Methodology

A record’s identity is the colonial-era place. Its canonical address uses the historical name — /place/cawnpore, not /place/kanpur. The modern name is prominent metadata on the page, and modern spellings redirect permanently to the canonical address rather than becoming separate records. This keeps one place from fragmenting into several near-duplicate pages.

A place’s district in 1870 is frequently not its district in 1910. Administrative relationships are therefore stored as dated assertions — place X was part of unit Y from year A to year B, on the authority of source Z — and never as a static column on the place itself. Each row of the administrative history table on a place page is one such assertion.

British India in the strict statutory sense (Interpretation Act 1889, s.18) is territory directly administered by the Governor-General. The British Indian Empire is the wider umbrella that also covers the princely states, and Burma until 1937. Every administrative unit here carries a governance type so the two are never conflated. Present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar are all within scope.

Coordinates, populations, dates, gazetteer volume and page numbers, and citations are recorded only where a source establishes them. Where a value is unknown it is shown as not recorded rather than estimated. Where a value is uncertain it is shown with a low or medium confidence marker rather than being quietly presented as settled.

When two reliable sources conflict, both readings are recorded and both appear on the page. The site does not pick a winner behind the scenes.

Material is reproduced inline only where the licence is confirmed permissive — public domain, CC0, or CC-BY. Sources whose licence has not been confirmed are linked out to and never reproduced. The source register tags each source with its licence.

The register is factual and neutral. Colonial rule is neither celebrated nor editorialised against; famine, coercion and violence are recorded where they belong to a place’s documented history, in the same plain terms as everything else.

Corrections are welcome and are the fastest way this gazetteer improves. Cite the source you are correcting from and the record it applies to; a correction without a source cannot be applied, because it could not then be cited on the page.