In the classic legal and historiographical interpretation, the administrative project of 1789-1790 was often obscured by the Weberian interpretation of a continuous and rationalised modernisation of the State. Criticised by liberal historiography from the 19th century onwards as responsible for the territorial "anarchy" of 1793, it has been lastingly condemned as "theoretical speculation" or even as a "constitutional aberration". This interpretation was first and foremost the product of the collective trauma experienced by the revolutionary players in face of the political impasses and territorial threats endured by the First Republic. Subsequently, it has been converted into a literature that is often unable to think of local administration outside the imperative of control assumedby the model of the NationState. However, this administrative project undoubtedly deserves to be analysed from a new point of view, freed from the interpretative schemes of the 19th century and combined, as it was for the men of 1789, with an aspiration to self-government and the rule of general law, the ideal of territorial federation and national unity.