In 1792, the East India Company officer William Kirkpatrick was selected to lead a diplomatic mission to Nepal after a Nepali request for assistance in an ongoing war with Qing China. The dispute, which started in 1788 with a Nepali a invasion of Tibet, had seen Chinese forces invade Nepal and the Company saw the mission as a chance to settle the dispute, negotiate a commercial treaty and gain important knowledge about the little-known Himalayan nation. Meeting Nepali envoys at Patna, Kirkpatrick explained to the Regent, Prince Bahadur Shah, that requests for artillery could not be accepted without a formal treaty with the East India Company. Bahadur Shah, wary of the influence of the Company in Nepal if such a treaty was signed, let the deal fall through. This enabled China, despite setbacks in the mountainous terrain, to besiege Kathmandu. Held off by 200 Nepali soldiers, the siege of the capital resulted in a stalemate and a peace treaty was signed in October on terms favourable to China.
Despite their failure to negotiate a treaty with Bahadur Shah, Kirkpatrick and his party were still permitted to travel to the royal court at Nuwakot, becoming the first British officials to travel to Nepal. En route, they were able to gather important information about the country, which Kirkpatrick wrote down in a report to the East India Company. In his preface to the published version of this account, bearing the title An Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul (1811), Kirkpatrick explained that he had only decided to publish it a decade after the mission after being persuaded by friends and with the permission of the Directors of the Company, to whom he dedicated the volume. The printed text adheres to this story. Rather than providing a full narrative, much of the book is a survey of the country, its landscape, produce, religious institutions, festivals, history and governance, with much of the information displayed in the form of numbered lists and tables. It also included a short vocabulary of Nepali words transcribed phonetically into the Latin alphabet.