Since when has marking freedom from colonialism been deemed offensive (‘Offensive nameplate’, May 27)?
There is no doubt that Malta became Britain’s unofficial protectorate out of its own volition early in the 19th century. There is clear evidence leading political thinkers submitted frequent petitions to London to better their lot while the island was being absorbed into the British Empire as a colony.
As Tristram Hunt would say, the British usually liked to suggest “some legalistic basis for their military adventures”.
This legalistic basis was achieved by Britain at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 by acquiring the approval of their victorious European allies to have the island ceded to them by way of ‘compensation’ following the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Treaty of Paris a year earlier. No consultation is recorded with any Maltese representative.
Almost a century later, historian Alfredo Mifsud argues that Malta was too small to affirm its rights and protestations against being “an object of negotiation without its intervention”. He adds that “arrogance in this congress of wolves was their favourite food”.
According to eyewitness medical doctor Eugene Fenech, Maltese leading citizens were called by the governor’s secretary at the palace to be officially informed of this acquisition three long years later, on December 16, 1818.
He notes that “the next day, Maltese civil servants, some of them after long years of service, were replaced by English ones, sometimes one Englishman replacing 10 Maltese”.
If there is any public plaque in Valletta that is not stating the full truth it is the inscription under the prominent British royal insignia on Palace Square, which declares that it was the “Melitensium amor” that confirmed the accession of Malta as a colony into the British Empire in 1814.
Obviously, it was put there by the colonial authorities along with several other huge insignias around the palace to inculcate Maltese loyalty to the British Crown ‘with every method’, perhaps ensuring what Maurice Halbwachs would call “social bonds for future generations”.
Hence, the correspondent’s lament.