From the 17th to the 20th century, this dataset documents the territorial expansion of British India, detailing how provinces and districts were formed. It categorizes acquisitions by presidencies like Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, listing dates and methods of land acquisition. The dataset was curated by the India State Stories team using sources including Baden-Powell (1892) and India Administrative Atlas 1872-2001.
Use Cases
- Map the territorial expansion of British presidencies based on documented acquisition dates and methods.
- Analyze the transition of the East India Company from a trading entity to a political administrator based on the timeline of administrative unit creation.
- Trace historical colonial districts to their modern administrative equivalents using the bridging records mentioned in the description.
Strengths
- Covers a long temporal range spanning from the 17th to the 20th century.
- Explicitly links colonial administrative units to their modern equivalents.
- Curated by a named team (India State Stories) citing specific historical sources.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale analysis.
Provenance
- Source
- India State Stories team (Shivakumar Jolad and Gaurav Kalyani).
- Collection Method
- Curated from historical sources including Baden-Powell(1892), Banerjee & Iyer (2005), India Administrative Atlas 1872-2001.
- Time Range
- 17th to 20th centuries.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-05-27 06:41:04; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- British India, focusing on provinces and districts under presidencies like Bengal, Madras, and Bombay.