Nagaon, earler spelt of Nowgong was carved out as a separate district administrative unit in 1832. Located in Central Assam, the eastern, western and southern segments of the newly organised district were once ruled by different small-time feudal kings or their agents. An extensive and undulating plain intersected by big and small hills and rivers- the geography of the sements determined who their masters ought to be. The residual effects of the rule of the Bara Bhuyans were imaginatively utilised and reorganised by Momai Tamuli Barphukana, an intrepid officer of the Ahom king Pratap Singha in the first half of the seventeeth century. This area, until then, was more of strategic than administrative concern. Newly organised village system-hence called "Nagaon",   'Na'  means new.

At the social level, a great majority of the people were the Vaishnavites. Sankardeva, the great saint of the Bhakti movement era was born at Bordowa, at a distance of fifteen kilometres from the district geadquarters town. His life and work had been social exemplifiers and anyone can feel the long shadow of his influence even in the remotest part of the district.

The thickly populated parts of the district were the chosen targets of violence and term during the Burmese rule. There was no leadership to organised resistance movement against the Burmese. The people heaved a sigh of relief when the British came down heavily on the Burmese and compelled them to withdraw from Assam. Following the treaty of Yandaboo in 1826, this central area of the province passed off silently into the hands of the British. It took a couple of years before the British finally settled on the present site on the bank of the Kollong river as the district headquarters. Earlier, they experimented from Puranigudam and Rangagora. The district headquarters was called Nagaon and gradually it emerged into a town. It become a municipality in 1893. Nagaon follows the pattern of any other district of the Lower Provinces east of the Ganga. It is basically a rural conglomerate of agricultural population.

Conscious of its strategic location, the administration of the district was always entrusted to officers of extraordinary merit. A local peasant uprising at Phulaguri in 1861 against governments taxation policy was enough of an indication that the peasantry was not altogether a stolid and docile lot. The peasantry was also an active participant in the various stages of the national struggle for freedom. The national leaders, M.K Gandhi, Rajendra Prasad and Pandit Nehru were impressed by their spirit and enthusiasm.

The entire credit of introduction of modern education in the district goes to the Christian Missionaries. Of them, the name of  Miles Bronson, the American missionary, shines as brilliantly as ever. The apostle of the new age Anandaram Dhekia Phukan spent the best part of his life at Nagaon, His spiritual successor Gunabhiram Barua also worked in Nagaon for about two decades.