The story of how the East India Company took over large swaths of Asia, and the devastating results of the corporation running a country. In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and set up, in his place, a government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of a private army. The creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional company and became something much more unusual: an international corporation transformed into an aggressive colonial power. Over the course of the next 47 years, the company's reach grew until almost all of India south of Delhi was effectively ruled from a boardroom in the city of London.

1839年春，英国人武装入侵阿富汗，几乎未遇抵抗。但两年后，阿富汗人揭竿而起，义民起事演变成举国上下的暴力反抗。第一次英阿战争以不列颠惨败告终。威廉·达尔林普尔基于最新的多语种材料，以生花妙笔解析不列颠帝国史上最大的灾难，而这一灾难与当前西方国家在阿富汗所面临的不断深化的危机显然有类似之处。

Conjuring all the sweep of a great nineteenth-century novel, acclaimed author William Dalrymple unearths the fascinating story of the British Resident at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, James Kirkpatrick, who in 1798 fell in love with the great-niece of the Hyderabadi prime minister. To marry her, Kirkpatrick converted to Islam and even became a double agent working against the East India Company. Shedding light on the many eccentric Westerners during this period who "turned Turk," adopting Indian customs, dress, and religions, Darymple brings to life a compelling and largely unwritten story of Britain’s rule over India.

In this evocative study of the fall of Mughal Empire and the beginning of the Raj, award-winning historian William Dalrymple uses previously undiscovered sources to investigate a pivotal moment in history. The last Mughal emperor, Zafar, came to the throne when the political power of the Mughals was already in steep decline. Nonetheless, Zafar—a mystic, poet, and calligrapher of great accomplishment—created a court of unparalleled brilliance, and gave rise to perhaps the greatest literary renaissance in modern Indian history. All the while, the British were progressively taking over the emperor's power. When, in May 1857, Zafar was declared the leader of an uprising against the British, he was powerless to resist though he strongly suspected that the action was doomed. Four months later, the British took Delhi, the capital, with catastrophic results. With an unsurpassed understanding of British and Indian history, Dalrymple crafts a provocative, revelatory account of one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.

William Dalrymple chronicles ten years of living and traveling in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and India. Here he discovers a region falling into a time of darkness, discord and disintegration which according to ancient Hindu cosmology is known as the Age of Kali. Despite the area's strife and discontent, Dalrymple's attitude does not fall to pessimism, rather every page reveals his passion for the people and culture of the Indian subcontinent. He encounters such figures as Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan and meets with ostracised inmates of a widows' home. Critical yet sympathetic, The Age of Kali is must-have reading for anyone wanting to understand the countries of the subcontinent.