The Anglo-Nepalese War (1 November 1814 – 4 March 1816), also known as the Anglo-Gorkha War, was a major military conflict fought between the Kingdom of Nepal and the East India Company (EIC). The war was the culmination of decades of geopolitical friction as two expanding powers clashed along an ill-defined 1,500-kilometer frontier. While Nepal had aggressively expanded its empire from the Teesta River in the east to the Sutlej River in the west, the EIC was simultaneously extending its dominion across the Indian subcontinent. The initial conflicts were driven by competition over the fertile Tarai lowlands and trans-Himalayan trade routes into Tibet. The final crisis emerged in May 1814 CE (Jeth 1871 BS), when a small Nepalese force attacked EIC police outposts in the disputed Butwal region, killing 18 EIC officials. Citing this attack as a casus belli, Lord Hastings, the Governor-General of India, formally declared war on the Kingdom of Nepal on 1 November 1814 CE (18 Kartik 1871 BS).
The immediate catalyst for the war was a protracted territorial dispute over the border districts of Butwal and Sheoraj. Following Nepal's annexation of the Kingdom of Palpa in 1806 CE (1863 BS), Nepal laid claim to these lowland dependencies. However, the EIC asserted its own sovereignty over the region, having acquired the neighboring Oudh State territories from the Nawab of Awadh in 1801 CE (1858 BS). After years of diplomatic deadlock, EIC forces occupied the disputed lands in early 1814 CE (1871 BS). This provocation prompted the Nepalese to launch the retaliatory attack on EIC outposts later that year, triggering the war later that year.
Nepal fought the war entirely isolated; attempts by Bhimsen Thapa, the Mukhtiyar of the Kingdom of Nepal, to forge anti-British alliances with the Maratha Empire, the Sikh Empire, and Qing China ultimately failed. In contrast, the EIC leveraged the immense wealth and manpower of the Indian subcontinent. The EIC supplemented their regular forces with massive financial support from the Nawab of Awadh and backed deposed local rulers in Kumaon, Garhwal, and Sikkim, who rallied local populations against Nepalese rule.
Despite this imbalance, EIC faced severe early setbacks due to the treacherous mountainous terrain and fierce resistance from heavily outnumbered Nepalese forces. Under commanders like Major-General David Ochterlony, the EIC used heavy artillery to bypass or bombard mountain fortifications, effectively cutting off Nepalese supply lines. Facing starvation, impossible odds, and no prospect of reinforcements, key Nepalese commanders were forced into negotiated surrenders at critical strongholds, such as the forts of Almora and Malaun.
The war concluded with the signing of the Treaty of Sugauli, formally ratified on 4 March 1816 CE (22 Falgun 1872 BS). The treaty forced Nepal to cede huge portion of its territory, while compelling Kathmandu to accept a permanent British Resident. Despite these severe concessions, Nepal successfully retained its political independence, remaining one of the few states to avoid British colonization. The war also established a lasting military legacy: impressed by the martial prowess, discipline, and bravery of the Nepalese forces, the British Empire began recruiting them into its military under the name "Gurkhas," forging a tradition that continues to this day.
Background
In the mid-eighteenth century, the British East India Company actively traded with Nepal. Viewed as an opulence hub, Nepal supplied the Company with commodities such as rice, butter, oil seeds, timber, dyes, and gold. In 1767, British concerns around this partnership grew when the Gorkhas ascended their power and leadership in Nepal. In 1768, the Gorkhas conquered Kathmandu Valley and became Nepal’s ruling force, paving the way for a declining relationship between British India and Nepal. In 1801, the Company established a British Residency in Kathmandu to seek a stronger hold over the region. As 1814 approached, however, the British found themselves concerned by the possibility of an alliance between Nepal and Sikhs in northern India. The Company believed that if Nepal was expelled from its Western lands, the “Terai” region, it would no longer pose a danger. In 1814, this is what the British set out to do, alongside a goal of establishing a second Residency in Kathmandu to keep a close watch on the nation. In May 1814, British forces in Nepal temporarily left to escape malaria season. When Nepali forces aimed to reassert power, Company officials were killed in the process. In 1814, Warren Hastings – Governor General of Bengal – officially declared war on Nepal. 16,000 troops were then sent to invade Nepal in September 1814. The Treaty of Sagauli (1816) then marked the end of the Anglo-Nepalese War.
