Goats, kings and anarchy - William Dalrymple on his new book

The author tells us why he’s deviating from his ‘micro-studies’, how his new book is like Chinese cooking, and the rise of the corporate with the East India Company

November 17, 2017 03:42 pm | Updated 03:47 pm IST

“It’s been a sad day for goats,” William Dalrymple says, when I meet him ahead of his performance with singer Vidya Shah at the launch of The Hindu November Fest last week. His Instagram account describes him as goatherd and kabooter baz , and in interviews, he is frequently pictured caressing all manner of caprinae. Gilbert, once king of Dalrymple’s flock, was displaced by his son Freud (horn envy seems an inevitable consequence with a name like that) — an event that put old Gilbert in such despair, he had to be put down. “It’s interesting goats get depressed just like people do. They put their heads against the wall and don’t want to go on. It happened to Gilbert’s mother, Georgina, too. She had a still birth and it undid her, she just sat looking at the ground and died within a month,” he shares.

Stories about the last king are Dalrymple’s staple, but he tells me his next book will be a shift in gears. It will still feature a king, the Persian emperor Nader Shah, but it is really about a 60-year period in history when the wealthiest empire in the world is taken over by a boardroom of London merchants, giving rise to the East India Company. “It’s almost the first company in the whole world. From the Medicis in 15th century Florence, to a bunch of Sindhi merchants or Gujaratis sitting on the coast of Porbandar in Kutch, businesses had always been family affairs. But to raise the capital necessary to trade at the other end of the world in the 16th century, the British invent the corporation, they have joint stock, and that changes the world more than anything else — more than Christianity, more than democracy. It has a universal take-up,” he says.

Rise of the corporation

The book, which may or may not be called The Anarchy , will be Dalrymple’s most ambitious yet. “I’ve never done anything like it before,” he says. “All my books so far have been micro-studies of just two or three years, and they disguise their micro-ness in the great shaggy covering that makes it look like they’re about huge subjects. White Mughals is actually just a few years in Hyderabad, The Last Mughal is two years in Delhi.” This one will cover 60 years, from the time Shah messes up the Mughal Empire, to 1803, when the British replace it, effectively by taking over Delhi, keeping the king as pensioner. “It’s a huge sweep of territory, people coming and going, playing lots of parts, all of which is very bad for the narrative. It’s like Chinese cooking for me.” Not a word has been written yet, which is normal, Dalrymple says. “The big history books take three to four years to research. I’m nowhere near the end.”

The Scottish historian and writer talks in great bursts of energy, frequently gesticulating with his arms. “It’s the most extraordinary bit of history,” he tells me. “When (the battle of) Plassey takes place, there’s only about 35 people working in that office, and yet this boardroom, this corporation, replaces the greatest and richest empire that India has ever seen… By 1802, the company has twice as many troops as the British army, and have the Mughal emperor in their back pocket. The weirdness is that Victorians rewrote history to make it look like a nationalist enterprise. Half of the book is not about the company versus India or the Mughals, it’s about the company against the British government — a struggle which goes on today in every legislature between lobbying groups who represent corporate interests.”

In continuity

The historical leap from 1803 to Donald Trump’s government, with its complicated ties to Russian business interests, is something that clearly excites Dalrymple. “The book is more topical than ever because this is the ultimate corporate takeover. Ditto with Modi’s India. It was the corporates who brought Modi to power with their massive ad campaigns and all the unquantifiable sums of money that went into the BJP for the last election. So this battle between the power of the state and the power of the corporation is the big story of our time, and the jury is out on who’s going to win,” he says.

Of course, as all historians know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. When I ask about historical continuity in India, he tells me the reason so much in the country stays the same amidst change is because of the way families are locked in. “When I was doing Nine Lives , coming down here to write about Chola bronze makers — who are still sitting in a bend in the Cauvery, where they were plonked by Raja Raja Chola in 1100 — the same families are there making the same idols on the same bend in the Cauvery. No one has moved. It’s gone father to son for 37 generations since 1100. That just doesn’t happen anywhere else, but it happens here.”

He’s quick to concede that this continuity can have negative influences; if you’re a sweeper for instance, it traps you into centuries of deprivation. But it can also offer important insights. “So when (art critic and historian) BN Goswamy was trying to write the history of (painter) Nainsukh, to find the history behind these amazing paintings, he just goes to the pilgrimage centre in Haridwar and looks up the family pilgrimage records and there they are in one volume. Father to son. Father to son. Every name of every painter in one single book.”

Keeping the optimism

But isn’t it also true, that for all this continuity, there are always multiple versions to the same story, and sometimes all this multiplicity can get confusing?

“I remember writing Holy Mountain and thinking at the end of five years that I’ve seen the whole of the Middle East, all the major sights, been everywhere, talked to everyone. It’s a ridiculously arrogant thing to say, but I felt I understood it in a way I’ve never even begun to understand India,” he says, adding, “I’ve been running around this coastline for 30 years, but tomorrow I hope to see Fort St David (in Cuddalore), a major sight I’ve never seen before. It’s just endless!”

So, yes, history repeats itself, and yes we continue to ignore its lessons — but forget about looking backwards for a moment and give us a glimpse of the near future in this country. What do you see? I ask. “I’m not an admirer of this government,” Dalrymple states, “It’s Mussolini without the trains running on time. In the long term though, I’m a huge optimist for India. There are a million things that could go wrong, but everything I’ve read about its past has shown that India’s natural place is at the top of the top table, and, along with China, it should be the centre of the world again. Other than this period between 1498, when Vasco de Gama arrives, and 1947, when European gunboats and globalism put it into second rank for three to four hundred years, it’s been at the top. Pliny complained about all that Roman gold going East, and I think it will do so again. We’d really have to screw up in this country for that not to be the case within my lifetime.”

Quick take

Best thing about farm life: Less smog

Biggest luxury: My lovely cook Biru’s masala omelettes by the pool

Your children’s source of amusement: That I’m on social media more than they are

Most unusual collection of art you’ve seen recently: Oliver Hoare’s collection of hand carved 18th century walrus ivory dildos known as scrimshaws

JLF 2018 highlights: Tom Stoppard, Hamid Karzai, Michael Ondaatje, Amy Tan, Helen Fielding

Next photography project: The Historian’s Eye are all photographs taken while researching my East India Company book, The Anarchy — ranging from Mughal Delhi to Nawabi Lucknow, Nizami Hyderabad, Company Calcutta, and Tipu’s Srirangapatnam

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