The Corporation that Changed the World - Nick Robins

Well… I didn’t really finish this book, because I carelessly forgot it in a flight I took from Mumbai to Bangalore… but I had read around 80% of the book so am in a position to comment about the book.

The reason I bought this book is to read up into the history of East India Company and their stance with respect to India. The history books in the school dwelt on the Maratha era and then passed on to the 1857 mutiny and there on to the Independence struggle with only a cursory mention about the impact of the East India Company on the nation from a economic and a political perspective. The only thing that was communicated was the atrocities committed on the Indians under the rule of East India Company and then the British Raj. What this book offers is a proper blend of the rise of East India Company, their functioning, their political and social impact not just in India but globally, and their eventual demise.

The good thing is that the author has managed to keep out any bias while presenting the historical facts. He maintains the business book feel while discussing the operations of East India Company as he compares their functioning, the organizational structure, the capital raising mechanisms and the rampant malpractices of the Company with the modern day organization.

The book gives sufficient detail for a person like me who wants to read on the subject more out of curiosity and for high level information. The writing is entertaining and is not boring in a text book way. It does not mince words about the cruelty that the Britishers subjected the Indians to and how methodically they ruined the entire country’s economy. This is the first business book that sparked my patriotic fury. And it did well to remind me of the struggle that India as a nation has been through to be free from the clutches of the foreign power. All the post-independence rhetoric, however clichéd, strikes true. We as Indians, have struggled for long. It’s about time we did not get carried away with the rampant westernization and rose to the riches of the pre-East-India era, where while there were inter-ruler wars, the per-capita income for the common man, was much higher. It’s high time we stopped being a poor nation.