A British Raj province comprising British conquests from the Mughals and Marathas in central India. Its capital was Nagpur. The Marathi-speaking Berar region of the Hyderabad princely state was administered by the Central Provinces after 1853, and annexed to the Central Provinces in 1903.

The Central Provinces and Berar were bounded on the north and northeast by the Central India Agency, including the Bundelkhand and Bagelkhand agencies, and along a small strip of the Sagar district by the United Provinces; on the west by the states of Bhopal, Indore, and the Kandesh district of Bombay state; on the south by Hyderabad state and the large zamindari estates of the Madras Presidency; and on the east by these latter estates and the tributary states of Bengal.

The Central provinces and Berar was made up of 22 districts, grouped into five divisions:

• Jubbulpore (Jabalpur) Division (18,950 sq. mi.) which included Jubbulpore, Saugor (Sagar), Damoh, Seoni and Mandla districts.
• Nerbudda (Narmada) Division (18,382 sq. mi.), which included Narsinghpur, Hoshangabad, Nimar, Betul and Chhindwara districts.
• Nagpur Division (23,521 sq. mi.), which included Nagpur, Bhandara, Chanda, Wardha, and Balaghat districts.
• Chhattisgarh Division (21,240 sq. mi.), which included Durg, Raipur, and Bilaspur districts.
• Berar Division, which included Amraoti (Amravati), Akola, Ellichpur, Buldana and Wun districts.

The Central Provinces and Berar also had jurisdiction over 16 princely states. The states of Raigarh (1486 sq. mi.) and Sarangarh (540 sq. m.) were under the authority of Chhattisgarh Division.

After the defeat of the Marathas in the Third Anglo-Maratha War, the territories north of the Satpura Range ceded in 1817 by the Maratha Peshwa (parts of Saugor and Damoh) and in 1818 by Appa Sahib were in 1820 formed into the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories under an agent to the governor_general. In 1835 the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories were included in the newly formed North_West Provinces. In 1842, in consequence of a rising, they were again placed under the jurisdiction of an agent to the governor_general. They were restored to the North_West Provinces in 1853.

In 1818, the Maratha Bhonsle Maharajas of Nagpur submitted to British sovereignty. In 1853, on the death of Raghoji III without heirs, Nagpur was annexed by the British under the doctrine of lapse. Until the formation of the Central Provinces in 1861, Nagpur province, which consisted of the Nagpur division, Chhindwara and Chhattisgarh, was administered by a commissioner under the central government.

Central Provinces and Berar in 1909

The Saugor and Nerbudda Territories were joined with the Nagpur province to constitute the new Central Provinces in 1861. On the 1st of October 1903 Berar also was placed under the administration of the commissioner of the Central Provinces. In October 1905 most of Sambalpur and the princely states of Bamra, Rairakhol, Sonpur, Patna and Kalahandi were transferred from the Central Provinces to Bengal, while the Hindi-speaking Chota Nagpur states of Chang Bhakar, Korea, Surguja, Udaipur and Jashpur were transferred from Bengal to the Central Provinces.

After Indian Independence in 1947, the Central Provinces and Berar became part of India, and was merged with the princely states under its authority to become the Indian State of Madhya Pradesh in 1950. In 1956, the Marathi-speaking areas of Madhya Pradesh, which comprised the Berar and Nagpur divisions, became part of Bombay state. In 2000, the eastern portion of Madhya Pradesh split off to become the new state of Chhattisgarh.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.