The Rise of the House of Gorkha

The Rise of the House of Gorkha provides us with a very readable narrative of how the work of the political conquest of territorial Nepal was achieved between 1740 and 1816. Relying on more fundamental work done by Mahesh C. Regmi on the economic incentives and impact of the era of conquest, Stiller provided what is still the best account of the relationship between land and military that drove the machine of conquest. While Prithvinaraya Shah appears as a genius in Stiller's work, the book is no hagiography of the kind one encounters in nationalist accounts. It presents history not just with tons of facts but fats presented in a carefully crafted narrative to provide fundamental insights into an era of history, an understanding of which is essential to our knowledge of just about everything in today's Nepal.