ONE LAND · 12 ATLASES
History of Bangladesh in maps
Bangladesh as it appears in 12 interactive history atlases, from 1206 to 1991: Bengal, East Bengal / East Pakistan, Bengal, British India, Bangladesh, East Pakistan. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Bangladesh before it was Bangladesh? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History atlases — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.
Bengal (mod. Bangladesh) · Mongol Empire
| Other settled powers (Jin China, Christendom, Delhi) — the opening position |
MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Bengal (mod. Bangladesh) · Industrial Revolution
Bengal was the textile capital of the eighteenth-century world, famous for the muslins of Dhaka. Under the East India Company, which ruled it from 1757, weavers were pressed into Company contracts, and machine-made British cloth then took their markets; Dhaka’s population fell by perhaps two-thirds in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Bengal later grew the jute that Calcutta’s mills spun into the world’s sacks.
| Colony or dependency — the opening position | |
| Colony or dependency |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Bangladesh · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
East Bengal / East Pakistan (mod. Bangladesh) · Indian independence
East Bengal: Curzon’s province of 1905, the League’s heartland (founded at Dacca, 1906), the famine’s killing ground in 1943, and from 1947 the eastern wing of Pakistan — holding most of the new state’s people and little of its power, its language soon a grievance (the Language Movement’s martyrs fell in Dacca in 1952). This map’s era ends with East Bengal blue; the wing became Bangladesh in 1971, at terrible cost — Curzon’s line of 1905, made a nation on the third attempt.
| British India — direct rule — the opening position | |
| Pakistan (from Aug 1947) |
INDIAN INDEPENDENCE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Bengal (British India) · WWI
| Entente-aligned & imperial territories — the opening position |
Bengal, British India (mod. Bangladesh) · Chinese Revolution
| Foreign empires — British, French, Russian, American — the opening position |
CHINESE REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
East Pakistan (British India until 1947) · Stalin’s Soviet Union
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Bangladesh · Road to WW2
| Colonial empires & possessions — the opening position |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Bangladesh · WW2
| Western Allies — the opening position |
Bangladesh · Cold War
| NATO & core Western allies — the opening position |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Bangladesh · Refugee crises
REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
East Pakistan (Bangladesh from 1971) · Mao’s China
| Neutral, non-aligned or colonial — the opening position | |
| Beijing’s allies and friends | |
| Neutral, non-aligned or colonial |
MAO’S CHINA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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