MIDNAPORE, a town and district of British India, in the Burdwan division of Bengal. The town has a station on the Ben gal Nagpur railway. Pop. (1931) 3 2,03 I .
The DISTRICT OF MIDNAPORE has an area of 5,245 sq.m. and a population (1931) of 2,799,093. The greater part consists of a large open plain under cultivation but the country along the west ern boundary, known as the Jungle Mahals, is undulating and in the N.E. corner some hills rise to over 1,00o ft. in height. The eastern and south-eastern portions are swampy, richly culti vated, and thickly populated. The west, which has a lateritic soil partly covered by jungle, is sparsely inhabited. The chief rivers of the district are the Hoogli and its three tributaries, the Rup narayan, the Haldi and the Rasulpur. The main line of the Bengal-Nagpur Railway passes through the district from east to west ; from Kharagpur the East Coast section goes to Madras and the line to Gomoh branches off north to Chota Nagpur. Kharag
pur contains the railway workshops and has a population (1931) of 37,871. There are three canals, the Midnapore canal, the Hi jli tidal canal, and part of the Orissa coast canal. Drainage works have been constructed for a water-logged area in the south; there is also an extensive system of embankments. Silk, mats and brass and copper utensils are manufactured.
The early history of Midnapore centres round the ancient town of Tamluk (q.v.). In the 16th century it was eclipsed by Hijli which had Portuguese and Dutch settlements. In 1687 Job Char nock occupied Hijli and sustained a long siege by the Mughal forces. The British administration of the district dates from 1760, when Mir Kasim ceded it to the East India Company with Chitta gong, and Burdwan when he became Nawab of Bengal.