This article analyzes Italian research and experimentation on the economic potential of certain plant species in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, also providing insight into beekeeping and honey production. It focuses on continuity of method and progress across regimes and on the invisibility of many of the actors involved in the development of agricultural science and food research. Specifically, “continuity” refers to the continuation of certain threads of Old-Regime experimentation by the scientific apparatus put in place during the Napoleonic era. These threads were reworked and strengthened with the new means available to Frenchified Europe. The concept of “invisibility” derives from an expression by Steven Shapin and refers to actors who contributed to the development of agricultural science while remaining in the shadows. These include various types of technicians and members of rural society who supported the scientific work of scholars without receiving overt recognition. Continuity and invisibility were therefore two fundamental components both in the epistemological development of agricultural science and in the improvement of food research. The article analyzes case studies mainly from northern Italy – or rather, the various geopolitical entities existing in this geographical region – during the late Old Regime and the Napoleonic era, comparing them with examples from all over Europe.

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The article studies agricultural science teaching and research in the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. In particular, it considers the three national universities of Pavia, Bologna and Padua, highlighting both the points in common and the differences between them. It analyses both unpublished documentation and monographs, dissertations, scientific journals circulating at the time. The article is introduced by an analysis of the Napoleonic legislation for the strengthening of agricultural science as an institutional knowledge. The study related to the University of Pavia comes next. It isolates the topics of cultivation of cereals and grain conservation techniques in order to analyse the educational and scientific activity and its contribution to the national debate. This is followed by an analysis of the professorships in Bologna and Padua, considering similarities and differences with Pavia in matter of topics.

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