Provinces of France

Under the Ancien Régime, the Kingdom of France was subdivided in multiple different ways (judicial, military, ecclesiastical, etc.) into several administrative units, until the National Constituent Assembly adopted a more uniform division into departments (départements) and districts in late 1789. The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791.[1]

The country was subdivided ecclesiastically into dioceses, judicially into généralités, militarily into general governments. None of these entities was called "province" by their contemporaries. However, later interpretations confused the term of "general government" (a military division) with that of a cultural province, since the general governments often used the names and borders of a province. It was not always the case, which causes confusion as to the borders of some provinces.[2]

Today, the term "province" is used to name the resulting regional areas, which retain a cultural and linguistic identity.

Borrowed from the institutions of the Roman Empire, the word first appeared in the 15th century and has continued to spread, both in official documents and in popular or common usage. Whatever the century or dictionary consulted, the definition of the word often remains vague, due to the coexistence of several territorial division systems under the Ancien Régime. Some geographers, even some of the most famous, such as Onésime Reclus, have widely criticised the idea of provinces and provincial identity, sometimes denying that the word covers any tangible reality. In fact, the many lists and maps showing the provinces of France are neither perfectly superimposable nor exactly comparable. The fact remains, however, that the names of many of the territorial subdivisions of the Ancien Régime refer to Gallic civitates.

Before the French Revolution, France was made up of territorial divisions resulting from history, geography and settlement, which differed according to the different powers that were exercised there, with different categories such as metropolises, dioceses, duchies, baronies, governments, states, elections, generalities, intendances, parliaments, countries, bailliages, seneschaussées, etc. Each of these categories took the name of a province, without covering the same geographical area. For example, the jurisdiction of the parlement d'Artois did not correspond to the same territory as the gouvernement d'Artois or the intendance d'Artois.

The Constituent Assembly of 1789, having abolished all the rights and customs specific to the different regions (also known as privileges, such as those of the classes, nobility and clergy) during the night of 4 August, decided to establish a uniform division of the territory, the départements, and that this division would be the same for the different functions of the State: military, religious, fiscal, administrative, university, judicial, etc. The town chosen as the capital of each department would have to be the seat of each of these functions, and at the same time have a prefecture, a court, a university, a military post, a bishopric, a stock exchange, a fair, a hospital, etc. The protests of the towns which had always fulfilled one of these functions and which were thus deprived of their court of appeal, their arsenal, their university or their fair, prevented this plan from being completely implemented.^{[citation needed]}

In some cases, modern regions share names with the historic provinces; their borders may cover roughly the same territory.