Find a place in British India, 1757–1947
Search a colonial-era place name in any recorded spelling. Each record gives the modern name and country, the administrative units it sat under and the years those held, coordinates, and the sources behind every one of those facts.
Try Cawnpore (now Kanpur), Dacca (now Dhaka), Calcutta (now Kolkata), Rangoon (now Yangon).
Names change; identity does not
Records are filed under the historical name and carry every documented spelling, transliteration and native-script form alongside it. Modern names redirect to the historical record rather than splitting it.
Administrative history is dated
A place's district in 1870 is often not its district in 1910. Every administrative relationship is stored with the years it applies to and the source that establishes it.
British India is not modern India
Scope covers present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and distinguishes directly administered territory from the princely states of the wider Indian Empire.
Recently recorded places
All 116 placesHow the records are built
Facts come from published gazetteers, censuses, map catalogues and reconciled identifier sets — chiefly the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908–1931) and the Census of India. Nothing is estimated or inferred: an unknown value is shown as not recorded, and where two reliable sources disagree, both readings appear.
Read the methodology or the full source register.