Does it make any sense to carve up one small archipelago into two very distinct Maltas? Early observers of the islands did exactly that – urban Malta had one set of attributes while the countryside stood as an antithesis in almost every dimension of social life. 

Visitors deemed townspeople ostentatious, cheating and immoral; farmers and fishermen were frugal, industrious, prudish and bigoted. According to these diarists, two out of every three Maltese wives, sisters and daughters in the cities earned their livelihood merchandising their bodies while the countryfolk exacted the highest standards of chastity from their women.

A Malta postcard used in 1917, showing simple, rustic life.

Today’s feature skirts one-half of Malta’s spirit, the almost totally obsolete profile – bucolic, hard-working, primitive, resigned, at one with nature. 

Most of the images come from popular postcards of the 1910s. Not one is signed by the camera artist but, judging by the compositional style and technique, I would attribute most of them to the gifted Salvatore Lorenzo Cassar (1855-1928). 

Other pioneer photographers also tried their hand at this genre, like Richard Ellis, Mikiel Farrugia and Edward Alfred Gouder but it was Cassar who showed the greatest empathy with the toilers of nature and who transformed images of seed to food into miniature works of visual art. Oxen, mules, asses, sheep and goats appear as the docile props of rural mankind.

"Malta never produced enough to feed the population and relied on massive imports. The kings of Sicily favoured the Maltese with a unique concession: they could bring wheat and other edibles from Sicily without paying the hefty export tax"

Wheat being removed from an underground granary, pre-World War I.

Countrywomen loaded. Note how common it was for women to balance loads on their heads rather than carrying in their hands.

The Wignacourt aqueduct makes an impressive backdrop for this rustic scene which includes a watering cart and a karozzin. The postcard was used in 1929 but could be much earlier.

The farmer – bidwi, gabillott – takes centre stage, sharing back-breaking labour with farm animals, working ungenerous water-parched land – an agriculture immune to mechanisation in a panorama parcelled off by ancient rubble walls.

Countrywomen loaded. Note how common it was for women to balance loads on their heads rather than carrying in their hands.

The ancient fountain of Għeriexem, limits of Rabat, Malta, in the 1910s.

A country woman with a large sack of agricultural produce on her head, c. 1910.

A farmer with two pails of fresh cheeselets (ġbejniet).

Malta never produced enough to feed the population and relied on massive imports. The kings of Sicily favoured the Maltese with a unique concession: they could bring wheat and other edibles from Sicily without paying the hefty export tax.

All images from the author's collections