Decolonising the Maltese Mind

by Charles Xuereb,

published by Midsea Books, 2022

A large component of the Maltese population has repeatedly proved unable or unwilling to prevent its brain cells being colonised.

In their 250 years’ rule, the Knights of the Order of St John effortlessly, and maybe not even deliberately, imprinted on the natives an overwhelming urge to ape them. Most of those who had a voice aspired to turn into awkward reproductions of their masters, in manners, architecture, customs, language and tastes.

And, with the exit of the Knights (who were not colonisers), nothing really changes. The subconscious servility to the Order just shifted, and very smoothly too, to the latest owners. The people only switched mental vassalage – from the old Order to the new British.

Grovelling came easy, it hardly needed weightlifting training. Kowtowing identifies with winners, and who wants to be a loser? Malta will go down in history as the only nation in the whole world ever to offer to vanish into the great Mother Country – the appalling integration plot of the 1950s.

A contemporary scene in Merchants Street, Valletta, evoking both the Church and the British Empire who left their impact on Maltese identity. Photo: Charles Xuereb

In his unrelenting quest, Charles Xuereb researches whether this really happened, and why and how.

His proves to be a challenging book - some would rightly call it provocative. Spoiler alert – if readers disagree with or resent his conclusions, that is only further evidence, if any were needed, of how successful and complete this conceptual capture was and still is.

Over half a century has lapsed since independence, Malta has had government succeeding government, each claiming louder nationalist credentials than the previous one, and yet the decolonisation of the mind has hardly started – and still seems a failing process.

I confess I grow impatient listening to those nostalgic of colonial rule, those whose spirit, despite a purely paper liberation, remains soft hostage to imperialist thraldom.

“But the British were good sorts (Allaħares ma kienux l-Ingliżi għalina). But the Germans, the Belgians, the Italians, the French behaved even worse in their colonies. But the British left us a universal language. But the empire had a civilising mission. But they taught us to queue….” Any excuse sounds good, so long as it justifies an undignified carelessness of their own nationhood.

The fact is neither Xuereb nor I feel any compulsion to classify the various nuances of colonialism into better, average or worse.  All colonialism is evil. Intrinsically evil. Even when (especially when) it comes packaged in glittering tinsel and delivered to the sound of stirring jingles. Take torture as a (very) inappropriate example – it is always and uncompromisingly wicked.

The unveiling of the Great Siege monument, the only Maltese national monument erected in Valletta under British rule. Photo: courtesy of the National Archives

I find it pointless debating whether the rack was more virtuous than quartering, or whether tearing out your fingernails was worse than electric shocks to the genitals. Any shape and form of colonialism, however “good”, would still be dire.

This book is a thorough, and melancholic, memorial to how the collective will of a nation is conditioned (polite word for brainwashed) into relying on others – through money, through prestige, through social climbing, through promotion. Imperialism thrives when the pre-existing superiority complexes of the coloniser latch on to the pre-existing inferiority complexes of the colonised.

This racist ‘superiority’, the imperial brigade believed, gave them the right to own, to use and abuse, to ravage, to plunder, to set themselves up as beacons for the rest of humanity. We are the pre-eminent race, aren’t we? This, many of the colonised equally came to believe, imposed on them the duty to cheer and be grateful while being ruinously exploited.

A toxic symbiosis, between the two extreme opposites, survives well after political independence. It is much alive, healthy and hearty, today. Many Brits never faltered, whether it be pride or cockiness, in their claims to being exceptional – a different (read superior) nation. To this very day, in the intractable mess they are mired, the majority still feels it can look down on the bipeds from the rest of Europe.

Similarly, not much has changed in many Maltese. They still act as if inspiration and guidance can only shine from London, as if the British is the only model we should aspire to emulate. This, Xuereb rightly brands the colonisation of the mind.

A thorough memorial to how the collective will of a nation is conditioned

Many Maltese still think British. They punish their children with weird British names, drink tea, beer, whisky, and gain calories on pudding; the bible of parliamentary procedure is still Erskine May. Not to mention language: we translate, very literally, English idiomatic expressions – darba f’qamar blu, tieħdu bi żrara melħ, tara għajn b’għajn, tigdem aktar milli tista’ tomgħod, sold għal ħsiebithek, biċċa kejk and, oh, so many others.

