MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Pakistan

ONE LAND · 6 ATLASES

Pakistan, on the map of history

What was Pakistan before it was Pakistan? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — 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.

The Indus marches (mod. Pakistan) · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

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West Pakistan (the Raj’s west, to 1947) · Indian Independence & Partition, 1905–1948

The state demanded in a resolution at Lahore in 1940 and delivered — “moth-eaten,” its founder said — in August 1947: the Muslim-majority west of the Raj, joined to a Bengali east wing a thousand miles away across India. Jinnah, its Quaid-e-Azam, survived his state’s birth by thirteen months; his 11 August speech promising a state blind to creed remains its most contested text. Karachi doubled with refugees within a year; the army born of the Punjab’s recruiting grounds became the state’s strongest institution — a fact with a long future.

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British India (mod. Pakistan) · China in Revolution, 1911–1949

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British India (Indus provinces) · The Great War, 1914–1918

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Pakistan · The Road to War, 1931–1941

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Pakistan · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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