A comprehensive and accessible one-volume history of Nepal, first published in 2005.

Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal is a story of Nepal's transformation from war to peace, monarchy to republic, a Hindu kingdom to a secular state, and a unitary to a potentially federal state. Part-reportage, part-history, part-analysis, part-memoir, and part-biography of the key characters, the book breaks new ground in political writing from the region. With access to the most powerful leaders in the country as well as diplomats, it gives an unprecedented glimpse into Kathmandu's high politics. But this is coupled with ground-level reportage on the lives of ordinary citizens of the hills and the plains, striving for a democratic, just and equitable society. It tracks the hard grind of political negotiations at the heart of the instability in Nepal. It traces the rise of a popular rebellion, its integration into the mainstream, and its steady decline. It investigates Nepal's status as a partly-sovereign country, and reveals India's overwhelming role. It examines the angst of having to prove one's loyalties to one's own country, and exposes the Hindu hill upper-caste dominated power structures. Battles of the New Republic is a story of the deepening of democracy, of the death of a dream, and of that fundamental political dilemma - who exercises power, to what end, and for whose benefit.

Recently anthropology has turned to accounts of persons-in-history/history-in-persons, focusing on how individuals and groups as agents both fashion and are fashioned by social, political, and cultural discourses and practices. In this approach, power, agency, and history are made explicit as individuals and groups work to constitute themselves in relation to others and within and against sociopolitical and historical contexts. Contributors to this volume extend this emphasis, drawing upon their ethnographic research in Nepal to examine closely how selves, identities, and experience are produced in dialogical relationships through time in a multi-ethic nation-state and within a discourse of nationalism. The diversity of peoples, recent political transformations, and nation-building efforts make Nepal an especially rich locale to examine people's struggles to define and position themselves. But the authors move beyond geographical boundaries to more theoretical terrain to problematicize the ways in which people recreate or contest certain identities and positions. Various authors explore how people_positioned by gender, ethnicity, and locale_use cultural genres to produce aspects of identities and experiences; they examine how subjectivities, agencies and cultural worlds co-develop and are shaped through engagement with cultural forms; and they portray the appropriation of multiple voices for self and group formation. As such, this collection offers a richly textured and complex accounting of the mutual constitution of selves and society.

Francis Hamilton Buchanan (1762-1829) was a Scottish-born explorer, naturalist, and physician, employed by the British East India Company in a number of capacities from 1794 to 1815. He conducted surveys of Mysore in 1800 and Bengal in 1807-14. This work, published after his return to Scotland, is based on his 14-month stay in Nepal in 1802-03. Buchanan drew upon his own observations and conversations with hereditary chiefs, Buddhist priests, scribes, and others in an attempt to provide a comprehensive account of the country as he found it before the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16. Buchanan also drew from an earlier work by Colonel William Fitzpatrick, An Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul, published in London in 1811. In addition to maps and engravings, Buchanan's book includes two noteworthy scientific supplements: a register of the weather from February 1802 to March 1803 and an attempt by Buchanan's colleague, Colonel Crawford, to calculate the height of several Himalayan peaks.

With An Introductory Sketch Of The Country And People Of Nepal.