Colonialism: old and new

Our Maltese national consciousness has taken centuries to emerge through the ‘clashes and encounters’ with consecutive foreign occupiers.

They have all been colonisers: primarily interested in holding Malta for its geostrategic value and deep natural harbours. Our occupiers wanted Malta to control the central routes in the Mediterranean connecting Europe to Africa and Asia.

Our people had to struggle for centuries to transition from an invisible, colonised population into a sovereign nation.

In Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire states that contact between different civilisations is generally healthy and enriching, but colonialism is the exact opposite. Growing up in Martinique, a Caribbean island colonised by France, his critique of French imperialism is also a global indictment of all Western European colonial projects.

True cultural blending and exchange require equality, mutual respect and reciprocity. Colonialism does not allow this exchange to take place. It establishes relations of domination and submission.

We have had to forge our national consciousness from below, adapting and evolving through different colonial epochs, with each layer shaping who we are and what we have become by not simply imitating others but by becoming ourselves. The Maltese language was born out of its encounter with Arabic and provided the space that allowed the Maltese to articulate their own independent thought.

Norman, Angevin and Aragonese rule integrated Malta into the Southern European socio-political sphere where the islands were treated merely as remote, feudal fiefdoms.

The Maltese rebellion (1426-27) against the cruel Aragonese feudal lord, Gonsalvo Monroy, is one of the earliest sparks of local consciousness. When the Maltese blockaded Monroy’s wife in Mdina and raised enough money to buy back their own islands from the King of Aragon, they demonstrated a collective political will. For 100 years they were granted the ‘Università’ an administrative council, a form of fragile early self-governance where the Maltese first learned to negotiate their rights against foreign rulers.

When the Order of the Knights of St John were granted Malta, we experienced ‘settler colonialism’, unique in its characteristics. The Knights intended to stay here permanently (once they knew that they had no other option) but without wanting to eliminate the indigenous population.

The Knights were an autocratic occupying force, but they inadvertently set Malta on the road to statehood. Because they ruled Malta from within Malta, they had to build a centralised administrative, legal, economic, and military infrastructure on the island. Under the Order, Malta transformed from “scattered rocks below Sicily” into a regional Mediterranean powerhouse. This concentrated wealth and governance allowed the local population to grow and see their island as a distinct political entity.

The French occupation (1798-1800) was brutal and short. There were Maltese intellectuals who had the illusion that Napoleon’s arrival would introduce radical democratic republican reform in Malta. Napoleon’s conquest of Malta was not to liberate our people through “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. Taking over Malta was part of French imperial expansion in the Mediterranean and to counter British trade routes and imperialism.

Under British rule, the Maltese faced a harsh reality: they were treated as secondary “British subjects” rather than equals, often paid lower wages for the same work. The military needs of the Empire always superseded local human needs. This systemic inequality fuelled the local constitutional and Labour movements, directly pushing Malta toward Independence (1964) and becoming a Republic (1974) and closing down British military bases in 1979.

Independence and sovereignty are never won permanently; they must be actively nurtured- Evarist Bartolo

Malta became a neutral state in 1987 and committed in its constitution to actively pursue peace, security, and social progress, not to join any formal military alliance and not to permit any foreign military bases on Maltese territory.

Independence and sov-ereig­nty are never won permanently; they must be actively nurtured. Waving a red and white flag and singing the national anthem is meaningless if a ‘colonial mentality’ remains.

A few scattered rocks

In Palermo, in 1963, Illuminato Peri wrote in Lezioni di storia medioevale’:

“In Sicily, the independence of the kingdom came to an end in an atmosphere of discouragement and resignation, and discouragement and resignation would become characteristic states of mind among the Sicilians.”

“In our own time, a small part of the Kingdom of the Island of Sicily and its adjacent islands has regained the dignity of an independent state. These are the islands of Malta and Gozo, which became independent in the second half of the twentieth century after a long period of foreign domination.”

Our survival as an independent sovereign state depends on how we manage our membership of the European Union and interdependence with the rest of the world.

A top-down, ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach by the European Union erodes Malta’s sovereignty and decision-making power when policies designed by and for the EU’s largest economies leave smaller, peripheral island states like Malta effectively sidelined. The European Union we joined was a “Europe of States”, a confederal model, and not the United States of Europe, a federal Europe which centralises supreme power within a single European government.

Pressure is growing within Brussels to abolish the unanimity rule (the national veto) in areas like foreign policy and taxation. Losing the veto would be ‘a tragedy’ for Malta. Without it, a top-down majority vote could easily force Malta into geopolitical or economic decisions that directly conflict with its national interests, completely erasing its independent voice.

The EU’s increasingly unified push toward militarisation, arms funding, and rigid bloc loyalty is a direct threat to Malta’s 1987 constitutional commitment to military neutrality.

Uniform, centralised European regulations on taxation and corporate laws frequently fail to account for how small island economies must innovate structurally to attract investment and remain competitive.

Our millennial history shows that when we lose control completely over our destiny, and decisions concerning us are taken without us or ignore our legitimate interests, they are taken against us. George Santayana says: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We will again become a few scattered rocks on the periphery of Southern Europe and lose all that we have gained since 1964.

Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.