The Present State of the British Interest in India: With a Plan for Establishing a Regular System of Government in That Country

This anonymous 1786 pamphlet reads like an act of conscience from within the belly of empire. Written on the eve of Pitt's India Act, it documents in meticulous, damning detail how the East India Company transformed Bengal - once the richest province in Asia - into a landscape of famine, debt, and systematic misgovernance. The author, likely a Company insider or close observer, builds a devastating case: British merchants grew rich while Indian cultivators starved; Company servants feathered their nests while the treasury bled; the vast wealth of a subcontinent was being plundered rather than governed. What elevates this beyond a polemic is its proposed remedy: a rational, Crown-supervised system of administration that might have saved millions and changed the arc of British rule. The text captures a pivotal historical moment when reform was still possible - before the Company dug in, before the Permanent Settlement calcified everything. For anyone interested in the origins of the British Empire's most profitable and problematic colony, this is a front-row seat to the moment everything could have gone differently.