ABSTRACT
Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan were three states that happened to be the dynastic principalities under the benign gaze of the British colonial empire from the second half of the 19th century. The chapter briefly surveys the historical travail of the three kingdoms and then goes on to shed light on the imperial ‘Great Game’ which engulfed the region around these three states. The British consciously created Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan as internal buffer states and advised them to be maintained as such even post-independence. This chapter sheds light on the context of these political states, their formation and the aftermath.