The Shah era of Nepal began with the Gorkha King Prithvi Narayan Shah invading Kathmandu Valley, which consisted of the capital of the Malla confederacy. Until then, only the Kathmandu Valley had been referred to as Nepal. The confederacy requested help from the East India Company, and an ill-equipped and ill-prepared expedition, numbering 2,500, was led by Captain Kinlock in 1767. The expedition was a disaster, and the Gorkhali army easily overpowered those who had not succumbed to malaria or desperation. The ineffectual British force provided the Gorkhali with firearms and filled the Gorkhas with confidence, which possibly caused them to underestimate their opponents in future wars.
Victory and the occupation of the Kathmandu Valley by Prithvi Narayan Shah, starting with the Battle of Kirtipur, resulted in the shift of the capital of his kingdom from Gorkha to Kathmandu, and the empire that he and his descendants built then came to be known as Nepal. Also, the invasion of the wealthy Kathmandu Valley provided the Gorkha army with economic support for furthering their martial ambitions throughout the region.
To the north, however, aggressive raids into Tibet over a long-standing dispute over trade and control of the mountain passes triggered Chinese intervention. In 1792, the Chinese Qianlong Emperor sent an army that expelled the Nepalese from Tibet to within 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) of their capital, Kathmandu. Acting Regent Bahadur Shah (Prithvi Naryan's younger son) appealed to the British Governor-General of India for help. Anxious to avoid a confrontation with the Chinese, the Governor-General did not send troops but sent Captain Kirkpatrick as mediator. However, before he arrived the war with China had finished.
The Tibet affair had postponed a planned attack on the Garhwal Kingdom, but by 1803, the Raja of Garhwal, Pradyuman Shah, had also been defeated. He was killed in the struggle in January 1804, and all his land was annexed. Further west, general Amar Singh Thapa overran lands as far as Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, the strongest fort in the hill region, and laid siege to it. However, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Sikh state in Punjab, intervened and had driven the Nepalese army east of the Sutlej River by 1809.
Causes
In the years leading up to the war, the British had been expanding their sphere of influence. While the Nepalese had been expanding their empire – into Sikkim to the east, the Kumaon and the Garhwal to the west, and into Awadh to the south – the British East India Company had consolidated its position in India from its main bases of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. This British expansion had already been resisted in India, culminating in three Anglo-Maratha wars as well as in the Punjab where Ranjit Singh and the Sikh Empire had their own aspirations.
Territorial Conflict
Territorial conflict represents a significant cause of the Anglo-Nepalese War. First, Nepal’s views on borders and borderlands clashed with the Company’s visions of space and territoriality. Borderlands represent “zones of contact for the management, separation, and negotiation of difference,” and leading up to 1814, conflicts over borderlands played a pivotal role in spurring conflict between Nepal and British India. Throughout its history, the Himalayas served as a site of political malleability and entangled agrarian entitlements. As such, Nepal’s boundaries remained porous. As opposed to fixed territorial lines, Nepal possessed “an unbounded space” that facilitated heterogeneous movements of trade and people. Nepal’s borders experienced frequent shifts in administration determined by the environment, tribute and taxation claims, and landholding patterns. As a result, control over Anglo-Gorkha borderlands – Nepal’s frontiers with British India – oscillated frequently among different agents. In the eighteenth century, these borderlands became an area of deep concern for the British. The British viewed borders as fixed and immutable, leading the Company to interpret Nepal’s fluid boundaries as encroachments on British territory.
Motivated by territorial concern, the Company embarked on surveys and mapmaking projects. These activities involved carving political and administrative boundaries in Nepal to render the territory “more legible for colonial rule.” These maps were then produced by the Revenue Surveys in the nineteenth century, serving as a strategy for the Company to divide land into non-overlapping, fixed spaces. Clashing ideas around borderlands and spatiality, therefore, played an instrumental role leading up to the height of territorial disputes in 1814 – the onset of the Anglo-Nepalese War.
