Departments, Metres and a Rational State

The revolutionaries set out to replace the patchwork of the Old Regime with uniform, rational institutions. In 1790 France was divided into 83 departments of roughly similar size, designed so that anyone could reach the administrative centre within about a day's ride. Internal customs barriers were abolished, guilds were dissolved in 1791, and a single system of law courts replaced the old jurisdictions.

Scientists began work on a decimal system of weights and measures based on nature: the metre was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. The metric system became law in 1795. These reforms reflected Enlightenment confidence in reason and equality before the law, but they also centralised power, a continuity with the Old Regime that Tocqueville later stressed. Many of them, including the departments, still exist.