Province

This article is about political regions. See geologic province for geological meanings.

Province is a name for a secondary level of government in most countries. In some countries an alternative term is used, such as state (in Australia and the United States), prefecture (in Japan), or region (in France and Italy; the latter uses provincia as a tertiary form of government, akin to a county). During the time of the British Empire, various colonies had the title of Province such as the Province of Canada and Province of South Australia. In Germany and Austria, the same sense of historical and cultural unity on a less-than-national scale is expressed as Land, the common name for states of Germany and states of Austria.

In many federations (particularly those that are in fact confederations), the province or state is not clearly subordinate to the national or "central" government. Rather, it is considered to be sovereign in regard to its particular set of constitutional functions. The central and provincial governmental functions, or areas of jurisdiction, are identified in a constitution. Those that are not specifically identified in the constitution are called "residual powers". These residual powers lie at the provincial (or state) level in a decentralised federal system (such as the United States and Australia) whereas in a centralised federal system they are retained at the federal level (as in Canada). Nevertheless, some of the enumerated powers can also be very significant. For example, Canadian provinces are sovereign in regard to such important matters as law and order, property, civil rights, education, social welfare, medical services and even taxation.

The evolution of federations has created an inevitable tug-of-war between concepts of federal supremacy versus "states' rights". The historic division of responsibility in federal constitutions is inevitably subject to multiple overlaps. For example, when central governments, responsible for "foreign affairs", enter into international agreements in areas where the state or province is sovereign, such as the environment or health standards, agreements made at the national level can create juridictional overlap and conflicting laws. This overlap creates the potential for internal disputes that lead to constitutional amendments and judicial decisions that significantly change the balance of powers.

The word was introduced by the Romans, who divided their empire into provinciae. The word is thought to have originated from the Latin word provincia (zone of influence), which is turn is thought to have derived from pro ("in front") and vincia ("linked").

In France, the expression en province still tends to mean "outside of the region of Paris". Prior to the French Revolution, the country consisted of the region of Ile-de-France – the personal fiefdom of the king – and the royal provinces, which were once governed by their own feudal lords. Today, the expression is sometimes replaced with en région, as that term is now officially used for the secondary level of government.

The same expression is used in Peru, where en provincias means "outside of the city of Lima", although Lima itself is located in a province. Provinces are a tertiary unit of government in Peru, as the country is divided into twenty-five regions, which are then subdivided into 194 provinces.

In Arab countries the secondary level of government, called a muhfazah, is usually translated as a governorate. This term is also used for the historic Russian guberniyas. Compare oblast.

In Poland, the equivalent of province is województwo, often translated as voivodeship.

Contents

1 Current

2 Governorates

3 Historical provinces

3.1 Ancient and medieval/feudal provinces
3.2 Modern provinces

Current

Subdivisions called or translated into "province".

Country	local name	Number of entities
Provinces of Afghanistan	from arab. wilaya	24
Provinces of Argentina	span. provincia	23
Provinces of Armenia	marz	11
Provinces of Belarus	bela. voblast	6
Provinces of Belgium		10
Provinces of Bolivia	span. provincia	112
Provinces of Bulgaria	bulg. oblast	28
Provinces of Canada	engl./fran. province	10
Provinces of Chile	span. provincia	51
Provinces of China	chin. sheng	22
Provinces of Cuba	span. provincia	15
Provinces of Ecuador	span. provincia	22
Provinces of Equatorial Guinea	span. provincia	7
Provinces of Finland	finn. läänit / swed. län	6
Provinces of Gabon	fran. province	9
Provinces of Indonesia	indo. propinsi	29
Provinces of Iran	fars. ostan	30
Provinces of Ireland		4
Provinces of Italy	ital. provincia	103
Provinces of Kazakhstan	oblasy	14
Provinces of Kenya		8
Provinces of Kyrgyzstan	oblasty	7
Provinces of Korea	kore. do, to	14
Provinces of Laos	lao khoueng	16
Provinces of Madagascar		6
Provinces of the Netherlands	dutc. provincie	12
Provinces of Oman	ara. wilaya	appr. 60
Provinces of Pakistan		4
Provinces of Papua New Guinea		19
Provinces of Peru	span. provincia	180
Provinces of the Philippines	fili.: lalawigan / probinsya	79
Provinces of Poland	pl. województwo	16
Provinces of Rwanda	intara	12
Provinces of São Tomé and Príncipe	port.	2
Provinces of Saudi Arabia	arab. mintaqah	13
Provinces of the Solomon Islands		9
Provinces of South Africa		9
Provinces of Spain	span. provincia	50
Provinces of Tajikistan	veloyati, from arab. wilaya	3
Provinces of Thailand	changwat	76
Provinces of Turkey	turk. il	81
Provinces of Turkmenistan	from arab. wilaya	5
Provinces of Ukraine	ukra. oblast	24
Provinces of Uzbekistan	from arab. wilaya	12
Provinces of Vanuatu		6
Provinces of Zambia		9
Provinces of Zimbabwe		8

