Northern South Asia (820–1971 CE): Empires, Colonialism, and the Birth of Modern Nations

Medieval Empires and Dynastic Rule

From the early medieval period onward, Northern South Asia experiences significant dynastic changes. Islamic empires begin exerting influence from the 11th century with the Ghaznavids and later the Delhi Sultanate, reshaping cultural and political landscapes through trade, conquest, and cultural exchanges. Simultaneously, Afghanistan becomes a crucial frontier region, witnessing invasions and rule by various Turkic and Persian dynasties, including the Timurids and the early Mughals.

Nepal and Bhutan remain largely isolated, developing distinctive Himalayan cultures and systems of governance. In Nepal, the medieval period is characterized by the rule of various dynasties, such as the Mallas, who foster rich cultural and architectural traditions.

Mughal Ascendancy and Cultural Synthesis

The rise of the Mughal Empire in the 16th century under rulers like Babur, Akbar, and Aurangzeb marks a pinnacle of political and cultural achievement. The Mughals integrate diverse traditions, fostering a unique synthesis of Persian, Indian, and Central Asian cultures. Monumental architecture flourishes, exemplified by the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. Administrative systems established under Akbar provide stability and governance across the empire, extending influence into modern-day Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan.

British Colonial Expansion

The weakening Mughal Empire in the 18th century facilitates the expansion of the British East India Company, climaxing with the pivotal Battle of Plassey in 1757. British dominance consolidates rapidly, leading to direct British rule following the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58. Afghanistan, however, remains fiercely independent, becoming a contested region between British India and Imperial Russia, sparking several Anglo-Afghan wars.

Meanwhile, Nepal under the Shah Dynasty and Bhutan under the leadership of the Wangchuck Dynasty maintain autonomy, though both engage diplomatically and militarily with British India. Bhutan eventually signs treaties with Britain, securing internal sovereignty while ceding some frontier territories.

Rise of Nationalist Movements

Nationalist movements emerge by the late 19th century, notably with the establishment of the Indian National Congress in 1885. Parallel to this, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan spearheads educational reforms for Muslims, founding the Muhammadan-Anglo Oriental College in 1875 (later Aligarh Muslim University), laying the foundation for Muslim political activism.

Afghanistan sees modernization and centralization efforts under leaders like Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1880–1901), who solidifies borders and establishes the Durand Line with British India, a source of enduring tension.

Independence, Partition, and the Emergence of Modern States

Intense nationalist struggles, notably under Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, culminate in independence and the partition of British India in 1947, creating the independent dominions of India and Pakistan. The partition triggers massive migrations and communal violence, significantly reshaping the region.

Afghanistan navigates neutrality during this period, balancing relations between emerging global powers, while Nepal and Bhutan maintain independent monarchies, cautiously opening diplomatic relations with neighboring nations and beyond.

Post-Independence Challenges and Conflicts

The new states face immediate challenges, including economic stabilization, integration of princely states, and border disputes, notably over Kashmir. Pakistan experiences internal turmoil, leading to the separation of East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, following a violent liberation struggle. India maintains democratic governance, embarking on industrialization and social reforms.

Afghanistan becomes a focal point of Cold War rivalry, undergoing rapid modernization, yet experiencing deep internal divisions, leading to instability that intensifies in subsequent decades.

Nepal and Bhutan cautiously engage in modernization while striving to preserve traditional identities. Bhutan introduces controlled development policies under the monarchy, and Nepal gradually opens to external influence.

Legacy of the Epoch

The epoch from 820 to 1971 profoundly shapes Northern South Asia, witnessing transitions from medieval empires to colonial subjugation, culminating in complex realities of independent nation-states. Legacies include cultural syncretism, unresolved regional tensions (particularly over Kashmir and the Durand Line), and socio-political structures inherited from colonial rule. These dynamics continue influencing contemporary geopolitics and societal developments across Northern South Asia.

Indian opium has become a major global commodity under the British, who dominate the trade.

