Between Two Giants

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Nepal's geography is not an accident of borders so much as a consequence of them. Squeezed between the world's two most populous countries, India to the south and China north across the Himalayan crest, Nepal has spent much of its modern history managing that position rather than escaping it. Prithvi Narayan Shah's unification of the Kathmandu Valley in 1769 built a buffer kingdom that both the British Raj and Qing China had reason to leave alone rather than absorb, and the strategy mostly worked: unlike its neighbors on both sides, Nepal was never formally colonized. That same position now shapes its economy and its trade routes, most of which run south through India rather than north across the mountains, and its diplomacy, which has long balanced goodwill toward both neighbors rather than choosing between them.