Wangchuck dynasty of Bhutan

The monarchy

Ugyen Wangchuck, penlop of Trongsa, was elected hereditary king in 1907 by an assembly of clergy and officials, ending the instability of the late theocratic period. The Treaty of Punakha in 1910 placed Bhutan's external relations under British guidance while guaranteeing internal autonomy, an arrangement transferred to India in 1949.

Bhutan remained deliberately isolated into the middle of the twentieth century — no roads, no currency in general use, no foreign visitors. The third king, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, began opening the country in the 1950s and 1960s: abolishing serfdom, establishing a national assembly and a high court, joining the United Nations in 1971, and building the first roads.

Gross National Happiness and the transition

The fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, articulated in the 1970s the principle that gross national happiness matters more than gross national product, and Bhutan's development policy has been organised around it since — with environmental conservation written into the constitution, which requires that at least sixty per cent of the country remain forested. Bhutan is one of the few carbon-negative countries in the world.

The same period saw the expulsion or flight of a large part of the Lhotshampa, the Nepali-speaking population of the south, in the late 1980s and early 1990s under nationality and cultural policies; some hundred thousand spent nearly two decades in refugee camps in eastern Nepal before third-country resettlement. It is the least discussed episode of Bhutan's modern history and it belongs in any honest account of it.

In 2008 the fourth king abdicated in favour of his son and Bhutan adopted a constitution making it a democratic constitutional monarchy — a transfer of power initiated by the monarch against considerable popular reluctance.