Introduction

Abstract

This book explores new territory in the international historiographical debate on the evolution of the State-science relationship during the Age of Enlightenment and the Napoleonic Era. It analyzes the actors and dynamics driving the evolution of agricultural science in the decades straddling the turn of the nineteenth century in the geographical context of northern Italy. Here, institutions, experts, and some landowners showed great creativity in participating in the European knowledge network, contributing to the development of agricultural science. While historiographic literature contains good deal of materials on the development of this science, the international dimension of northern Italian agricultural science has received relatively little attention. This book offers a first attempt to fill this gap.