LAUSR

as both emerged from the disparate web of sovereignties that characterised the early modern period. To view the history of colonialism in India as primarily a lesson about the contemporary relevance of state regulation is thus to miss this nuance, and to overlook how aspects of the modern state regularly developed first in India, then were exported back to Britain. Equally, a convincing argument could be made that the nationalisation of the East India Company was driven less by metropolitan actors, and more by a crisis of legitimacy precipitated by the growth of public cultures and civil society within South Asia. Company officials developed a wide array of idiosyncratic ideologies and collective identities during the first half of the nineteenth century, frequently contradicting the official policy of both Parliament and the Court of Directors, and eventually undermining the rationale behind the Company’s continued existence. The passages of Dalrymple’s book that weave Anglo-French rivalry into the narrative use a remarkable collection of French-language sources that highlight this complexity: in one, the Frenchman Michel Raymond—a mercenary general employed by the Nizam of Hyderabad—is seen coordinating the politics of Mughal successor-states according to French national interests, passionately declaring how he was “ready to sacrifice all” and thereby “prove the zeal for my country which animates me”. Although Dalrymple does recognise how, in the British case, the relationship between Company and Parliament “grew steadily more symbiotic...until eventually it turned into something we might today call a public-private partnership”, statements like Raymond’s point to a more complicated situation. Early-modern identities, rooted in loyalties to a number of overlapping ‘corporate bodies’, make it extremely difficult to align eighteenthcentury history with contemporary understandings of the relationship between state and corporation. All the same, there is no doubt that this book is a masterpiece of popular history. Long passages of primary material are expertly marshalled into compelling order, then allowed to speak for themselves. Other passages are deeply emotive. Perhaps most importantly, though, by telling the East India Company’s ‘relentless rise’ as a gripping page-turner, Dalrymple has provided a balanced account of imperial British history at a time when jingoistic misconceptions of the Nation’s former empire are widespread and instrumentalised.