Contents from the Treaty of Sagauli illustrate that clashes over territorial views aided in causing the war. Article 2 states, “The Raja of Nepal renounces all claim to the lands which were the subject of discussion between the two States before the war, and acknowledges the right of the Honourable Company to the sovereignty of those lands.” British forces’ focus on land and territoriality throughout the various articles of this Treaty exemplifies that territorial concern helped spur the war. Article 3 further states, “The Raja of Nepal hereby cedes to the Honourable the East India Company in perpetuity all the under-mentioned territories,” followed by the listing of five very detailed territorial spaces. When describing one of these ceded lands, for example, the Treaty states, “hills eastward of the River Mitchee including the fort and lands of Nagree and the Pass of Nagarcote leading from Morung into the hills.” These high levels of specificity, once again, showcase the Company’s highly fixed perceptions of borders and borderlands. As a result of the Anglo-Nepalese War and the subsequent treaty, Nepal lost approximately one-third of its land. Disputes over territoriality, therefore, constituted a driving cause for war, following from the Company's deep concerns about Nepal’s fluid borders in the preceding years and decades.
The acquisition of the Nawab of Awadh's lands by the British East India Company brought the region of Gorakhpur into the close proximity of the raja(king) of Palpa – the last remaining independent town within the Nepalese heartlands. Palpa and Butwal were originally two separate principalities; they were afterwards united under one independent Rajput prince, who, having conquered Butwal, added it to his hereditary possessions of Palpa. The lands of Butwal, though conquered and annexed, were yet held in fief, or paid an annual sum, first to Awadh, and afterwards, by transfer, to the British. During the regency of Rani Rajendra Laxmi, towards the close of the 18th century, the hill country of Palpa was conquered and annexed to Nepal. The rajah retreated to Butwal, but was subsequently induced, under false promises of redress, to visit Kathmandu, where he was put to death, and his territories in Butwal seized and occupied by the Nepalese. Bhimsen Thapa, the Nepalese prime minister from 1806 to 1837, installed his own father as governor of Palpa, leading to serious border disputes between the two powers. The occupation of Terai of Butwal from 1804 till 1812 by the Nepalese, which was under British protection, was the immediate reason which led to the Anglo-Nepalese war in 1814.
In October 1813, the ambitious the Earl of Moira, assumed the office of the Governor-General, and his first act was to re-examine the border dispute between Nepal and British East India Company. These disputes arose because there was no fixed boundary separating the Nepalese and the British. A struggle with the former was unpromising as the British were ignorant of the country or its resources and, despite their technological superiority, it was a received persuasion that the nature of the mountainous tract, which they would have to penetrate, would be as baffling to them as it had been to all the efforts of many successive Mahomedan sovereigns. A border commission imposed on Nepal by the Governor-General failed to solve the problem. The Nepalese Commissioners had remarked to the British the futility of debating about a few square miles of territory since there never could be real peace between the two States, until the British should yield to the Nepalese all the British provinces north of the Ganges, making that river the boundary between the two, "as heaven had evidently designed it to be." However, Nepalese Historian Baburam Acharya contends that the British were striving to annex the hill regions of Nepal and were the ones responsible for creating border disputes. At the border demarcation, the British representative Major Bradshaw disrespected the Nepalese representatives – Rajguru Ranganath Poudyal and Kaji Dalabhanjan Pande, with a view of invoking a war against the Nepalese. In the meantime, the British found that the Nepalese were preparing for war; that they had for some time been laying up large stores of saltpetre; purchasing and fabricating arms, and organizing and disciplining their troops under some European deserters in this service, after the model of the companies of East India's sepoy battalions. The conviction that the Nepalese raids into the flatlands of the Terai, a much prized strip of fertile ground separating the Nepalese hill country from India, increased tensions – the British felt their power in the region and their tenuous lines of communication between Calcutta and the northwest were under threat. Since there was no clear border, confrontation between the two powers was "necessary and unavoidable". Britain formally declared war on Nepal on 1 November 1814.