Departments of France

The departments of France (département, ) and many of its former colonies are administrative divisions. The 101 French departments are grouped into 22 metropolitan and five overseas regions, all of which have identical legal status as integral parts of France. The departments are subdivided into 342 arrondissements, which in turn, are divided into cantons. Each canton consists of a small number of communes. In the overseas territories, some of the communes play a role at departmental level.

History
The first French "departments", in the sense of territory, were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson, and served as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées ("Bridges and Highways", the infrastructure administration).

Before the French Revolution, France accumulated territory gradually through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the close of the Ancien Régime it was organised into provinces. During the period of the Revolution, these were dissolved, partly in order to weaken old loyalties.

The modern departments, as all-purpose units of government, were created on 4 March 1790 by the National Constituent Assembly to replace the provinces with what the Assembly deemed a more rational structure. Their boundaries served two purposes:
 * Boundaries were chosen to deliberately break up France's historical regions in an attempt to erase cultural differences and build a more homogeneous nation.
 * Boundaries were set so that any settlement in the country was within a day's ride of the capital of the department. This was a security measure, intended to keep the entire national territory under close control. This measure was directly inspired by the Great Terror, during which the government had lost control of many rural areas which were far from any centre of government.

The old nomenclature was carefully avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after an area's principal river or other physical features. Even Paris was in the department of Seine.

The number of departments, initially 83, was increased to 130 by 1809 with the territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire (see Provinces of the Netherlands for the annexed Dutch departments). Following Napoleon's defeats in 1814-1815, the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size; the number of departments was reduced to 86, as three of the original departments had 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 89 departments were given numbers based on their alphabetical order.

The departments of Moselle, Bas-Rhin, and most of 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. 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.

The reorganisation of lower France (1968) and the division of Corsica (1975) added six more departments, raising the total to 96. Counting the five overseas departments—French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and Mayotte—the total comes to 101 departments. In 2011, the overseas collectivity of Mayotte became the 101st department.

General characteristics
The departmental seat of government is called the prefecture (préfecture) or chef-lieu de department and is generally a city 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 by 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 are divided into one or more arrondissements. The capital of an arrondissement is called a subprefecture (sous-préfecture) or chef-lieu d'arrondissement.

Each department is administered by a general council (conseil général), an assembly elected for six years by universal suffrage, with the president of the council as executive of the department. Before 1982, the excutive of a department was the prefect (préfet) who represents the Government of France in each department and is appointed by the President of France. The prefect is assisted by one or more sub-prefects (sous-préfet) based in the subprefectures of the department.

The departments are further divided into communes, governed by municipal councils. As of 1999, there were 36,779 communes in France.

In continental France (metropolitan France, excluding Corsica), the median land area of a department is 5965 km2, which is two-and-a-half times the median land area of a ceremonial county of England & 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 511,012 inhabitants, which is 21 times the median population of a U.S. county, but less than two-thirds of the median population of a ceremonial county of England & Wales. Most of the departments have an area of between 4,000 and 8,000 km², and a population between 320,000 and 1 million. The largest in area is Gironde (10,000 km²), while the smallest is the city of Paris (105 km²). The most populous is Nord (2,550,000) and the least populous is Lozère (74,000).

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, so the correspondence became less exact. There is no number 20, but 2A and 2B instead, for Corsica. Corsican postal codes or addresses in both departments do still start with 20, though. The two-digit code "96" 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 get two letters for the ISO 3166-2 code, e.g. 971 for Guadeloupe (see table below).

Party-political preferences
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 Commission for freeing French development, known as the Attali Commission, recommended that the departmental level of government should be eliminated within ten years.

Nevertheless, the Committee for the reform of local authorities, known as 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 bringing the number of the latter down to fifteen. This committee advocates on the contrary, the suppression of the cantons.

Current departments
All departments have an escutcheon with which they are commonly associated, but not all are officially recognized or used. In some departments they are used, but in others a more modern emblem is used. The national government itself has no heraldic coat of arms, as a rejection of the aristocratic origins of heraldry, and this is followed by many governments in the departments.

Departments of French Algeria
Unlike the rest of French-controlled Africa, Algeria was officially incorporated into France from 1848 until its independence in 1962.

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:
 * 1) 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.
 * 2) Territories that were a part of Flag of the Habsburg Monarchy.svg Austrian Netherlands were also a part of Banner of the Holy Roman Emperor (after 1400).svg Holy Roman Empire.
 * 3) The Wappen Bistum Basel.svg Bishopric of Basel was a German Prince-Bishopric, not to be confused with the adjacent Swiss Flag of Canton of Basel.svg Canton of Basel.
 * 4) The territories of the  Republic of Venice were lost to France, becoming the Septinsular Republic, a nominal protectorate of the  Ottoman Empire, from 1800–07. After reverting to France as the Illyrian Provinces, these territories then became a British protectorate, as the Flag of the United States of the Ionian Islands.svg United States of the Ionian Islands
 * 5) Maastricht was a condominium of the Prinsenvlag.svg Dutch Republic and the Armoiries Principauté de Liège.svg Bishopric of Liège.
 * 6) On 6 June 1805, as a result of the annexation of the Flag of Genoa.svg Ligurian Republic (the puppet successor state to the Flag of Genoa.svg Republic of Genoa), Tanaro was abolished and its territory divided between the departments of Marengo, Montenotte and Stura.
 * 7) Before becoming the department of Apennins, the Flag of Genoa.svg Republic of Genoa was converted to a puppet successor state, the Flag of Genoa.svg Ligurian Republic.
 * 8) Before becoming the department of Arno, the State flag of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.PNG Grand Duchy of Tuscany was converted to a puppet successor state, the Flag of the Kingdom of Etruria.svg Kingdom of Etruria.
 * 9) Rome was known as the department du Tibre until 1810.
 * 10) Before becoming the departments of Bouches-du-Rhin, Bouches-de-l'Escaut, Bouches-de-la-Meuse, Bouches-de-l'Yssel, Ems-Occidental, Frise, Yssel-Supérieur and Zuyderzée, these territories of the Prinsenvlag.svg 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 Ostfriesland Flagge mit Wappen.0.2.svg County of East Frisia, were converted to another puppet state, the Flag of the Netherlands.svg Kingdom of Holland.
 * 11) Before becoming the department of Simplon, the Valais-coat of arms.svg République des Sept Dizains was converted to a revolutionary République du Valais (16 March 1798) which was swiftly incorporated (1 May 1798) into the puppet Republiquehelv.svg Helvetic Republic until 1802 when it became the independent Rhodanic Republic.
 * 12) In the months before Lippe was formed, the arrondissements of Rees and Münster were part of Yssel-Supérieur, the arrondissement of Steinfurt was part of Bouches-de-l'Yssel and the arrondissement of Neuenhaus was part of Ems-Occidental.