Opium's peculiar properties make it the ideal trade good during this age, combining the reliable demand of a basic food with the logistics of a luxury good.

As an addictive drug, opium requires a daily dose, giving it the inelastic demand of a basic foodstuff.

Long distance sea-trade in bulk foods is beyond the capacity of current maritime technology, but opium has the low weight and high markup of a luxury good like cloves or pepper.

Compounding its extraordinary profitability, China's Yongzheng emperor reacts to the rise of mass addiction by banning opium in 1729 and thus denying China the opportunity to produce opium locally to undercut the high price of Indian imports.

A syndicate of Indian merchants up the Ganges River at Patna holds a monopoly over the Bengal opium trade, making cash advances to peasant farmers and selling the processed opium to Dutch, British and French merchants.

Forces of the British East India Company in 1764 march inland from their port at Calcutta to conquer Bengal.

They soon discover the financial potential of India's richest opium zone.

The Company assumes control of a well-established opium industry involving peasant producers, merchants, and long-distance traders.

British exports of Indian opium to China increase from fifteen tons in 1720 to seventy-five tons in 1773, in which year the British governor-general of Bengal abolishes the Indian opium syndicate at Patna and establishes a colonial monopoly on the sale of opium.

Opium not only solves the fiscal crisis that accompanied the British conquest of Bengal; it remains a staple of colonial finances, providing from six to fifteen percent of British India's tax revenues throughout the nineteenth Century.

More important, opium exports are an essential component of a triangular trade that is the foundation of Britain's status as a world power.

Trade figures for the 1820s show that the triangular trade is large and well balanced: twenty-two million pounds sterling worth of Indian opium and cotton to China; next, twenty million pounds worth of Chinese tea to Britain; then, twenty-four million pounds of British textiles and machinery back to India.

The British East India Company, prizing stability above profit, has for over two decades maintained India's opium exports at four thousand chests—or two hundred and eighty tons tons, just enough to finance its purchase of China's tea crop.

The struggle for power at the Gurkha court has unfortunate consequences for both Nepal's foreign affairs and for internal administration.

All parties try to satisfy the army in order to avoid interference in court affairs by leading commanders, and the military is given a free hand to pursue ever larger conquests.

As long as the Gurkhas are invading disunited hill states, this policy—or lack of policy—is adequate. Inevitably, continued aggression will lead Nepal into disastrous collisions with the Chinese, then with the British.

At home, because power struggles center on control of the king, there is little progress in sorting out procedures for sharing power or expanding representative institutions.

A consultative body of nobles, a royal court called the Assembly of Lords (Bharadari Sabha), is in place after 1770 and it has substantial involvement in mayor policy issues.

The assembly consists of high government officials and leading courtiers, all heads of important Gurkha families.

In the intense atmosphere surrounding the monarch, however, the Assembly of Lords breaks into factions that fight for access to the prime minister or regent, and alliances develop around patron/client relationships.

Five leading Gurkha families contend for power in Nepal during this period—the Shahs, Choutariyas, Thapas, Basnyats, and Pandes.

Working for these families and their factions are hill Brahmans, who act as religious preceptors or astrologers, and Newars, who occupy secondary administrative positions.

No one else in the country has any influence on the central government.

When a family or faction achieves power, it kills, exiles, or demotes members of opposing alliances.

Under these circumstances, there is little opportunity for either public political life or coordinated economic development.

The Gurkha state has its greatest success in expanding to the east and west, but it also presses northward toward Tibet.

There is a longstanding dispute with the government of Tibet over trade issues, notably the status of Nepalese merchants in Lhasa and other settlements and the increasing debasement of coinage used in Tibet.

There also is a dispute over control of the mountain passes into Tibet, including the Kuti and Kairang passes north of Kathmandu.

In the 1780s, Nepal demands that Tibet surrender territory around the passes.

When the Tibetans refuse, the Nepalese close trade routes between Lhasa and Kathmandu.

