The Central Provinces was a province of British India. It comprised British conquests from the Mughals and Marathas in central India, and covered parts of present-day Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra states. Nagpur was the primary winter capital while Pachmarhi served as the regular summer retreat. It became the Central Provinces and Berar in 1903.

The Central Provinces was formed in 1861 by the merger of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories and Nagpur Province. The district of Nimar which was administered by the Central India Agency was added in 1864. It was almost an island encircled by a sea of "native States" such as Bhopal State and Rewa State to the north, the Chota Nagpur States and Kalahandi State to the east, and the Nizam's territories of Hyderabad to the south and Berar to the west.

The Central Provinces was landlocked, occupying the mountain ranges, plateaus, and river valleys in the centre of the Indian subcontinent.

The northernmost portion of the state extended onto the Bundelkhand upland, whose northward-flowing rivers are tributaries of the Yamuna and Ganges. The Vindhya Range runs east and west, forming the watershed between the Ganges-Yamuna basin and the Narmada River basin, which occupies the center and west of the province, and flows westward to empty into the Arabian Sea. The upper Narmada valley forms the center of the Mahakoshal region. Jabalpur (formerly Jubbulpore) lay on the upper Narmada, and was an important railway junction.

The Satpura Range divides the Narmada valley from the Deccan Plateau to the south. The Central Provinces included the northeastern portion of the Deccan, drained by tributaries of the Godavari River including the Wainganga, Wardha, and Indravati. These flow east towards the Bay of Bengal. A portion of Berar lay in the upper basin of the Tapti River, which drains westward into the Arabian Sea. The portion of the Central Provinces on the Deccan Plateau formed the Vidarbha region, which includes Nagpur, the capital of the province.

The eastern portion of the state lay in the upper Mahanadi River basin, which forms fertile rice-growing region of Chhattisgarh. The Maikal Range separates the basins of the Narmada and the Mahanadi. The Chota Nagpur Plateau extended into the northeast corner of the province.

General censuses were held in 1866, 1872, 1881, 1891 and 1901. The population in 1866 was over 9 million, and in 1872 over 9.25 million. 1869 was a famine year. There were epidemics of smallpox and cholera in 1872, 1878, and 1879. By 1881 the population had risen to 11.5 million, and by 1891 to nearly 13 million. The population in 1901 was 11,873,029, a reduction of 800,000 from 1891. The lack of summer monsoon rains in 1897 and 1900 led to widespread crop failures and huge famines in those years, and there were partial crop failures in four other years in the decade, with epidemics of cholera in seven of the ten years. A portion of the decrease (between one-eighth and one-quarter) was from emigration to Assam and other provinces of India.

The central Provinces contained two distinct linguistic regions: Mahakoshal, consisting mainly of Hindi-speaking districts, and Vidarbha, chiefly, but not exclusively, a Marathi-speaking area. The linguistic regions could not be fully integrated as a unit.