Mini review:
Author is a prof at LSE who's written other histories. It's light on some of the surrounding events, as it's focused on the company and the money. He threads forward periodically, to how some of those company things relate to a modern multinational, or a corporate survivor of that age or some regulation. Mostly that works, occasionally it's a bit jarring. Overall it's a feature to see what we think as modern capitalism getting out of control now, were just as out of control way back when.
Focusing on the company, you don't get a great deal of depth of some of the events, e.g. The Boston Tea Party, and the preceding tea boycott, just the company role in causing it and how they made it worse. You get to find out the EIC's part had English merchants writing to their colonial cousins urging them to restart the boycott - that had been petering out. You get to find out Adam Smith felt the invisible hand should be paired with an invisible fist of regulation, and really quite disliked the company. You won't get the depth of the events and consequences that those choices, share splits, or chasing dividends caused, or the impact on the Indians and company workers they were betraying.
It's opinionated. I think it's all the better for that. The couple of others I have read on EIC or Clive have perhaps been easier reads, but could fall into the trap of "they did terrible things, but it was another age, so...". Then give you the more of the events without the detail of the evil villain plotting the next way to line their pockets. Yet give you more a sense of the impact on regions.
There is a good deal on Clive, Plassey and Bengal. By the time you're done you get a visceral sense of why, in his later days, Robert Clive was one of the most hated figures in England (and no doubt India).
We've failed to remember Adam Smith's take on the corporation into modernity, just the Wealth of Nations. One for me to dig into further, as his actual views on companies don't seem to match up with what we think he thought. :)
There were calls to wind EIC in, or wind it up going all the way back to the 1610s, and to give India back almost from the moment they arrived. Which continued constantly until it was finally forcibly wound up. All those dodgy stock splits, Theranos and Enron type frauds, countries wondering how to tame the out of control tech titan? EIC got there first. Just as willing to defraud Britain as anywhere else. As the first English joint stock company. As a near independent sovereign corporate with powers of justice, war and currency.
Ain't nothing new then.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/844131.The_Corporation_T...