The anarchy : the relentless rise of the East India Company
"In August 1756 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish in his richest provinces a new administration run by English merchants who collected taxes through means of a ruthless private army -- what we would now call an act of involuntary privatization. The East India Company's founding charter authorized it to "wage war" and it had always used violence to gain its ends. But the creation of this new gover...