THE GURKHAS The Gurkhas and the British have fought side by side for 207 years, but they first met as enemies. In the latter half of the eighteenth century the Gurkhas – originally the men of Gorkha, a tiny mountainous kingdom to the west of Kathmandu – unified the plethora of principalities, chiefdoms and statelets into what is now Nepal. Then the Gurkhas looked east, and marched into Sikkim; they looked west and conquered Kumaon and Garhwal; they even invaded Tibet and for a time extracted tribute from the Emperor of China, until the inevitable equation of riches and population told, and the Gurkhas withdrew back into their mountain stronghold. Now they cast their eyes south, to the Plain of Bengal, to what seemed to be a land rich beyond the dreams of mere soldiers, where the streets were paved with gold, the women and the cattle were fat, where a man only had to throw a seed onto the ground for it to grow, and where the people were seemingly indolent and unwarlike. Inevitably this brought them into conflict with the British, in the form of the Honourable The East India Company, which, no longer primarily a trading organisation, governed huge tracts of British India. The Company made treaties, raised taxes and administered the law. It also had an army, composed of locally raised regiments of native soldiers with British officers, and regiments of the British Army stationed in India but paid for by the Company.
THE GURKHAS
THE GURKHAS
THE GURKHAS
THE GURKHAS The Gurkhas and the British have fought side by side for 207 years, but they first met as enemies. In the latter half of the eighteenth century the Gurkhas – originally the men of Gorkha, a tiny mountainous kingdom to the west of Kathmandu – unified the plethora of principalities, chiefdoms and statelets into what is now Nepal. Then the Gurkhas looked east, and marched into Sikkim; they looked west and conquered Kumaon and Garhwal; they even invaded Tibet and for a time extracted tribute from the Emperor of China, until the inevitable equation of riches and population told, and the Gurkhas withdrew back into their mountain stronghold. Now they cast their eyes south, to the Plain of Bengal, to what seemed to be a land rich beyond the dreams of mere soldiers, where the streets were paved with gold, the women and the cattle were fat, where a man only had to throw a seed onto the ground for it to grow, and where the people were seemingly indolent and unwarlike. Inevitably this brought them into conflict with the British, in the form of the Honourable The East India Company, which, no longer primarily a trading organisation, governed huge tracts of British India. The Company made treaties, raised taxes and administered the law. It also had an army, composed of locally raised regiments of native soldiers with British officers, and regiments of the British Army stationed in India but paid for by the Company.