businessequip

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When I was young, coffee shops were dangerous venues. I was never allowed to go to one. Youths would congregate and drink frothy coffee – we had never heard of cappuccinos- and stay for ages getting up to some sort of mischief. These days, the main mischief is young folks, sitting with half a cup of cold coffee, occupying the best seats and fiddling endlessly with their laptops.
In a back alley in Tokyo, there is a coffee bar where it’s best not to let your coffee get cold – that is, if you sit in a certain chair where you may, if you wish, briefly revisit the past. (Watch the coffee!) For the time travellers it’s terribly important not to do anything the disrupt the present, but it addresses a yearning, that I am sure we all have, to focus on what we did not do, did not ever say. The more they delve, the more poignant the dilemma.
The book is ‘Before the Coffee Gets Cold’ by the Japanese star, Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I loved it.
David

#indiebookshop

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I finished A Passionate Spirit by Cate Haste which was about the life of Alma Mahler. It is the story of an extraordinary woman in turbulent times. I would say it was fairly niche, it is created extensively from her own words and perceptions as the wife of Mahler in a world of creatives. I found it absorbing and alarming. A portrait of the agonies and ecstasies of a woman always in company yet desperately alone.

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The Anarchy: The relentless rise of the East India Company
by William Dalrymple. Bloomsbury 2019. (non-fiction; hardback; ISBN 978-1-4088-6437-1)
By the end of the eighteenth century, the East India Company (EIC) had transformed itself within fifty years from a trader in spices and silks to a military power which overcame the rulers and peoples of almost all India. In the author’s words, it was: ‘the supreme act of corporate violence in world history’. Great empires such as the Mughal were subjugated by military might, which was then used to raise taxes. The EIC commanded a security force of 200,000 men – far greater than the entire British army. William Dalrymple’s magnificent account, beautifully written, well researched and documented, and with a helpful glossary, describes the brutal advance of British colonial power across the sub-continent.
Officially, the EIC partnered Indian rulers in a series of negotiated trading arrangements. The reality was different. One EIC-appointed Governor of India was Lord Richard Wellesley (brother of Arthur, later the victor of Waterloo):
‘… he wrote to reassure the Court of Directors that he was not engaged in some vainglorious adventure at their expense: “Although I have deemed it my duty to call your armies into the field in every part of India … my views and expectations are all directed to the preservation of the peace, which in the present crisis cannot otherwise be secured than by a state of forward preparations for war.”
[Wellesley] had, in reality, absolutely no intention whatsoever of keeping the peace. Instead, he was hugely enjoying the prospect of using the directors’ private army to wage his entirely avoidable war against the French-led forces in India.’
Incredibly, this naked power was exercised by a private company run from a boardroom in London. By hook and by crook, strategies emphasising differences between the princes, and which divided and ruled, extracted immense wealth from India. Much of it brought fortunes to individual investors (who became the super-rich of their day), and to financial institutions in London.
Yet Dalrymple’s narrative makes clear not only the political double-speak and criminal extortion which took place in Britain’s name, but also the immense suffering of India’s hungry population as a result of war, plunder, hikes in taxation and other injustices.
As the many colour illustrations in The Anarchy show, cultures were denuded. Alongside fascinating examples of Indian art one also finds the painting by Benjamin West, Shah Alam Conveying the Gift of the Diwani to Lord Clive. The Shah’s court gleams with gold and silver in richly ornamented furnishings and clothing, yet Dalrymple observes: ‘Today we would call this an act of involuntary privatisation. The scroll is an order by the Emperor to dismiss the Mughal revenue officials in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, and replace them with a set of English traders appointed by [Governor] Clive.’
The EIC became ‘too big to fail’. Eventually the British government was forced to intervene. The glory of Empire was for many years trumpeted vigorously, but Britain’s shameful reputation and the deeper resentments induced will outlast it.
Ray