Number of words: 333

Nepal and Tibet had long served as China’s principal sources of information on the Indian subcontinent. For Nepal, this function became even more important after 1792, when the Qianlong Emperor sent an expedition against the Gurkha kingdom because of various disputes over the Qing territories in Tibet.” As the Manchu general Fuk’anggan advanced into Nepal, the Gurkhas reached out to the East India Company for troops and armaments. But their requests were rejected out of hand by the British, whose paramount consideration, at that time, was to maintain their access to Chinese tea. They could not risk antagonizing the Qing for fear of being ejected from Guangzhou, which would have deprived them of a vitally important source of revenue.”

So the Gurkhas came to terms with the Qing general, and thereafter made every effort to draw China into a military alliance against the East India Company. They cautioned the Qing over and over that the British ‘harbor ill-intentions and have occupied all the lands from the sea in the south to the mountains in the north; and the kings of each place have been subdued and incorporated”.” The Qing baulked, however, and refused to intervene when the Gurkhas fought a series of wars with the British between 1814 and 1816. But Beijing did send an Imperial Commissioner and a large military force to Tibet to keep an eye over the warring sides, and the envoy’s diplomatic interventions ultimately played an important part in resolving the conflict, on terms that were relatively favourable to Nepal. It was because of the kingdom’s tributary relationship with the Qing that the British allowed the Gurkha kingdom to remain mostly autonomous, and in possession of its core territories, at a time when the East India Company was on an expansionist spree, gobbling up state after state across the subcontinent. Nepal continued to send five-yearly tribute missions to China till 1906.

Excerpted from Pages 253 to 254 of Smoke And Ashes: A Journey Through Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh