Skip to content
BritishIndia.com

Masulipatam

Port, 1759–1947

మచిలీపట్నంమసులీపట్నం

Today Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India. Same place, renamed.

Key facts

Historical name
Masulipatam
Type
Port
Coordinates
16.1667° N, 81.1333° E(seed dataset)
Governance
Directly administered
Record confidence
Medium confidence
Identifiers
Q845662

Directly administered by the Governor-General of India, and therefore part of British India in the statutory sense of the Interpretation Act 1889, s.18.

Location

Pin placed at the coordinates recorded for this place. Colonial-era boundaries are not drawn.

Description

Historic Coromandel port and district town, the earliest English factory on the east coast (1611) and a centre of kalamkari painted cloth.

Historical notes

The Imperial Gazetteer records the Dutch seizure of the government of Masulipatam in 1686 and the English protests that followed; the port was largely destroyed by the cyclone and storm-wave of 1864. Now Machilipatnam.

Administrative history

Administrative parenthood changed over time. Each row states the years it is recorded for, and the source it comes from.

Administrative units this place is recorded under, by year
YearsRelationUnitConfidence
from 1901Part ofMadras PresidencyPresidency · Directly administeredSnapshot from the 1901 census and the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908-31). End of the relationship not established; recorded as open rather than inferred.Medium confidencesource
from 1901Part ofKistnaDistrict · Directly administeredSnapshot from the 1901 census and the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908-31). End of the relationship not established; recorded as open rather than inferred.Medium confidencesource

Recorded names

Every documented spelling and transliteration held for this place. The historical name is canonical; modern names redirect to it.

Name variants recorded for this place
NameScriptTypeYears
MasulipatamLatinHistorical English
BandarLatinAlternative spelling
MachilipatnamLatinModern English
MasulipatamLatinAlternative spelling
Masulipatam TownLatinAlternative spelling
MasulipathnamLatinAlternative spelling
MasulipatnamLatinAlternative spelling
మచిలీపట్నంTeluguIndigenous
మసులీపట్నంTeluguIndigenous

Records and references

Census of India
Census of India, 1901, Vol. XV (15): Madras

Sources

  1. Database· identityCC0

    Wikidata (Q845662), Wikimedia Foundation

    Wikidata, CC0 1.0

    Retrieved 2026-08-29

  2. Encyclopedia· generalCC BY-SA

    Wikipedia: Machilipatnam, Wikimedia Foundation

    Wikipedia contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0

    Retrieved 2026-08-29

  3. Archive· descriptionPublic domain

    Internet Archive scan: in.ernet.dli.2015.55947, Internet Archive

    Scanned volume of a pre-1929 publication (Imperial Gazetteer of India 1908–31 / Census of India 1901); public domain. Digitisation courtesy of the Internet Archive.

    Retrieved 2026-08-29

Sources tagged “Licence unverified” are linked to rather than reproduced. Scans and images are only displayed inline where the licence is confirmed permissive.