DEPARTMENT, a division or part of a system ; one of the branches of the Administration in a State or municipality. In Great Britain it is commonly applied to the subordinate divisions of the chief executive offices of State, such as the savings bank or other department of the Post Office, the mines department of the Board of Trade, etc. ; in the United States these subordinate divisions are known as "bureaux," while "department" is used of the chief branches of the executive.
In France the word is also used for a territorial division cor responding loosely to an English county. Previous to the French Revolution the local unit in France was the military gouvernement, roughly corresponding to the old provinces, such as Franche Comte, Provence, Bourgogne, Bretagne, etc., but this division being too closely bound up with the administrative mismanage ment of the old regime, at the suggestion of Mirabeau, the "pro vinces" were divided into departments, as nearly as possible equal to a certain average of size and population, and deriving their names principally from rivers, mountains or other prominent geo graphical features. In 186o three new departments were created out of the newly annexed territory of Savoy and Nice. The three departments of Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle, which were lost after the Franco-German war in 1871, were restored in 1919. Each department is presided over by an officer called a prefect (q.v.) and is subdivided into arrondissements each in charge of a sub-prefect. Arrondissements are again subdivided into cantons and these into communes, somewhat equivalent to the English parish. (See FRANCE : Government and Administration.)