page_title: Provinces of the Netherlands
section_title: French period
hierarchical_section_title: Provinces of the Netherlands / History / French period
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Belgium and the Netherlands during the French occupation.Français&#160;: Carte de la Belgique et des Pays-Bas pendant l'occupation française.
context_page_description: There are twelve provinces of the Netherlands, representing the administrative layers between the national government and the local municipalities, with responsibility for matters of subnational or regional importance.
  Currently, the most populous province is South Holland, with just over 3.7 million inhabitants as of January 2020, and also the most densely populated province with 1,374/km². With 383,488 inhabitants, Zeeland has the smallest population. However Drenthe is the least densely populated province with 188/km². In terms of area, Friesland is the largest province with a total area of 5,749 km². If water is excluded, Gelderland is the largest province by land area at 4,964 km². The province of Flevoland is the smallest by land area at 1,412 km². In total about 10,000 people were employed by the provincial administrations in 2018.
  The provinces of the Netherlands are joined in the Association of Provinces of the Netherlands. This organisation promotes the common interests of the provinces in the national government of the Netherlands in The Hague.
context_section_description: During the Batavian Republic, the Netherlands was from 1798 to 1801 completely reorganised into eight new departments, most named after rivers, inspired by the French revolutionary example, in an attempt to do away with the old semi-autonomous status of the provinces. They are listed below, with their capitals and the territory of the former provinces that they mostly incorporated:
  After only three years, following a coup d'état, the borders of the former provinces were restored, though not their autonomous status. They were now also called "departments" and Drenthe was added to Overijssel. In 1806 the Kingdom of Holland replaced the republic to further French interests. It was during this administration that Holland was first split in two, with the department of Amstelland to the north and that of Maasland to the south. East Frisia, then as now in Germany, was added to the kingdom as a department in 1807 and Drenthe split off again making a total of 11 departments.
  When the Netherlands finally did become fully part of France in 1810, the departments of the kingdom and their borders were largely maintained, with some joined together. They were however nearly all renamed, again mainly after rivers, though the names differed from their Batavian counterparts. Following are their names and the modern day province they mostly correspond to:
  With the defeat and withdrawal of the French in 1813, the old provinces and their names were re-established, Holland was reunited and East-Frisia went its separate way. The 17 provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands were for a significant part based on the former French departments and their borders, in particular in what would later become Belgium.
  There is continuous discussion within the Netherlands about the future of the provinces. Before 2014, the national government was planning to merge the provinces Flevoland, North Holland and Utrecht into a single province (Noordvleugelprovincie). Due to significant protest the plan was abandoned.
caption: Map of the subdivisions of the Netherlands during French administration; East Frisia is not included in this later map
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