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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of accounting in the enactment of the Napoleonic imperial project in Tuscany and the Kingdom of Naples in the early nineteenth century. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts the Foucauldian theoretical framework of governmentality and a comparative approach to highlight similarities and differences between the two regions. Findings The presence of different cultural understandings and structures of power meant that in Tuscany accounting mirrored and reinforced the existing power structure, whereas in the Kingdom of Naples accounting practices were constitutive of power relations and acted as a compensatory mechanism. In the Kingdom of Naples, where local elites had been traditionally involved in ruling municipalities, control of accounting information and the use of resources “re-adjusted” the balance of power in favour of the French whilst letting local population believe that Napoleon was respectful of local customs. Research limitations/implications The ability of accounting technologies to act as compensatory mechanisms within governmentality systems paves the way to further investigations about the relationships between accounting and other governmentality technologies as well as the adjustment mechanisms leading to accounting resilience in different contexts. Social implications By identifying accounting as an adaptive instrument supporting less obvious practices of domination the study helps unmask a hidden mechanism underlying attempts to know, govern and control populations which still characterises modern forms of imperialism. Originality/value The comparative perspective leads to a new specification of the multifaceted roles that accounting plays in different cultural and political contexts in the achievement of the same set of imperial goals and enhances understanding of the translation of politics, rhetoric and power into a set of administrative tasks and calculative practices.

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The article uses Latour’s actor-network perspective to explore the role of accounting and the intendants (administrative officials) in integrating the Kingdom of Naples into Napoleon’s empire during the first decade of the nineteenth century. By comparing the ‘action at a distance’ network planned by the French empire and its actual ‘translation’ played by both human actors and accounting technologies, we reveal certain unintended consequences. Although the French plan assigned the main translating role to the budgets, the intendants resulted as the main players. Their role as intermediates of the budgets transmission between local and central levels of government had the greatest influence on the ‘translation’ process. This role stemmed from the need to overcome the resistance of the local governments against the French plan. The main contribution of this work is to highlight that network survival may require human actors to replace technologies in ‘translation’ processes.