ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Shah's difficulties in coping with the initial lack of centralization and—more generally—the difficulties the rulers had to face in order to strengthen their control over the subjects and over the economic resources. It discusses the central policies and examines the relations within some local societies with regard to their effect on central policies. The powerful "unification" of Nepal and the consolidation of the Shah's rule initiated some processes causing changes in power and authority relations, and in the division of labor, creating new relations of political economy within the emerging "Nepalese" society. The long-distance trade had been of crucial importance in the principalities on the Nepalese territory—especially in the Kathmandu Valley—long before the unification. Placing a political system in space and time does not only require an examination of its natural environment and its historical background. The chapter concludes the consequences of the state's intervention in the relations within the putative "autonomous village communities".
