The History of Bhutan

The History of Bhutan begins with the Preface discussing Bhutan's enigmatic status and the existent writings on Bhutan followed by the first chapter on the names of Bhutan. The second and third chapters present the physical and geographical description of the country as well as the ethnographic account of its people and languages.

The entire history of Bhutan is covered in an unprecedented narrative and analytical depth from Chapter VI to Chapter XV. The last chapter, in the form of epilogue, summarizes the political, social and cultural changes which Bhutan went through in the second half of the twentieth century and continues to do so today.

The book concludes with a brief appraisal of Bhutan's famous development policy of Gross Natinal Happiness and will have a long bibliography, index, some maps and pictures and a glossary.

This is a brilliantly researched, wide-ranging history of Bhutan. There is a similar history of Tibet in the market that is a steady seller.

In the recent years, the remote Kingdom of Bhutan is the eastern Himalayas has increasingly attrached the attention of the world. In 2008, Bhutan emerged as the youngest democracy and in the same year it crowned the world's youngest monarch. This was followed by the king's colourful wedding in 2011.

Today, it continues to enchant the rest of the world with its policy of Gross National Happiness and has become a very popular destination for travel. The number of tourist who visited Bhutan shot up from 6,392 in 2011 to 65,746 in 2011 excluding a similar number of Indian visitors who travelled by land. The current goverment of Bhutan is bent to annually rope in at least 100,000 high end tourists paying US$250 tariff per day by the end of 2012.

This books is the first ever attempt to cover entire histor of Bhutan in some detail in English, combining both traditional perspectives and modern historiographical analysis for an intelligent but non-specialized audience.

This book tells the story of Bhutan in a narrative style interspersed with some analysus and topical discussion and numerous citations and translation from earlier writings. The book is primarily a historical account, presented with the scheme of the author's new system of periodization of Bhutan history, but it also includes substantive discussions of Bhutan's geography, culture and society