The Northern Circars Division

When the British arrived to the Indian subcontinent, several administrative divisions nomenclature were based on the existing Mughal structures - the two being in particular, sarkar and pargana. The most famous administrative division with the name pargana still in use is the one in West Bengal - 24 Parganas, that is now divided into North 24 Parganas (HQ at Barasaat) and South 24 Parganas (HQ at Alipore; the district also consists of the city of Kolkata, the capital of the state). While the name Sarkar is used in various fields (including several Indian languages movies), the one historically famous was Northern Circars (misspelt by the English). 

Northern Circars was not actually a province, but a division of the bigger Madras Presidency (and later, the Madras Province), extending from Ganjam in Orissa to Nellore on the Andhra coast. The following former districts were part of the Northern Circars majorly: 

• Ganjam (today's Ganjam and Gajapati, in Odisha)
• Vizagapatam (today's Srikakulam, Vizianagram and Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh)
• East Godavari (excluding the former French territory of Yanaon or Yanam)
• West Godavari
• Kistna (Krishna)
• Guntur (Guntur and Prakasam, in Andhra Pradesh)
• Nellore

Additionally, a narrow strip sandwiched between the former Warangal and Bastar districts (part of East Godavari) would also be included in the division, that now forms part of Mulugu and Kothagudem districts of Telangana. 

The Northern Circars division has some of the earliest European contacts on the Indian subcontinent between the 16th to 18th centuries. The most famous being the Masulipatam (Machilipatnam) that was majorly a Dutch factory followed by the French and later, the British. But apart from this, the following were also major/minor European settlements: 

1. Bimlipatam (Bheemunipatnam)
2. Vizagapatam & Waltair (Visakhapatnam)
3. Jaggernaikpoeram or Jagannathapuram (Cocanada or Kakinada)
4. Yanaon (Yanam)
5. Injaram (in East Godavari district)
6. Palakollu (in West Godavari district)
7. Narasapur / Madapallam (Narasapuram, in West Godavari district)
8. Nizamapatam / Petapoli (Nizamapatnam, in Guntur district)

All the above were dominated by Dutch presence before the English took over from the 18th-19th centuries. The large Dutch existence were in the settlements of Bimlipatam (also pronounced as Biemelepatnam by the Dutch) , Cocanada (formerly Jaggernaikpoeram) and Palakollu that lasted for more than two centuries. One can spot a series of Dutch cemeteries and church ruins in these places. At a shipyard near Cocanada (at Narsapuram) there exists a boarding school for girls - Holland Wharf Girls' Hostel, carrying the Dutch heritage even today. The French influence was high in this region as well, which got segregated into one single settlement of Yanaon (or Yanam) that today is part of the Puducherry Union Territory. 

Prior to the formation of both Madras Presidency and Northern Circars, the region was marked as part of the Golconda Kingdom having major port settlements such as Ciacola or Chicocol (Srikakulam), Bimilipatan and Masulipatan. Some more former spellings would be such as Sicacole, Visigapatnam, Narsingapatnam, Watari, Coranga (Kakinada) etc. On certain 1760s map, one would also find this entire belt labeled as either Orixa (Orissa or Odisha) or Chikacol. Guntur area what is today was marked as Mustafanagur or Murtazanagar, possibly part of the Mughal name-changes. One can say that the predecessor name for Northern Circars was Chikacol (with various spellings). However, a buffer name of Sirkars also appeared on early 1800s maps, before getting added by the prefix 'Northern', although it was labelled as a sub-division to the Orissa territory. And henceforth, the region was interchangeably called as Circars, Sirkars, Sarkars, Sarkar Districts or Northern Circars. 

In the 20th century, the neighbouring districts to Northern Circars were the Princely State of Hyderabad, the Bastar State (of Eastern States) and various territories under Orissa States (Kalahandi, Baudh, Patna etc.). A tiny exclave of the Warangal district (of Hyderabad State) was in the Kistna (Krishna) district while two exclaves of Kistna district were in the Nalgonda district (of Hyderabad State). Post independence, the thin strip between Hyderabad and Bastar remained part of the Madras State and remained so even after the creation of Andhra state in 1953. In 1956, the territories were improved furthermore and the suffix 'Pradesh' was added to Andhra by dissolving the Hyderabad state and internal adjustments were done among the various districts. After 5 decades, with the formation of the Telangana state in 2014, the district of Khammam consisted of the thin strip of Northern Circars which got further divided in 2019 into Mulugu and Bhadradari Kothagudem. 

Below here is a recreated map of the Northern Circars as per a 1946 National Geographic map.