|
|
|
KATHMANDU DURBAR
SQURE |
PATAN DURBAR
SQURE |
BHAKTAPUR DURBAR
SQURE |
Nepal has been a kingdom for at least 1,500 years. During
most of that period, the Kathmandu Valley has been Nepal's
political, economic, and cultural center. The valley's
fertile soil supported thriving village farming communities,
and its location along trans-Himalayan trade routes
allowed merchants and rulers alike to profit.
Since the fourth century, the people
of the Kathmandu Valley have developed a unique variant
of South Asian civilization based on Buddhism and Hinduism
but influenced as well by the cultures of local Newar
citizens and neighboring Tibetans.
One of the major themes in the history
of Nepal has been the transmission of influences from
both the north and the south into an original culture.
During its entire history, Nepal has been able to continue
this process while remaining independent.
It was the destiny of Gorkha, one of
these small kingdoms, to conquer its neighbors and finally
unite the entire nation in the late eighteenth century.
The energy generated from this union drove the armies
of Nepal to conquer territories far to the west and
to the east, as well as to challenge the Chinese in
Tibet and the British in India. Wars with these huge
empires checked Nepalese ambitions, however, and fixed
the boundaries of the mountain kingdom.
Nepal in the late twentieth century
was still surrounded by giants and still in the process
of integrating its many localized economies and cultures
into a nation state based on the ancient center of the
Kathmandu Valley.
Nepal took a fateful turn in the mid-nineteenth
century when its prime ministers, theoretically administrators
in service to the king, usurped complete control of
the government and reduced the kings to puppets. By
the 1850s, a dynasty of prime ministers called Rana
had imposed upon the country a dictatorship that would
last about 100 years.
The Ranas distrusted both their own
people and foreigners--in short, anyone who could challenge
their own power and change their position. As the rest
of the world underwent modernization, Nepal remained
a medieval nation, based on the exploitation of peasants
and some trade revenues and dominated by a tradition-bound
aristocracy that had little interest in modern science
or technology. After the revolt against the Ranas in
1950, Nepal struggled to overcome its long legacy of
underdevelopment and to incorporate its varied population
into a single nation. One of the early casualties of
this process was party-based democracy.
Nepal remained until 1990 one of the
few nations in the world where the king, wielding absolute
authority and embodying sacred tradition, attempted
to lead his country towards the twenty-first century.
|
