The history of the service of the Brigade of Gurkhas to the British Crown goes back as far as 1815. Since then the Brigade has conducted itself with distinction during numerous conflicts worldwide. Prior to 1997 the Brigade's focus was in the Far East but following the handover of Hong Kong it moved to the UK which is now its base. Robert Clive's decisive victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 firmly established British supremacy in India thereby opening the door for expansion of the Honourable East India Company.
Some 10 years after Plassey the British started to come into contact with a unique and vigorous power on the northern borders of its newly won territories in Bengal and Bihar. This power was the city-state of Gorkha led by its dynamic king Prithwi Narayan Shah. Gorkha was a feudal hill village in what is now western Nepal, and is the place from which the Gurkha takes his name. Prithwi Narayan Shah and his successors grew so powerful that they overan the whole of the hill country from the Kashmir border in the west to Bhutan in the east. Eventually, as a result of boundary disputes and repeated raids by Gurkha columns into British territory, the Governor General declared war on Nepal in 1814. After two long and bloody campaigns a Peace Treaty was signed at Sugauli in 1816.
