A trading company built a private army twice the size of Britain's own

Chartered in 1600 to trade pepper and spices, the English East India Company gradually taxed, administered and conquered vast stretches of the Indian subcontinent, funding a private army of roughly 260,000 soldiers at its peak — about double the British Army of the time. A single joint-stock corporation, answerable mainly to its shareholders, effectively ruled an empire.

— William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company — Bloomsbury, 2019
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