Hindoostan, or Hindustan?

One of the principle aspects of this map to consider is the starkly obvious British influence of a map that is of India. It’s clear that Arrowsmith designed this map with an entire British-centric view of India, reflecting the country’s imperial rule.

The first, most glaring, example I saw of this was the word “Hindoostan” emblazoned across the entire map (see below). 

This immediately made me question the map’s intentions,  considering that the correct spelling today is "Hindustan," which is a geographical term for India that is often used by the country’s natives. This made me question whether this was intentional at all, or whether this was just a spelling used more widely in the nineteenth century. Using a Google Books Ngram search as a gauge, I found that the spelling “Hindustan” had, indeed, been in usage in the 1800s in exclusively British English, including around the decade in which the map was published. Google Ngram even provides much specific evidence from books that were published at this time that the spelling of “Hindustan” was alive and well in use.  

On the other hand, “Hindoostan” rendered zero results on Ngram Viewer. Using this—as an admittedly rudimentary, yet still certainly insightful—way of looking at the usage of this certain spelling at the time, it’s fair to conclude that this spelling of “Hindoostan” versus “Hindustan” was very much an intentional choice. This is just one tell-tale sign of how this map was a British-centric way of looking at India.