Departments of France

before 1790 (color) and today's departments (black borders) The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées (Bridges and Highways) infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution, France gained territory gradually through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the end of the Ancien Régime it was organised into provinces. During the Revolution they were dissolved, partly in order to weaken old loyalties. The National Constituent Assembly decided to create a more uniform division into departments (département) and districts in late 1789. The process began on 4 August 1789 with the elimination of provincial privileges, and a 22 December 1789 decree (with letters patent in January 1790) provided for the termination of the provincial governments. The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791. Following the defeats of Napoleon in 1814–1815 the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86 (three of the original departments having been split). In 1860 France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy, which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from the new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe, Moselle, Vosges and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871 following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. A small part of Haut-Rhin, however, remained French and became known as the Territoire de Belfort; the remaining parts of Meurthe and Moselle were merged into a new Meurthe-et-Moselle department. When France regained the ceded departments after World War I, the Territoire de Belfort was not reintegrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922 it became France's 90th department. Likewise the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, and a new Moselle department was created in the regained territory, with slightly different boundaries from the pre-war department of the same name. The reorganisation of Île-de-France in 1968 and the division of Corsica in 1975 added six more departments, raising the total in Metropolitan France to 96. By 2011, when the overseas collectivity of Mayotte became a department, joining the earlier overseas departments of the Republic (all created in 1946) – French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion – the total number of departments in the French Republic had become 101. In 2015 the Urban Community of Lyon was split from Rhône to form the Métropole de Lyon, a sui generis entity, with the powers of both an intercommunality and those of a department on its territory, formally classified as a "territorial collectivity with particular status" () and as such not belonging to any department. As of 2019 Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse are still administrative departments, although they no longer have the status of departmental "territorial collectivities": region and department functions have been managed by a "single territorial collectivity" since 2018. Despite the intention to avoid the old nomenclature, often the names of pre-1790 provinces remained in use. For example, the name of Berry, though no longer having an official status, remains in widespread use in daily life. ==General characteristics==

Government and administration The departmental seat of government is known as the prefecture () or and is generally a town of some importance roughly at the geographical centre of the department. This was determined according to the time taken to travel on horseback from the periphery of the department. The goal was for the prefecture to be accessible on horseback from any town in the department within 24 hours. The prefecture is not necessarily the largest city in the department: for instance, in Saône-et-Loire department the capital is Mâcon, but the largest city is Chalon-sur-Saône. Departments may be divided into . The capital of an arrondissement is called a subprefecture () or . Each department is administered by a departmental council (), an assembly elected for six years by universal suffrage, with the President of the Departmental Council as executive of the department. Before 1982, the chief executive of the department was the prefect (), who represents the Government of France in each department and is appointed by the President of the French Republic. The prefect is assisted by one or more sub-prefects () based in the subprefectures of the department. Since 1982, the prefect retains only the powers that are not delegated to the department councils. In practice, their role has been largely limited to preventing local policy from conflicting with national policy. The departments are further divided into communes, governed by municipal councils. As of 2025, there were 34,746 communes in France. In the overseas territories, some communes play a role at departmental level. Paris, the country's capital city, is a commune as well as a department. . The solid line is the Le Havre-Marseille line, to the east of which lives 60% of the French population. In mainland France (metropolitan France, excluding Corsica), the median land area of a department is , which is two-and-a-half times the median land area of the ceremonial counties of England and the preserved counties of Wales and slightly more than three-and-half times the median land area of a county of the United States. At the 2001 census, the median population of a department in continental France was 511,000 inhabitants, which is 21 times the median population of a United States county, but less than two-thirds of the median population of a ceremonial county of England and Wales. Most of the departments have an area of between 4,000 and 8,000 km2 (1500 to 3000 sq. mi), and a population between 320,000 and 1 million. The largest in area is Gironde (), while the smallest is the city of Paris (). The most populous is Nord (2,550,000) and the least populous is Lozère (74,000). Numbering The departments are numbered: their two-digit numbers appear in postal codes, in INSEE codes (including "social security numbers") and on vehicle number plates. Initially the numbers corresponded to the alphabetical order of the names of the departments, but several changed their names and some have been divided, so the correspondence became less exact. Alphanumeric codes 2A and 2B were used for Corsica while it was split but it has since reverted to 20. The two-digit code "98" is used by Monaco. Together with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code FR, the numbers form the ISO 3166-2 country subdivision codes for the metropolitan departments. The overseas departments have three digits. Relation to national government Originally, the relationship between the departments and the central government was left somewhat ambiguous. While citizens in each department elected their own officials, the local governments were subordinated to the central government, becoming instruments of national integration. By 1793, however, the revolutionary government had turned the departments into transmission belts for policies enacted in Paris. With few exceptions, the departments had this role until the early 1960s. Political party preferences These maps cannot be used as a useful resource of voter preferences, because Departmental Councils are elected on a two-round system, which drastically limits the chances of fringe parties, if they are not supported on one of the two rounds by a moderate party. After the 1992 election, the left had a majority in only 21 of the 100 departments; after the 2011 election, the left dominated 61 of the 100 departments. (Mayotte only became a department after the election.) File:Cantonales_1998(dom).png|Party affiliation of the General Council Presidents of the various departments in the cantonal elections of 1998 File:Cantonales 2001.svg|Party affiliation of the General Council Presidents of the various departments in the elections of 2001 File:Cantonales 2004.svg|Party affiliation of the General Council Presidents of the various departments in the elections of 2004 File:Conseils généraux 2008.svg|Party affiliation of the General Council Presidents of the various departments in the elections of 2008 File:Conseils généraux 2011.png|Party affiliation of the General Council Presidents of the various departments in the elections of 2011 File:Presidents of French departments current.svg|Party affiliation of the General Council Presidents of the various departments in the elections of 2015 Key to the parties: • Divers Centre = Independents of the centre or Democratic Movement (Mouvement démocrate) • Divers Droite (DVD) = Independent conservatives • Divers Gauche (DVG) = Independent left-wing politicians • MPF = Movement for France (Mouvement pour la France) (right) • Nouveau Centre = New Centre (centre or centre-right) • PCF = French Communist Party (Parti communiste français) • PRG = Radical Party of the Left (Parti radical de gauche) • PS = Socialist Party (Parti socialiste) • UDF = Union for French Democracy (Union pour la démocratie française) succeeded by Democratic Movement • UMP = Union for a Popular Movement (Union pour un mouvement populaire) ==Future==

