1909 Imperial Gazetteer of India, Bombay Presidency Series, with Atlas Volume

A lovely example of the three-volume Bombay Presidency Series of the Imperial Gazetteer of India, detailing the geography of Bombay, Sindh, and other parts of the Subcontinent, published in 1909 by the Superintendent of Government Printing in Calcutta. This collection includes the scarce atlas volume focusing on the regions and cities, ranging from the Northwest Frontier Provinces to Burma.

A Closer Look

The atlas volume contains 64 plans of cities, including Bombay (Mumbai), Lahore, Karachi, Delhi, and Rangoon, as well as maps of provinces, historical and archaeological maps, railway maps, and more. The individual folio maps have a uniform size of 8.5 x 10 in. Chromolithographic printing allows for color shading to distinguish land use at the city level, or to distinguish directly administered territory from Princely States at the regional level. For the city plans, a wide range of features are illustrated and labeled, including parks, railways, docks, markets, government offices, hospitals, barracks, and forts. The regional maps denote geographic features (mountains and waterways especially) along with cities, towns, and railways.

The Imperial Gazetteer of India

The Imperial Gazetteer of India was a reference work distributed throughout the British Empire. It was first published in 1881, largely the product of research by Sir William Wilson Hunter, a Scottish member of the Indian Civil Service. Being a statistician by training, Hunter aimed to standardize and expand ongoing provincial-level projects and develop statistics for the entire Subcontinent. Following the publication of the first edition, subsequent editions in 1885-87, 1908-1909, and 1931 grew the original nine volumes to nearly thirty. In addition to the national-level gazetteer, a Provincial Series was prepared, with the present Bombay Presidency Series being perhaps the most prominent. These did include data (and in this case maps) relating to other parts of India and India as a whole, but focused more on the particular province in question.

Publication History and Census

This printing of the Imperial Gazetteer of India is the 'Provincial Series Bombay Presidency' issued in 1909 by the Superintendent of Government Printing in Calcutta. Interestingly, the individual maps were not reprinted from Survey of India maps (perhaps because they were deemed too detailed or sensitive for an atlas format) but were instead produced by J. G. Bartholomew and the Edinburgh Geographic Institute. Due to the multiple volumes and printings (other provincial series as well as a national, unified gazetteer) establishing a precise census of these volumes is difficult. However, in general, the atlas volume is especially rare (we are unable to find a clear reference to it in the OCLC, as catalog listings only refer to two volumes), while volumes one and two are present in a handful of academic institutions in North America, Europe, and the former British Empire.