ABSTRACT
The decades between the Battle of Chinjhiar (1795) and the beginning of British rule (1815) mark the definitive transition of the West Himalayan kingdoms to modernity. As the warring parties at Chinjhiar resumed their individual courses, the geopolitical landscape that surrounded them underwent momentous shifts that would dramatically impact their trajectories: the EIC's conquest of Delhi (in 1803) introduced the British as the major powerbroker south of the Sutlej River; Sikh unification under Maharaja Ranjit Singh Sandhawalia (r. 1799-1839) gradually absorbed the kingdoms north of the river into the Empire of Lahore; and the expansionist drive of Nepal under the Gorkha Shah dynasty (est. ~1559, r. c. 1768/9-2008) cast shadows over the entire region from as early as the 1790s, when the fledgling empire first crossed the Mahakali River into Kumaon. By 1803, the Gorkhas had invaded Sirmaur, traversed Bilaspur, and laid siege to Kangra. Six years later (1809), the Gorkhas quit Kangra and entrenched their hold on the hills south of the Sutlej for another five years, at which point (1814) they ceded their possessions west of the Mahakali to the EIC following defeat in the Anglo-Gorkha War (1814-16). 1 While the politically fragmented elite of the West Himalayan kingdoms tackled these transitions in starkly divergent ways – Kangra as a vassal of Lahore, Sirmaur and its neighbours as EIC allies, and Bilaspur somewhere in between – its experiences of this era assumed a largely uniform narrative that became foundational to the reinterpretation of Pahari Rajput kingship and polity in the modern era.
