How Malta became British

J. F. Grima’s feature (May 28) on – as timesofmalta.com preferred to re-title it – ‘How the Maltese islands became a British colony after the ousting of the French’  portrays a history full of illustrious names and pictures built with respect guided by British imperial thought.

I rather opt for Adam Rutherford’s statement: “It is the past, not history, that is fixed and the job of the historians is to constantly reassess it.”

May I add a few points of relevance to Grima’s feature, which could be of interest to students of history.

The author refers to “the majority of the island’s inhabitants” when whatever happened during that tumultuous period was orchestrated by an elitist segment (judged by the British as “wholly unfit to govern themselves”) rather than “the ignorant masses” who knew little of what was going on. Hunger and unemployment under the British would soon force those masses to seek a living in North Africa.

In the feature, scant details accompanied the petitions by the same elites to the British monarch. I find it strange how British officer William Eton, who often manoeuvred Maltese opportunists by making them sign English texts (a language they hardly understood) which he coordinated and presented to his sovereign in his effort to besmirch and replace commissioner Alexander Ball, was not mentioned.

Patrick Staines (2008) and S.J. Gribble’s 2018 The ‘Radical Underworld’ of the Mediterranean: William Eton, Malta, and the British Mediterranean Empire, 1770-1806 throw light on this period.

The 1815 Congress of Vienna, which eventually sealed Malta’s fate as a British colony rather than the protectorate the elite had sought, is only mentioned in the last paragraph. In 1907, Mgr Alfredo Mifsud argued that Malta was too small to affirm its rights and protestations against being “an object of negotiation without its intervention” in this “arrogant” congress “of wolves”.

According to contemporary witness Eugène Fenech, the Maltese were formally informed of this meekest transition on December 16, 1818, three years after the Vienna autarchic decision. No wonder Grima did not bother to translate Melitensium Amor from the Main Guard’s servile inscription. Certainly unaware, the Maltese could not have loved – or otherwise – this appropriation of their destiny.  

In the same spirit of Routledge’s Commonwealth journal of international affairs, The Round Table’s recent review of my book Decolonising the mind, in search of identity, where it aptly stressed my “long critical voice of Malta’s representations of its own history”, may I respectfully posit that sins of “passive neglect or omission” (Paul Ricoeur, 2002)) produce distorted histories.

CHARLES XUEREB – Sliema

Our future economic strategy

Aviation services is a economic sector with potential for growth. PHOTO: CHRIS SANT FOURNIER

Malta needs to find ways to grow the economy that “must rest on everything except construction”, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana told Times of Malta recently.

Surely these are words which should qualify as the wisest heard so far in this country from any politician this year.

It is our duty to continue suggesting to our government and our political class ways of ending the control of the construction industry over the Planning Authority and suggesting alternatives for the country to move forward.

Here are some potential avenues: the maritime sector, the exporting manufacturing sector, aviation services, making Malta a prime tertiary education attraction in the Mediterranean, more investment in financial services, sports and religious tourism.

 We should also give places like Paceville, Gżira and Buġibba a facelift, restrict the number of private cars that, on any day, are allowed to circulate on Malta’s roads and move Malta up one or two notches in the medical tourism field.

It will be the party which shows greatest sanity that will reap victories at the next local council, European Parliament and national elections.

Quality of life, and not just money in people’s pockets, is far, far more important.

JOHN CONSIGLIO – Birkirkara