire.
Now he joins us to tell the story of more than two hundred years of tumultuous colonial history, covert political machinations, and bloody resistance.
In 2026 we still talk about the British conquering India, but that phrase disguises a much more sinister reality. For it was not the British government that began seizing chunks of India in the mid-eighteenth century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in the city of London.
Bringing together decades of meticulous research and masterful narration, William will tell us the remarkable story of how the Mughal empire, which then generated just under half the world’s wealth, disintegrated and came to be replaced by the East India Company — an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational corporation.