Modern Nepal was dominated for more than two centuries by the Shah Dynasty of the Gukrhas - yet their kings struggled to create a developed and strong state.
Kathmandu was founded in 723 by Raja Gunakamadeva and has been the capital of Nepal for long periods since then. From 1768, it has served as the seat for the Shah family, which has provided the ruling dynasty of the country ever since then. The territory of Nepal contains a number of different ethnic groups and different castes and, when society is divided, there are opportunities for multiple sources of power. The consequence has been that the Shah dynasty has faced opposition from several prominent families in the centuries since the eighteenth century. There have been several occasions when the ruling king has been forced to accept a situation in which he is little more than a figurehead, with one or more of the oligarchic families wielding the real power.
In 1769, Prithvi Narayan Shah of the Gurkha people conquered the Nepal Valley from his mountain stronghold and created what is now the modern state of Nepal. To try to bring together a single country from the patchwork of local, regional and ethnic interest groups, Prithvi brought elements of many different groups into the political leadership. This was more or less successful in that it has brought the state into the modern world in the same territorial configuration now that it had then but it has contributed to the weakness of the central state which has resulted in lower levels of economic and social development for the Nepalese people. The situation seems to be particularly difficult for Nepalese women, especially those from the less powerful ethnic and caste groups. Nepalese society has remained as a whole in a very patriarchal state which denies rights and dignity to women.
For more than a century, from 1845-1951, Nepal was dominated by the Thapa family, which generally maintained the bulk of the spoils of power for family members. This form of conspiratorial politics, in which families and family members plot against each other to achieve status and position which represent their own form of legitimacy, is an inefficient way to rule a country and helps explain the poverty still present within society. It also provides a background to recent events in the country and the massacre of the royal family a few years ago. A similar situation occurred in Japan, which closed itself off for years from the outside world and devoted its energies to internal politicking until realizing how far behind much the rest of the world it had fallen. In the case of Nepal, the presence of imperial powers as neighbours further inhibited the ability of its rulers to buttress the capacity of the state.
