Malta’s Road to Autonomy 

Edited by Maroma Camilleri and Mevrick Spiteri,

Published by Malta Libraries

Malta’s Road to Autonomy: 100 Years on from the 1921 Self-Government, the third in a series devoted to public lectures organised annually by Malta Libraries, is dedicated to the memory of JJ Cremona, who wasn’t just a jurist and a poet but, in my view, also a patriot.

Handsome book with a few shortcomings

I must state that this is the first time in my many years of reading that I have encountered a book’s ‘Contents’ lacking page numbers.

Also, the first letter of the foreword, the preface, and the first two lectures/chapters is a drop cap, but from the third lecture onward, this style is discontinued.

The printers and the designers are not identified. And I might be wrong but the “Universitas coat-of-arms” on page 25 looks too similar to Grand Master de Rohan’s escutcheon not to raise questions. The first pages are not numbered using Roman numerals, as is usually done for forewords and prefaces, and the book begins on page 7, instead of page 1, as the title, copyright and other preliminary pages were clearly and misguidedly taken into account during page numbering.

These shortcomings are a real pity because the book’s physical qualities are truly exquisite.

The six lectures

The book presents a series of six lectures that follow a golden thread possibly connecting all of Maltese history, from the Middle Ages up to Self-Government established in 1921.

It opens with Charles Dalli’s analytical description of our islands’ medieval governing bodies – the Universitates – when Malta enjoyed autonomy until the archipelago was enfeoffed to the Order of St John. This look at the medieval administrative set-up is valuable because the Maltese kept returning to it

almost obsessively during the British period, as the precedent justifying their requests for autonomy.

A huge popular celebration in Main Guard Square on the proclamation of the first self-government constitution in 1921. Photo: Chritien & Co.

The book is intelligently conceived. It draws an arc from the autonomous Universitates government of the Middle Ages to the colonial Self-Government of the early 20th century. The latter is described in Dominic Fenech’s lecture, the one the book closes with. This lecture disappointed me, on three accounts.

First, it’s a rehash of a piece  Fenech had published 12 years earlier, without there being any attempt to convey new insights that might have been gained in the intervening years. Second, the analysis seems to me shallow, certainly not what one would expect from an old hand like the professor. Third, the writing style is – not to put too fine a point on it – pedestrian.

Though Michael Frendo isn’t a historian, his lecture – the second in the series – provides an analysis of the rights acquired by the Maltese in 1428, when they redeemed their homeland’s freedom from the king’s creditor (the well-known Monroy episode). I shall return to this beautiful essay further down.

Next, one finds Giovanni Bonello’s lecture called A Legal Profile of the 1530 Transfer of Malta and its Aftershocks. This lecture needs contextualisation. The author could have easily delved into feudal law, boring his readers to tears in the process. I own a few books on vassalage, lieges, fiefs, and all that, and, believe you me, it’s not the glamorous world movies set in the Middle Ages depict.

The bookcase of every Maltese who loves his country is where this book belongs

Judge Bonello avoids all this, though he does touch on one of the more intriguing legal issues. On page 49, he calls the 1530 instrument “sui generis” because “fiefs usually went to vassal physical persons [...] rather than to moral persons with their own claims to sovereignty”.

This isn’t a legal history publication, and it’s not a pop history book either: Bonello succeeds in quenching the thirst of the reader who wants to drink from the fountain of legal issues (by indicating them to him) while piquing the interest of the lay reader either by flagging the issue or by means of non-lawyerly renditions of complex political-legal issues through historical episodes. I find this approach wise.

One always learns from Bonello – not just through his erudition and literary style, but also through the strategy he employs to interact with his readers.

Godfrey Pirotta’s lecture is next in line, exuding his characteristic humility. But behind that façade lies an inquisitive and insightful mind, and learning. He asks whether the 1921-1932 Parliament was an experiment meant to fail and presents his conclusion as a hypothesis: yes, it was meant to because the failure was in the Empire’s interests.

A detail from a map showing the old city of Mdina.

The professor’s reasoning is persuasive. This lecture also provides an eye-opening analysis of the single-transferable-vote system, its causal link with political patronage, and why the British needed to sabotage Maltese politics through this system.

André Debattista’s lecture on self-government and dominion status in the British Empire (1919-1926) is absolutely valuable from a contextualisation angle. Whereas the other lectures deal with the Maltese situation from an internal point of view, Debattista tackles the subject from the external angle, removing the blind spots that otherwise hinder readers from understanding events beyond Malta’s shores.

This seems to be Maltese history-writing’s biggest defect: being oblivious to the fact that though an island, Malta is still connected to the world. The sea brings both physical flotsam and jetsam and debris consisting of ideas, political developments and so on. Debattista – in my opinion, a rising star in the Maltese intellectual firmament – puts Malta on the imperial map.

The bookcase of every Maltese who loves his country is where this book belongs. It’s the love exhibited in Michael Frendo’s parting shot (p. 42) which might not add much to what we already know, but does excite a rush of patriotism:

“History as forged by human experience and struggles teaches us that winning freedom is not a matter of linear progression. It is the result of a struggle that stutters and falters, moves forward, falls back, but, in the indomitable human spirit, inevitably resumes its pace in time. The Magna Charta Libertatis was a significant constitutional milestone for the Maltese.

“That legal victory and the 100 years of effective self-rule that followed represented a collective experience of the Maltese people that continued to resonate in the memory of the nation in later centuries. It is such experiences that formed and further strengthened the sinews of the nation, in an unremitting progression that eventually led to these islands and its people achieving independence, and sovereign statehood in 1964.”