Kingdom of Nepal

The Kingdom of Nepal (Nepali: नेपाल अधिराज्य), also referred to as the Gorkha Kingdom, was formed in 1768 by the unification of Nepal. Founded by Prithvi Narayan Shah (r. 1768–1775), a Gorkha king who succeeded in unifying the kingdoms of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur into a single state, it existed for 240 years under the formal rule of the Shah dynasty.

After a successful consolidation of its territory, despite a humiliating defeat to China after a failed invasion of Tibet in the 1790s, the Kingdom of Nepal became threatened in the early-19th century by British imperialism and the East India Company. In the Gurkha War (1814–1816), the Kingdom of Nepal retained its independence in the Sugauli Treaty in exchange for territorial concessions equating to a third of Greater Nepal. Political instability following the war resulted in the political ascendancy of the Rana dynasty, who beginning with Jang Bahadur became the hereditary Prime Ministers of Nepal from 1843 to 1951, reducing the role of the Shah monarch to that of a figurehead.

The mid-20th century began an era of moves towards the democratisation of Nepal. India, which became independent in 1947, would play an important role in supporting King Tribhuhvan (r. 1911–1950; 1951–1955), whom the Rana leader Mohan Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana had attempted to depose and replace with his grandson King Gyanendra (r. 1950–1951; 2001–2008), and in supporting a new government consisting largely of the Nepali Congress, which effectively ended the rule of the Rana dynasty.

The 1990s saw the beginning of the Nepalese Civil War (1996–2006), a conflict fought between government forces and the insurgent forces of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The situation for the Nepalese monarchy was further destabilised by the 2001 Nepalese royal massacre, in which Crown Prince Dipendra shot and killed ten people, including his father King Birendra (r. 1972–2001). Their deaths resulted in King Gyanendra returning to the throne. His imposition of direct rule in 2005 provoked a protest movement unifying the Maoist insurgency and pro-democracy activists. He was eventually forced to restore the Nepal House of Representatives, which in 2007 adopted an interim republican constitution. Following the 2008 Nepalese Constituent Assembly election, the Nepalese Constituent Assembly formally abolished the kingdom on 28 May 2008, declaring in its place the establishment of Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. At the point of the Kingdom of Nepal's abolition, it was the world's only country to have Hinduism as its state religion; the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal is an officially secular state.