British sailors posing in front of an old bus early in the 20th century, admired by local residents. Photo: courtesy of Sciortino Glass Plates, the National Archives

Our history teacher revealed that in 1568, Peter di Monte followed John de la Valette as grand master, and that the knights commissioned Matthew Preti to paint the vault of St John’s. Malta’s postboxes and telephone booths are forever red, over half a century after independence.

We drive on the left and recently changed the livery of our ambulances to clone exactly those of the UK. We can’t be seen to have a mind of our own, now, can we? Are we European, or fringe outcrops of the Anglosphere?

A few instances. The university issues a call for applications for the post of professor of surgery.  An excellent surgeon puts his name down – but fails to make it even to the shortlist. Where did he summon the arrogance to apply?

He only graduated summa cum laude in Heidelberg, the top German university for surgery. Now, how would the health service survive if operating theatres were abandoned in the hands of someone careless enough not to graduate in the UK?

When Malta became independent, it faced an option: either entrust external overview of its judicial decisions to the European Court of Human Rights or to the Privy Council in London. You guessed. Malta chose the Privy Council.

Dom Mintoff later claimed this to be a national outrage and sonorously kicked the Privy Council out. But then, he did not remember to join the European Court of Human Rights, as every other democratic European state, without a single exception, had done. 

Malta was left without any whiff of external judicial overview throughout all the years of his rather eccentric readings of the rule of law. That suited him fine.

Malta had, for hundreds of years, fashioned its university teaching of law, on well-tried-and-tested continental models, which led to a Doctorate of Laws. That, however, suffered the drawback of not conforming to any British model, a shameful opprobrium not to be endured.

In the UK, a Doctorate of Laws comes as a postgraduate degree. And how can post-colonial Malta have the insolence to be different from our former owners? No prob. A healthy tradition of a thousand years was flushed down the sewer and substituted overnight by an obsequious, demeaning and silly carbon copy of an entirely alien prototype.  But of a British prototype, so a round of applause please.

When the President’s Palace in Valletta decided to instal a sentry box at the entrance, I was daft enough to enquire about its design. Mhux bħal ta’ Buckingham Palace? came the irritable reply to this time-wasting dumbo. I should have known, shouldn’t I, that in the whole wide world, only Buckingham Palace can offer inspiration.

And after 58 years of independence, our army still has its marching orders brayed in English.

Queen Elizabeth II and her spouse Prince Philip in 1954 visiting Floriana early in the monarch’s reign. On the left is the pre-Independence flag with blue tile under the George Cross. Photo: Courtesy of Prime Ministers Collection, National Archives

Fact: Malta achieved independence in 1964. Legend: the Maltese too became independent then. But you don’t have to believe myths.

I perhaps tend to disagree with the author’s campaign to remove what he calls “colonial propaganda monuments” from public viewing.

Anything, from Queen Victoria’s Jubilee memorial statue in National Library square, to the George Cross on the flag, and several other mementos meant to spray Chanel No. 5 on what was essentially unrelenting servitude. 

If removing them would reverse history and anticipate independence by 164 years, that would certainly be an attractive proposition.

But no turnaround time machine has been invented yet, and, so far as I am concerned, good Queen Victoria can go on being amused. She, and the others, are part of a history we have to live with, warts, torts and all.

I have little doubt that, had I been the right age (I was four) at the outbreak of WWII, I would have temporarily suspended anti-colonialist militancy throughout the duration of the hostilities – the allies were fighting a war far more just than the Nazi-Fascists. But that’s as far as it goes. 

Some 28 years into independence, a kindly Maltese magistrate passed away, happy in the certainty that his heirs would respect his wish to be buried trussed up in a Union Jack.

Not unlike Rupert Brooke, in that rich dust, a richer dust concealed “that is for ever England”.

The photos appearing in this feature have all been taken from Charles Xuereb’s book Decolonising the Maltese Mind, published by Midsea books, which contains 130 images and a map of Valletta’s monumental scape.