In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the question of common lands played a crucial role in the history of French agricultural and social evolutions. The debate seemed however rather blur because a persistent confusion with the debate about common rights. It is above all disturbed by the complexity of stakes involved in this discussion. Was the common land sharing able to solve the agricultural backwardness? Did it concur in solving social issues or did it push the poor to mendicity? What kind of possibilities did it supply for the rural community and what was the real politics followed by the governments? Such questions raised doubt about the economic efficiency of land redistribution among the members of the rural communities. They introduced skepticism on the capacity of social actors, of communities and of governments, to take a clear position on this issue, insofar as the criteria of decisions were numerous, the relations of power were complicated and the actual contexts very varied.