Franco-Maltese relations span almost a thousand years if one takes into account the Normans’ expeditions from Sicily to the Maltese islands in the 11th and 12th centuries. This historical episode is now mostly associated with Count Roger and the adoption of the Maltese national white and red colours as well as with the return of the islands to the European fold since the Roman Empire.

This decisive chapter in the life of the then Siculo-Arabic, mostly Muslim, community was followed by the brief 13th-century affiliation with another French kingdom, which brought Malta under the Angevins. It is believed that this had introduced the first liturgical Catholic rituals of the Maltese Church.

The enduring epoch of l’Ordre de Malte (as most French people perceived Malta for centuries), with the majority of knights and grand masters hailing from the French aristocracy, has undoubtedly left the most durable cultural identity legacy, evident in the artistic and cultural heritage. Affluent French grand masters, in fact, were the ones who commissioned the most opulent landmarks on the island. These included the Baroque capital city of Valletta, Senglea, the aqueduct that brought water to the city, the palaces of Verdala and San Anton as well as Paola, and St John’s conventual church. French knight Louis Guerin de Tencin, who bequeathed an estimated 9,700-volume collection of books, founded the Bibliotheca in 1766, with the present building later commissioned by French grand master Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc.

Unquestionably, the French republicans led by General Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798, with the latter’s tumultuous but crucial imprint on the modern political aspirations of the nascent nation, injected the most radical republican expectations Malta’s literati were desirous to adopt.

These sites of memory, constantly rooted in most young minds through history textbooks and education, are the basis of what Maltese adult citizens are equipped with when they read about news from France, which will hold presidential elections on April 10.

Although, oddly enough, there has been no official state visit to Malta by a French president since independence, three French presidents have recently visited the island. François Hollande attended a handful of regional and international conferences in the 2010s; Nicolas Sarkozy dropped by in a yacht on an unofficial visit before taking the oath of office in 2007, while the current president and main presidential contender Emmanuel Macron attended the South EU Summit MED7 held in Valletta in 2019.

Customs from French North Africa

French links also come to mind whenever we hear about Maltese emigration to North Africa. Between 1825 and 1885, 65 per cent of emigrants from British-colonised Malta sought better survival prospects in French-ruled Algeria and Tunisia, besides Tripolitania (Libya) and Egypt.

Social practices imported from these neighbours at the time included the straw hat sans façon for men that had first appeared on sailors cruising on the Seine in Paris in the 19th century. The fashion spread like wildfire. Other social customs included the drinking of anisette and the naming of cinema theatres like L’Étoile, Odéon and Trianon.

It is believed that poupée, French for doll, became the demonstrative soubriquet tal-Pépé in Maltese, reserved for affected gesticulating snobs. The practice was widespread in Marseille, from where many Maltese sailors used to bring home the prized pupa ta’ Marsilja to spread out its dress on their bridal beds. The dolls are still fetching good prices on the internet.

Maltese emigrating farmers, who left the island in droves after 1830, replanted blood orange saplings they carried with them to Tunisia, and continue to export ‘les maltaises’ to France to this very day. The custom had started in Malta earlier under the Order during the 18th century, when French trader Savoye used to ship fresh ones to Queen Marie Antoinette, initiating a trendy craze in Paris. 

French of Maltese origin

Several successful French citizens of Maltese origin, whose families moved to France, many after Algerian independence in 1962, included a number of academics, like French philosopher and sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912-1994). Critic and writer Fernand Gregh (1873-1960) remains the only French author of Maltese origin who was elevated to the highest literary honour of becoming one of the ‘40 immortals’ of the Academie française in 1953.

Notwithstanding Malta’s admirable attempts to leave a mark at the Olympics, including recent forays in the winter tournaments, the closest to a Maltese-associated gold medal remains the one achieved by French footballer of Maltese descent Daniel Xuereb. In 1984, he scored the sole winning goal in the Los Angeles final against Brazil for France. He played for les Bleus between 1981 and 1989, and later, after joining Lyon, PSG and Marseille, became a football coach.

