Bangladesh: Dhaka, Barishal and Chattogram
Dhaka, Chattogram, Mymensingh, Barishal, Cox's Bazar, Narayanganj. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.
Whose archive this ground was
| Years | Who held it | Whose archive that means |
|---|---|---|
| 1500–1576 | Bengal Sultanate; Arakan at Chittagong | no registers survive Chittagong was conquered by Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah in 1340. The Kingdom of Mrauk U (1530-1666) and a Portuguese settlement (1528-1666) are both dated on the coast. |
| 1576–1757 | Mughal Empire - the Bengal Subah | no registers survive The Subah is dated 1576-1717 here; the date of the Mughal conquest is contested between 1576 and 1590. |
| 1757–1858 | East India Company: Dacca and the delta | National Archives of India · FIBIS — Families in British India Society · FamilySearch The Battle of Plassey in 1757 began the Company's control of Bengal. |
| 1858–1905 | British Raj: Bengal Presidency | National Archives of India · FIBIS — Families in British India Society · Findmypast · FamilySearch Baptisms, marriages and burials of Christians in the Presidency were returned to London and are in the British Library's India Office ecclesiastical returns (1698-1968), indexed by FIBIS. |
| 1905–1912 | Eastern Bengal and Assam | National Archives of India · FIBIS — Families in British India Society · Findmypast · FamilySearch Dhaka was the capital of the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, formed in 1905 and dissolved in 1912. |
| 1912–1947 | British Raj: Bengal | National Archives of India · FIBIS — Families in British India Society · Findmypast · FamilySearch The Radcliffe award of 17 August 1947 gave the Chittagong Hill Tracts to Pakistan although about 97 percent of the population was non-Muslim. |
| 1947–1971 | Pakistan - East Bengal, East Pakistan from 1956 | FamilySearch · The 1947 Partition Archive East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan by the 1956 Constitution, and Dhaka was declared a second capital in 1962. The 1970 election gave the Awami League a landslide in East Pakistan, and a crackdown began on 26 March 1971. |
| 1971–2026 | People's Republic of Bangladesh | FamilySearch · Muktijuddho e-Archive Independence was declared at Dhaka on 26 March 1971, and East Pakistan became Bangladesh when Pakistani forces surrendered on 16 December 1971. |
The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.
See the whole span, 1500–2026, on the map →
The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.