The removal of one or more levels of local government has been discussed for some years; in particular, the option of removing the departmental level. Frédéric Lefebvre, spokesman for the UMP, said in December 2008 that the fusion of the departments with the regions was a matter to be dealt with soon. This was soon refuted by Édouard Balladur and Gérard Longuet, members of the committee for the reform of local authorities, known as the Balladur Committee. In January 2008, the Attali Commission recommended that the departmental level of government should be eliminated within ten years. Nevertheless, the Balladur Committee has not retained this proposition and does not advocate the disappearance of the departments, but simply "favors the voluntary grouping of departments", which it suggests also for the regions, with the aim of reducing the number of regions to 15. This committee advocates, on the contrary, the suppression of the cantons. == Maps and tables ==

Current departments Each department has a coat of arms and a flag with which it is commonly associated, though not all are officially recognised or used. Former departments Former departments of the current territory of France Departments of Algeria () Unlike the rest of the French possessions in Africa, Algeria was divided into departments just like Corsica or Normandy from 1848 until its independence in 1962. These departments were supposed to be "assimilated" or "integrated" to France sometime in the future. Departments in former French colonies Departments of the Napoleonic Empire in Europe There are a number of former departments in territories conquered by France during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire that are now not part of France: Notes for Table 7: • Where a Napoleonic department was composed of parts from more than one country, the nation-state containing the prefecture is listed. Please expand this table to list all countries containing significant parts of the department. • Territories that were a part of Austrian Netherlands were also a part of Holy Roman Empire. • The Bishopric of Basel was a German Prince-Bishopric, not to be confused with the adjacent Swiss Canton of Basel. • The Ionian Islands were annexed by France after the Fall of the Republic of Venice. They were lost to France, becoming the Septinsular Republic, a Russo-Ottoman vassal state, from 1800 to 1807, before reverting to France at the Treaty of Tilsit. The second period of French rule lasted until 1810/14, after which these territories became a British protectorate, as the United States of the Ionian Islands • Maastricht was a condominium of the Dutch Republic and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. • On 6 June 1805, as a result of the annexation of the Ligurian Republic (the puppet successor state to the Republic of Genoa), Tanaro was abolished and its territory divided between the departments of Marengo, Montenotte and Stura. • Before becoming the department of Apennins, the Republic of Genoa was converted to a puppet successor state, the Ligurian Republic. • Before becoming the department of Arno, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was converted to a puppet successor state, the Kingdom of Etruria. • Rome was known as the until 1810. • Before becoming the departments of , , , , , , and , these territories of the Dutch Republic were converted to a puppet successor state, the Batavian Republic (1795–1806), then those territories that had not already been annexed (all except the first two departments here), along with the Prussian County of East Frisia, were converted to another puppet state, the Kingdom of Holland. • Before becoming the department of Simplon, the was converted to a revolutionary (16 March 1798) which was swiftly incorporated (1 May 1798) into the puppet Helvetic Republic until 1802 when it became the independent Rhodanic Republic. • In the months before Lippe was formed, the arrondissements of Rees and Münster were part of , the arrondissement of Steinfurt was part of and the arrondissement of Neuenhaus was part of . ==See also==