The Anarchy — William Dalrymple

Dalrymple's subject is the East India Company — specifically, how a joint-stock trading corporation came to replace the Mughal Empire as the dominant power in the Indian subcontinent. The book is meticulous in documenting the Company's methods: bribery, military coercion, exploitation of Mughal political collapse, and the systematic extraction of Bengal's wealth. The argument is that the Company's conquest of India was not British imperial policy but corporate opportunism operating in a vacuum of legitimate authority.