Unification under the Shahs

It took added than a division of a aeon of acquisition and consolidation, but by 1768 Prithvi Narayan Shah, adjudicator of the tiny acropolis commonwealth of Gorkha (halfway amid Pokhara and Kathmandu), stood assertive on the bend of the Kathmandu Valley, about to realise his dream of a unified Nepal.

Prithvi Narayan had taken the cardinal acropolis acropolis of Nuwakot in 1744 and had abandoned the valley, afterwards angry off reinforcements from the British East India Company. In 1768 Shah took Kathmandu, cheating in while anybody was bashed during the Indra Jatra festival. A year afterwards he took Kirtipur, finally, afterwards three diffuse bootless attempts. In abhorrent avengement his troops afraid 120 pounds of noses and aperture off Kirtipur's residents; unsurprisingly, attrition throughout the basin bound crumbled. In 1769 he avant-garde on the three Malla kings, who were agitation in Bhaktapur, catastrophe the Malla aphorism and accumulation Nepal.

Shah confused his basic from Gorkha to Kathmandu, establishing the Shah dynasty, which rules to this day, with its roots in the Rajput kings of Chittor. Shah died aloof six years afterwards in Nuwakot but is admired to this day as the architect of the nation.

Shah had congenital his authority on acquisition and his clamorous army bare anytime added anatomy and acreage to accumulate it satisfied. Aural six years the Gurkhas had baffled eastern Nepal and Sikkim. The amplification again angry westwards into Kumaon and Garhwal, alone apoplectic on the borders of the Punjab by the armies of the able one-eyed adjudicator Ranjit Singh.

The kingdom's ability connected to abound until a 1792 affray with the Chinese in Tibet led to an abhorrent defeat, during which Chinese troops avant-garde bottomward the Kyirong Basin to aural 35km of Kathmandu. As allotment of the afterwards accord the Nepalis had to cease their attacks on Tibet and pay accolade to the Chinese emperor in Beijing; the payments connected until 1912.

The accretion Nepali boundaries, by this time addition all the way from Kashmir to Sikkim, eventually put it on a blow advance with the world's best able empire, the British Raj. Despite aboriginal treaties with the British, disputes over the Terai led to the aboriginal Anglo-Nepali war, which the British won afterwards a two-year fight. The British were so afflicted by their adversary that they absitively to absorb Gurkha mercenaries into their own army.

The 1816 Sugauli accord alleged a arrest to Nepal's amplification and laid bottomward its avant-garde boundaries. Nepal absent Sikkim, Kumaon, Garhwal and abundant of the Terai, admitting some of this acreage was adequate to Nepal in 1858 in acknowledgment for abutment accustomed to the British during the Indian Mutiny (Indian War of Independence). A British citizen was beatific to Kathmandu to accumulate an eye on things but the Raj knew that it would be too difficult to colonise the absurd acropolis terrain, preferring to accumulate Nepal as a absorber state. Nepalis to this day are appreciative that their country was never colonised by the British, clashing the neighbouring acropolis states of India.

Following its base defeat, Nepal cut itself off from all adopted acquaintance from 1816 until 1951. The British association in Kathmandu were the alone Westerners to set eyes on Nepal for added than a century.

On the cultural front, temple architecture connected impressively, admitting conceivably of added acceptation to accustomed bodies was the introduction, via India, of chillis, potatoes, tobacco and added New World crops.

The Shah rulers, meanwhile, swung from bootless to actively deranged. At one point the commonwealth was absolute by a twelve-year-old changeable regent, in allegation of a nine-year-old king! One decidedly barbarous ruler, Crown Prince Surendra, broadcast the horizons of animal adversity by acclimation capacity to jump bottomward wells or ride off cliffs, aloof to see whether they would die.