The original Sanuki Castle was built by the Satomi clan, rulers of most of the Bōsō Peninsula during the Sengoku period.
Following the Battle of Odawara in 1590, the Kantō region by was assigned to Tokugawa Ieyasu by the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who also restricted the Satomi to Awa Province for their lukewarm support of his campaigns against the Later Hōjō clan.
Tokugawa Ieyasu appointed Naitō Ienaga, one of his hereditary retainers, to be daimyō of the newly formed 20,000 koku Sanuki Domain.
In January 1639, the domain was revived for Matsudaira Katsutaka, a former jisha-bugyō, whose holdings had reached 15,000 koku, qualifying for the status of daimyō.
The final daimyo of Sanuki Domain, Abe Masatsune, initially served with the pro-Tokugawa forces in the Boshin War against the strong advice of his senior retainers and refused to surrender his armory to the new Meiji government.