The Unification of Nepal by Prithvi Narayan Shah

In 1768, King Prithvi Narayan Shah of the small hill kingdom of Gorkha captured the Kathmandu Valley — the cultural and economic heart of the Himalayan region — after a 25-year military campaign. He unified dozens of small principalities and kingdoms into a single state, founding modern Nepal. Prithvi Narayan Shah described his new nation as "a yam between two boulders" — squeezed between the Qing Empire's Tibet and British India. His strategy of maintaining independence by playing the two powers against each other would define Nepali foreign policy for centuries. The Shah dynasty he established would rule Nepal until 2008 — one of the world's longest-reigning dynasties. His capital, Kathmandu, with its ancient Newar architecture, pagoda temples, and Durbar Squares, became the political center of a kingdom stretching along 800 kilometers of the Himalayas.