the island inevitably
'involved in the dealings of the outside world' in an altogether
new way. To the Maltese, these were emerging novelties which
they only progressively began to discover how to appreciate
and exploit. They had been unexpectedly caught up indirectly
in a European-Mediterranean role for which they were unprepared
on account of their size, history, and underdeveloped economic
base. The enormous infrastructural changes which the Order found
necessary to undertake with urgency were in no way marginal
to its natural expectations. And although it had never been
the Order's mission, certainly not one of its priorities, to
civilize the local population, it unwittingly succeeded in breaking
late medieval Malta's isolation, the long-term results of which,
for sectors of the native population, must have signified an
outward expansion drive, one that would prove momentous in all
domains of material and cultural life. From a sparsely settled,
largely sedentary, rural society, it was transformed over the
course of two and a half centuries or so into one marked by
relative mobility and densely populated urban centres with strong
elements of proto-industrial features, like the arsenal for
shipbuilding and repairs, arms manufacturing, warehouses, and
trans-shipment facilities.
Unfortunately, we are not yet in a position
to discern properly the measure of literacy on late medieval
Malta, or its extent towards the end of the Order's rule. In
the mid-1630s, for example, Fabio Chigi, the future Pope Alexander
VII, lamented the absence of books on the island and had had
to import copies of what he wanted from Italy to make up for
his deep sense of isolation. In 1716 the Venetian Giacomo Capello,
equally frustrated at the magnitude of illitracy on the island,
complained that books in Malta were a very rare commodity, and
that not only was the book trade negligible, it was barely worthy
of the name. This notwithstanding, there can be no denying that
the winds of change were blowing in the direction of the central
Mediterranean. Hospitaller Malta could at least boast of a Jesuits'
College in the early 1590s, a medical school and a printing
press in the sixteenth, and a seminary, university, and public
library in the eighteenth, none of which - or anything similar
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existed before. The first narrative
history of Malta was published in 1647.
It was the presence of the Hospitallers and
their wide-ranging activities - rather than geography - that
gave Malta its strategic importance. Before 1530 the islands'
political and administrative centre was necessarily located
in or around inland Mdina. By way of contrast, the Hospitallers
exploited Malta's spacious grand harbour. They first focused
on the tiny seaport of Birgu, the only commercial centre of
medieval Malta and which Godfrey Wettinger identifies as the
'only one settlement right on the shore ... sheltering within
the bow-shot of the walls at the Castle of Sant' Angelo', turning
it into their new headquarters, and secondly by the building
of Valletta, thereby providing 'windows opening outwards', making
it possible, Braudel would say, 'to glimpse, as from an observatory,
the general history of the sea.'
It was a complete volte-face. For centuries
the surrounding sea had offered the local community a threatening,
hostile frontier. The advent of the Ottoman adversaries and
the Hospitallers' consequent commitment to an aggressive naval
policy dictated a new defence strategy which progressively discarded
the philosophy of the vulnerable coastline and determined the
new role Malta would increasingly assume as an important base
for military and naval operations. Indeed, writes a recent historian,(2)
it 'pitchforked the Maltese islands into Mediterranean power
politics.' Manned 'with slaves, convicts, and Maltese sailors,
and with others, often foreigners',(3)Hospitaller
galleys sailed to all corners of the Mediterranean, either on
their own in search of human and material booty or with other
European forces in the naval operations of the Christian West
against Ottoman lands or against ports and territories belonging
to the Sultan's vassals in the Maghreb. The contemporary chronicles
of Giacomo Bosio, Bartolomeo dal Pozzo, and the Abbé
de Vertot amply illustrate the Order's, and (albeit to a much
lesser extent) their Maltese subjects', heroic contribution
to the several combined Christian European efforts of the times.
Tunis and Lepanto, Cyprus and Crete, the Morea and Belgrade
are classic examples, few and isolated.
Notwithstanding the elaborate arguments |
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[1] F. Braudel, The Mediterranean
and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. S. Reynolds
(London, Collins, 1972), 150.
[2] A. Hoppen, 'Military Priorities and Social Realities
in the Early Modern mediterranean: Malta and its Fortifications',
in Hospitaller Malta 1530-1798: Studies on Early Modern Malta and
the Order of St John of Jerusalem, ed. V. Mallia-Milanes (Malta,
1993), 401.
[3] A.T. Luttrell, 'Malta and Rhodes: Hospitallers and Islanders',
in ibid., 268.
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