Dear loyal readers:
The BYU French Studies blog team--in an effort to help all of you increase your understanding of French culture, politics, and way of life--is pleased to bring you our new series, for your reading pleasure: "Better Know a Department." Each week, we will bring you a brief summary of one of France's beloved departments. This means that with your devotion to our blog, within two years you will have a wonderfully superficial understanding of all these very large areas within France's domain. Without question, you will be able to impress all of your friends who are undoubtedly constantly asking themselves questions like "how many French departments are there," and "which department is Toulon a part of?" Just because they're not vocalizing these questions to you, doesn't mean they don't have them. They're probably just embarrassed that they don't know, and thus don't ask. So starting sharing your knowledge with them, and realize that when they respond with things like "you need a hobby," they are really saying "please tell me more."
We start this series off with a short explanation of just what a department is. The following information has been carefully researched and can be verified by the only source BYU students trust more than their own professors: Wikipedia (and we not only went there, but we referenced the FRENCH version, so you can KNOW this is solid information). Roughly analogous to counties in the United States, the departments were created by the National Constituent Assembly (Assemblée nationale constituante) to divide and organize french territory in 1790. This creation of the French Revolution caught on more so than the whole "French Republican Calendar" idea, but still is largely unfamiliar to us in America, kind of like the Metric System.
Initially, there were 83 districts, but Napoleon increased that number dramatically when he decided to conquer Europe. When that didn't work out so well after the little fire incident in Moscow, France was left with 86 departments by 1815 (they constituted the same territory as the original 83, however three of those had been divided, giving France an additional three departments. Still, we'll chalk that up as a net-gain). Today, each individual department has a general council (conseil général) at its head, which is elected for a six year period. A prefect (préfect) is sent to each department to represent the national government. Each department is broken down into a couple of arrondissements and then even further into communes. Currently, there are 100 departments in total, including four overseas: Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Réunion. To learn more about these four, wait for "overseas month." It will be exciting.
For those of you still wondering about the calendar, today is: Septidi, 17 Brumaire, in the year 217. Share that with a friend today.
