The Anglo-Nepalese War began in 1814 with the British East India Company’s desire to take control of Nepalese land. Although the East India Company had been consistently expanding its territory throughout the previous century, once the Company declared war on Nepal, British soldiers faced difficulty in acquiring land from Nepalese forces, the Gurkhas. With superior knowledge of the terrain and access to resources, the Gurkhas prevailed in initial battles. However, the East India Company eventually advanced into Nepalese territory, winning battles and threatening Kathmandu, leading to the 1816 Treaty of Sugauli which ended the war. The Treaty required Nepal to relinquish land to the East India Company and allow a British representative in the Nepalese court.
Despite the British victory, the Anglo-Nepalese War did not garner significant interest or admiration from citizens of Victorian Britain, remaining largely forgotten in Victorian accounts and novels concerned with empire. John Pemble (2009) suggests that Victorian disinterest in the Anglo-Nepalese War was due to the East India Company’s failure to enlarge its territory or conquer the Gurkhas to the extent desired. In addition, Pemble highlights British apathy toward the East India Company’s endeavors during the early to mid-nineteenth century, which shifted following the Indian Mutiny of 1857 to occupy a prominent space in British Victorian popular consciousness. While Mill makes no direct reference to the Anglo-Nepalese War in his autobiography, his work for the East India Company began in 1823 (Mill ch. III), less than a decade after the end of the war. One could imagine that Mill’s role in handling correspondence could have been influenced by or required knowledge of the Anglo-Nepalese War due to the temporal proximity of his work to the war.
Sources
Cartwright, Mark. “Anglo-Nepalese War.” World History Encyclopedia, 5 Dec. 2022, https://www.worldhistory.org/Anglo-Nepalese_War/. Accessed 20 May 2024.
Pemble, John. “Forgetting and Remembering Britain’s Gurkha War.” Asian Affairs, vol. 40, no. 3, 2009, pp. 361-376. https://doi.org/10.1080/03068370903195154. Accessed 20 May 2024.