The anarchy by dalrymple7/6/2023 So, too, is loot, and that is exactly what the British were to extract from India over the next several centuries. As William Dalrymple points out early on in this excellent book, the English words pyjamas, chintz, calico, taffeta, shawl and dungarees are all of Indian origin. India was an industrial powerhouse, the world’s leader in manufactured textiles. Mughal capitals were busy with traders, artists, poets, aristocrats, warriors and clerics, all of whom contributed to the flow of around £100m annually, equivalent to roughly £10bn today, to the imperial exchequer in the northern city. When slighted by Portuguese merchant adventurers who built unauthorised fortifications around trading posts at the mouth of the Ganges, the emperor swept the Europeans into the river with embarrassing ease. When Hawkins arrived, this immensely impressive dynasty had 4 million men under arms. Many were ruled by the Mughal empire, a regional superpower that had seized Delhi and much of the north of India two centuries earlier.
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