Gorkha rule in Himachal and Uttarakhand

Gorkha rule in Himachal and Uttarakhand refers to the period, roughly 1790 to 1815, during which the expanding Gorkha Kingdom of Nepal conquered and administered Kumaon, Garhwal, and a number of hill states in what is now Himachal Pradesh, before losing these territories to the British East India Company following the Anglo-Nepalese War.

Gorkha Expansion out of Nepal

The kingdom of Gorkha, a small hill state, had unified the Kathmandu Valley and much of present-day Nepal under Prithvi Narayan Shah by 1768-69. His successors continued this expansionist trajectory, pushing the kingdom's frontier westward along the Himalayan foothills over the following decades, a campaign carried out during the reign of the child king Girvan Yuddha Bikram Shah, whose government was effectively directed by the regent Bhimsen Thapa in Kathmandu.

Conquest of Kumaon and Garhwal

The Gorkhas conquered Kumaon in 1790, defeating its ruling Chand dynasty. Garhwal followed in 1803, when Gorkha forces defeated King Pradyuman Shah of the Garhwal kingdom at the Battle of Khurbura; Pradyuman Shah was killed in the fighting, and Garhwal's remaining royal line retreated to the small principality of Tehri Garhwal, which survived as a residual state.

Expansion into Himachal Pradesh

From their new base in Uttarakhand, Gorkha forces under the general Amar Singh Thapa, the principal commander on the empire's western front, advanced into the hill states of present-day Himachal Pradesh between roughly 1803 and 1809. They captured Sirmaur and its capital Nahan, brought Bilaspur (Kahlur) under Gorkha control, and overran the Shimla hill states, including Bushahr, Keonthal, and Jubbal. Amar Singh Thapa's subordinate commanders included the general Bhakti Thapa, later killed resisting the British.

In Kangra, the Gorkhas were drawn in by a coalition of smaller hill chiefs alarmed at the aggressive expansion of Sansar Chand Katoch, the powerful raja of Kangra, and invited Gorkha intervention against him. Gorkha forces defeated Sansar Chand's army at the Battle of Mahal Morian in 1806, driving him to take refuge in Kangra fort, which the Gorkhas then besieged. The prolonged siege, from 1806 to 1809, ultimately failed: Sansar Chand appealed for help to Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of Lahore, who marched to relieve the fort in 1809 and forced the Gorkhas to withdraw westward, taking possession of Kangra fort for the Sikh Empire in exchange rather than restoring full control to Sansar Chand. Gorkha westward expansion was checked decisively on this front, leaving Kangra outside their control at the time of the later war with the British.

Administration

Gorkha administration in the conquered hill territories was noted by contemporaries for heavy taxation and strict, often harsh, enforcement, but also introduced a more systematic revenue settlement than many of the small hill kingdoms it replaced. Fortifications at strategic points, including Jaithak near Nahan and positions guarding the approaches to Kangra, reflected the military priorities of an administration still consolidating a frontier only recently won. As devout Hindus, Gorkha rulers and officers, Amar Singh Thapa among them, patronized temples and undertook pilgrimages to sites including Kedarnath and Badrinath, and supported the restoration of temples that had fallen into disrepair under earlier local rule.

The Anglo-Nepalese War and Loss of the Hill Territories

Gorkha expansion brought the kingdom into direct friction with the East India Company, whose own frontier interests in the western Himalaya it increasingly encroached upon; the resulting Anglo-Nepalese War broke out in 1814. On the eastern front near Dehradun, Gorkha commander Balbhadra Kunwar mounted a prolonged defence of the fort at Nalapani (Kalanga) with a garrison of a few hundred men against a much larger besieging British force under Major-General Rollo Gillespie, who was killed in the fighting; the garrison held out for several weeks before Balbhadra abandoned the ruined fort in late 1814, a defence later cited by British officers themselves as a display of exceptional discipline and courage. On the western front, Major-General David Ochterlony led the Company's campaign against Amar Singh Thapa; Bhakti Thapa was killed in fighting near Malaun, and Amar Singh Thapa, his position untenable, surrendered the fort of Malaun to Ochterlony in May 1815, effectively ending organized Gorkha resistance in the hills.

The war concluded with the Treaty of Sugauli, signed in December 1815 and ratified in March 1816, under which Nepal ceded Kumaon, Garhwal, excepting Tehri Garhwal, restored to the Garhwal royal line under British protection, Sirmaur, and the Shimla and other hill states to Company control, along with the Terai lowlands, part of which was later restored to Nepal. The treaty fixed Nepal's southern border close to its present line and ended Gorkha rule in the Indian Himalaya.

Legacy

The most enduring consequence of the war lay in military recruitment rather than administration: impressed by the fighting quality of Gorkha soldiers during the campaign, the East India Company began raising Gurkha units from former Gorkha soldiers and hill recruits almost immediately, starting with what became the Sirmoor Rifles in 1815; Gurkha regiments have served continuously in the British and, since 1947, Indian and British armies to the present day. In the territories themselves, temples restored or endowed under Gorkha patronage remained in local use, and the administrative and fort-building infrastructure the Gorkhas left behind was in several cases adapted by the following British administration rather than replaced outright.