In France under the Ancien Régime, an estate provincial (État provincial) was an assembly of the three estates of a province, "regularly constituted, periodically convoked and possessing certain political and administrative functions, of which the main one was to vote on the impôt". Only the "pays d'état" had rights to such Estates. This arose from the specific legal conditions of their historical incorporation into France as formerly independent states. Examples include the Estates of Brittany, Estates of Burgundy and Estates of Languedoc.
In France their official name was 'estates general of ' (to distinguish them from the 'états particuliers' and States-General) or simply 'the estates'. Without reducing it simply to this question, impôts were the provincial estates' preoccupation and main raison d'être throughout the ancien régime - their formal assent was generally accompanied by the drafting of complaints to send to the king or his councils.
In contrast to the pays d'état, any area where impôts were fixed by the king's representatives (known as the élus) were known as pays d'élection. This distinction was abolished after the French Revolution of 1789. A third category, "Pays d'imposition" was used for recently conquered lands which had their own local historical institutions (they were similar to the "pays d'état" under which they are sometimes grouped), although taxation was overseen by the royal intendant.
Famous quotes containing the words states and/or provincial:
“Sean Thornton: I don’t get this. Why do we have to have you along. Back in the states I’d drive up, honk the horn, a gal’d come runnin’ out.
Mary Kate Danaher: Come a runnin’. I’m no woman to be honked at and come a runnin’.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“The dead level of provincial existence.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)