The most populous province is Henan, China, pop. 93,000,000. Also very populous are several other Chinese provinces, as well as Punjab, Pakistan, pop. 85,000,000.

The largest provinces by area are Xinjiang, China (1,600,000 sq. km) and Quebec, Canada (1,500,000 sq. km).

There are also provinces in New Zealand, but the country is not seen as a "federal" country. However, the provinces do have a few duties like collecting rates and each province has its own Health Board and District Prisons Board.

Governorates

The term governorate is widely used in arab countries to describe an administrative unit; it translates the Arabic word muhafazah. Some governorates combine more than one wilaya; others closely follow traditional boundaries inherited from the Ottoman Empire's vilayet system.

Historical provinces

Ancient and medieval/feudal provinces

pharaonic : see nome (Egypt)
in Achaemenid Persia (and probably before in Media), again after conquest and further extension by Alexander the Great, and in various (mainly the larger) hellenistic successor states : see satrapy
Provinces of the Roman empire
in (later) Byzantium : see exarchate, theme
the gau (a county) in the Frankish (Carolingian) 're-founded' Holy Roman Empire
the emirate? in the (Arab-ruled) caliphate and subsequent sultanates
the subah in the Indian mughal empire

Modern provinces

In historical terms, Fernand Braudel has depicted the European provinces—built up of numerous small regions called by the French pays or by the Swiss cantons, each with a local cultural identity and focused upon a market town—as the political unit of optimum size in pre-industrial Early Modern Europe and asks, "was the province not its inhabitants' true 'fatherland'?" (The Perspective of the World 1984, p. 284) Even centrally organized France, an early nation-state, could collapse into autonomous provincial worlds under pressure, such as the sustained crisis of the Wars of Religion, 1562—1598.

For 19th and 20th-century historians, "centralized government" had been taken as a symptom or modernity and political maturity in the rise of Europe. Then, in the late 20th century, as a European Union drew the nation-states closer together, centripetal forces seemed to be moving towards a more flexible system composed of more localized, provincial governing entities under the European umbrella. Spain after Franco is a State of Autonomies, formally unitary, but in fact functioning as a federation of Autonomous Communities, each one with different powers. (see Politics of Spain). While Serbia, the rump of the former Yugoslavia, fought the separatists in the province of Kosovo, at the same time the UK, under the political principle of "devolution" established local parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (1998). Strong local nationalisms surfaced or developed in Cornwall, Languedoc, Catalonia, Lombardy, Corsica and Flanders, and east of Europe in Abkhasia, Chechnya and Kurdistan.

In the Habsburg territories, the traditional provinces are partly expressed in the Länder of 19th-century Austria-Hungary.

The Ottoman Empire's provinces had various types of governors (gnerally a pasha), but mostly styled vali, hence the predominant term vilayet, generally subdivided (often in beyliks), sometimes grouped under a governor-general (styled beglerbeg).