Fromits translation in 1793, Travels in France by Arthur Young enjoyed veritable public success in France, mainly on account of the response from the republican authorities and the farming community. Yet this reception was ambiguous. From the Consulate onwards, Young’s book was instrumentalised by French agronomists to force the State to undertake the major agricultural programme to which they had aspired for more than a decade. The Empire met their expectations and, according to the logic of reclassifying knowledge that it instituted, made an attempt at redefining the conventions of agricultural travel. This institutionalisation, scientific specialisation and instrumentalisation for political purposes constituted its new and unfinished characteristics.