Italian “economic botanists” and State-science cooperation (late eighteenth-early nineteenth century)

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many Italian naturalists became increasingly interested in the application of science to agriculture and manufacturing, expressing a growing awareness of the economic benefits of scientific progress in their countries. For example, botany increasingly combined more traditional studies with new research and experimentation aimed at defining the potential of plants in the food and textile sectors. The article analyzes the profiles of a number of Italian scientists, focusing on their progressive specialization in “economic botany” and considering their role in the circulation of socio-economic ideas as part of an evolution of the State-science synergy that involved all of Europe. It not only illustrates how natural sciences and socio-economic thought from France and Central Europe influenced Italian scientists, but also demonstrates how this community elaborated its own original contributions to European economic thought.