MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Bhutan

ONE LAND · 7 ATLASES

Bhutan, on the map of history

What was Bhutan before it was Bhutan? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Bhutan · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

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Bhutan (treaty kingdom) · Indian Independence & Partition, 1905–1948

The dragon kingdom managed the century’s safest sovereignty: the 1910 Punakha treaty gave Britain its foreign policy and left everything else alone, and Bhutan — alone on this map — passed the entire era without a famine, a partition or an occupying army. In 1949 it signed the same bargain with free India. Smallness, altitude and a talent for treaties: a reminder that on the imperial map, invisibility could be a strategy.

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Bhutan · China in Revolution, 1911–1949

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Bhutan · The Great War, 1914–1918

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Bhutan · The Road to War, 1931–1941

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Bhutan · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

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Bhutan · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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