In 1788 the Nepalese overrun Sikkim, send a punitive raid into Tibet, and threaten Shigatse, seat of the Panchen Lama, the second highest-ranking lama in Tibet.

They received secret assurances of an annual payment from the Tibetan and local Chinese authorities, but when the agreement is not honored they invade again in 1791, pillaging the monastery at Shigatse before withdrawing to Nepal.

These acts finally move the emperor in Beijing to send a huge army to Tibet.

Alarmed, the government in Kathmandu concludes a trade agreement with the British East India Company, hoping for aid in their struggle.

They are to be disappointed because the British have no intention of confronting China, where there are so many potential trading opportunities.

The Chinese forces easily force the Nepalese out of Tibet in 1792 and pursue them to within thirty-five kilometers of Kathmandu.

The Nepalese are forced to sign a humiliating treaty that takes away their trading privileges in Tibet.

It makes them subordinate to the Qing Empire and requires them to pay tribute to Beijing every five years.

Thus, Nepal is enclosed on the north, and the British have again shown themselves to be untrustworthy.

The kingdom of Garhwal to the west is mostly hill country but includes the rich vale of Dehra Dun.

During the late eighteenth century, the kingdom had been devastated by conquerors as varied as Afghans, Sikhs from the Punjab, and Marathas from western India.

The armies of Nepal had been poised to attack Garhwal in 1790, but the affair with Tibet had shifted their attention.

In 1803 after Garhwal is devastated by an earthquake, the Nepalese armies move in, defeat and kill the raja of Garhwal in battle, and annex a ruined land.

General Amar Singh Thapa moves farther west and during a three-year campaign defeats or buys off local princes as far as Kangra, the strongest fort in the hills.

The Nepalese lay siege to Kangra until 1809, when Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Sikh state in the Punjab, intervenes and drives the Nepalese army east of the Sutlej River.

Amar Singh Thapa spends several years putting down rebellions in Garhwal and Kumaon, towns that submit to military occupations but are never fully integrated into the Gurkha state.

The Nepalese are being checked in the west.

There has been little direct contact with the lands controlled by the British East India Company or its clients, but by the early 1800s a confrontation is becoming more likely.

Just as Nepal had been expanding toward the west throughout the late eighteenth century, so the company has steadily added to its annexed or dependent territories all the way to the Punjab.

Amar Singh Thapa claims lowland areas of Kumaon and Garhwal as part of his conquests, but David Ochterlony, the British East India Company's representative in the west, keeps up constant diplomatic resistance against such claims, which are not pressed.

In 1804 Palpa is finally annexed by Gurkha and along with it comes claims to parts of the Butawal area in the Tarai.

As Nepalese troops slowly occupy these tracts, local landlords complain to the company that their rights are being violated.

Similar claims to Saran District lead to armed clashes between Nepalese troops and the forces of local landlords.

During these proceedings, there is constant diplomatic intercourse between the government of Nepal and the British East India Company and little desire on either side for open hostilities.

The Gurkha generals, however, are quite confident in their ability to wage warfare in the mountains, and the company, with its far greater resources, have little reason to give in to this aggressive state, which blocks commerce in the hills.

After retreating before a reoccupation by company troops, Nepalese forces counterattack against police outposts in Butawal, killing eighteen police officers on April 22, 1814.

The fragile state of Nepal is at war with the British Empire.

Nepal's single major unifying force at this stage in its history is the Gurkha-led army and its supply system.

Prithvi Narayan Shah and his successors had done the best they could to borrow military techniques used by the British in India, including modern ordnance, command structures, and even uniforms.

An entire munitions and armaments industry has been created in the hills, based on locally mined and processed raw materials, and supported by a system of forced labor to transport commodities.

The soldiers in the army are renowned for their ability to move relatively fast with their supplies and to fight with discipline under tough conditions.

They also know their terrain better than the British, who have little experience here.

Although the Nepalese army of an estimated sixteen thousand regulars will have to fight on a wide front, it has great logistical advantages and a large reservoir of labor to support it.