Unification of Nepalनेपाल एकीकरण

Prithvi Narayan Shah became king of the small hill state of Gorkha in 1743 and spent a quarter-century absorbing its neighbours. On 25–26 September 1768, his forces took Kathmandu while the city celebrated Indra Jatra; Patan followed days later and Bhaktapur in November 1769, completing the conquest of the three Malla kingdoms of the Valley. The capital moved from Gorkha to Kathmandu, and the modern Kingdom of Nepal was born.

His successors pushed the frontiers west to the Sutlej and east into Sikkim, creating, briefly, a Greater Nepal nearly twice today's size. Expansion collided with the British East India Company over the Terai. The Anglo-Nepal War (1 November 1814 – 4 March 1816) ended with the Treaty of Sugauli — signed 2 December 1815 and ratified 4 March 1816 — under which Nepal ceded Sikkim, Kumaon, Garhwal and much of the Terai, accepted a British Resident in Kathmandu, and saw the Mechi and Mahakali rivers fixed as its eastern and western borders.

The treaty also opened the long tradition of Gurkha recruitment into British arms. Nepal preserved its formal independence — it was never colonised — but court politics in Kathmandu grew steadily more violent, culminating in the palace intrigues of the 1840s that brought the Rana family to power.