This book provides the first comprehensive study of the technical corps during the Napoleonic Era, both in France and in Italy. These corps, which possessed advanced schooling and nurtured meritocratic practices even in the Ancien Regime, came to the forefront with the French Revolution, due to the increase in prestige of both scientists and the military. Notwithstanding the key roles played by well-known figures such as Lazare Carnot and Napoleon Bonaparte, the historiography has not fully explored either the culture that produced them, or the impact this had in France and in Napoleonic Europe, or their far-reaching legacy. The modern paradigms of technocracy and meritocracy in fact have their origin in these corps.