Another Maltese bearing the same surname, whose iconic bust shares the fascia of famous composers around the exterior of the 1870 L’Opéra de Paris, is Nicolò Isouard Xuereb. He acquired the highest acclaim in the arts when Napoleon III recognised his musical contribution during the First Napoleonic French Empire.

A number of French citizens with Maltese origins were also successful in the political arena of France, including the current minister for the interior, banker Gérald Darmanin. During the last French legislature, Claude Bartolone, born in Tunis of a Sicilian father and a Maltese mother, was the president of the National Assembly, while high-profile politician Edgar Pisani (1918-2016) spent a lifetime serving in the governments of presidents Charles De Gaulle and François Mitterand.

A number of French citizens with Maltese origins were successful in the political arena of France

French architects in Malta

Médéric Blondel was the first French resident engineer (1659-1695) who helped to complete a network of coastal defences on the island. He can also be considered as the catalyst for French influence on Maltese civil and ecclesiastical architecture, including the Ta’ Ġieżu church façade in Valletta.

This influence reached its peak during the 18th century, with various French military engineers overseeing bastions and the construction of Fort Manoel, whose plan replicated works of the famous French military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707). De Vauban’s school of thought influenced several other French engineers who came to Malta, such as Colongues, de Tigné, de Mondion, de Tresmannes, Maigret and Folard.

An innovative architectural link with France was forged in the 1830s when villagers in Mosta wanted to enlarge their old church. Novel designs by French descendant and Bonapartist Georges Grognet de Vasse (1774-1862), though rejected by the then anti-French general, Bishop F. X. Caruana, were confirmed by the parish. The construction of the famed Mosta rotunda, hailed as the third largest dome in the world, was completed in the 1860s.

Medical French links

Perhaps the strongest link Malta enjoyed with France during the epoch of the Order of Malta occurred when Maltese medical doctors undertook further specialisation at the Paris and Montpellier universities. This practice continued throughout the 19th century and into the early years of the 20th century.

Maltese psychiatrist Thomas Chetcuti, director of the Franconi Mental Asylum at Floriana in 1838, after visits to France, returned to Malta and inspired by the humanitarian reforms of Frenchman Philippe Pinel (1745-1826), liberated local mental patients from chains. In 1899, two of the Attard Mental Hospital wards were named after the French pioneers Pinel and Guillaume Ferrus (1784-1861), the latter having established the concept of occupational therapy.

During the same period, Gavino Gulia kept his medical readers abreast of contemporary advances in French medicine by publishing extracts from the Gazette medicale, the Gazette des Hospitaux as well as the Progrès medical journals. His brother, Amabile Gulia, propagated Louis Pasteur’s investigations in bacteriology and focussed attention on another Frenchman, Jules Lemaire (1814-1873), pioneer of the use of carbolic acid as an antiseptic in 1863, rendering surgical interventions safe from bacterial infection.

Themistocles Zammit (1864-1935), who in 1905 discovered the germ of brucellosis in goats, in 1891 attended the École Supérieure de Pharmacie to update his expertise in laboratory procedures and had a memorable meeting in Paris with Louis Pasteur (1822-1895).

During World War I, as physician to the French Navy in Malta, Alphonse Portelli Carbone (1863-1932) received the Légion d’Honneur. He appreciated how pasteurisation rendered goats’ milk free from the germ of brucellosis. In 1923, he recalled the story of how 14 Maltese children bitten by a rabid dog were saved from death by being inoculated by Pasteur himself in Paris. Another boy, who was in the same predicament, died because his parents objected to the vaccination. 

In agreement with the Royal British Navy, French Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère (1852-1924) was appointed commander-in-chief of both navies in the Mediterranean during World War I while the British were engaged defending northern Europe.

This is not the only time the Marine nationale had relations with Malta. The imperial French navy traces roots in the naval academy of the Knights of Malta since the 16th century, at the time of Cardinal Richilieu. French class frigate Tourville was in Grand Harbour some years ago, proudly displaying the Maltese Cross to recall its association with Vice Admiral Maréchal de France Hilarion de Tourville (1642-1701), a French knight of Malta.

Other French knights became admirals in the French Navy, including de Grasse, Suffren and Chevalier Paul, now remembered on other French vessels.