![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article explores the fantasies of untold gains British strategists (especially those at some remove from political power) developed about Malta in its first decades as a British colony. Located at the centre of a region positioned almost exactly between India and the Americas, Malta was conceived by a diverse set of thinkers as an imperial lynchpin: central to anticipated regional military dominance, revivified trade with the Ottoman Empire, new transportation projects, and ambitious missionary efforts. The disparate nature of these ambitions helps us understand the ways in which expanded British power in the Mediterranean could be seen as a source of excitement in its own right, not simply important in terms balance of power calculations, as much of the historiography assumes. Given that its position was considered to be key to the many benefits strategists hoped to derive from Malta, this article explores how the tiny island colony came to be seen as a ‘fulcrum’ from which outsized gains could be realised. Focusing on the period roughly between 1801 and 1840, I explore recurrent patterns of extreme optimism about what control of Malta could help achieve (often followed by recurrent disappointment). Following these cycles helps demonstrate how various British strategists imagined power in the Mediterranean could serve as an adhesive force for the broader empire during a period of imperial reconfiguration.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Wood, Importance of Malta, 3.
2 In general, this article tends to support P.J. Marshall’s revision to Vincent Harlow’s post-swing ‘second British Empire’ in its advocacy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a period of flexibility and possibility. As Marshall insists, the Atlantic World remained a central focus of British policy and strategy, and the move to reconfigure that world from the mid-1780s on, even as the Indian Empire was growing, put more focus on the Mediterranean as a zone of connection between the two that might evince similar dynamism. See Marshall, Making and Unmaking of Empires and Marshall, Remaking the British Atlantic. For the original ‘swing to the East’ thesis, see Harlow, Founding of the Second British Empire.
3 For a recent work that explores the extent to which British strategists envisioned Gibraltar as a node dependent on connection, communication, and cosmopolitanism in the eighteenth century (in a manner similar to perceptions of Malta during the period considered here), see Muller, “The Garrison Revisited: Gibraltar in the Eighteenth Century.”
4 On this discussion of ‘Northerners’ (by whom he meant the English, Dutch, Northern French, and others) as ‘invaders’ and ‘intruders’ in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century. Mediterranean, see Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, vol. I, 612–642. For a similar suggestion of the turn of the nineteenth century as a breaking point after which a history of the Mediterranean as a region (as opposed to different histories occurring in the Mediterranean) becomes impossible, see Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, 9–10. For critiques of this framework as regards the seventeenth-century Mediterranean, see Greene, “Beyond the Northern Invasion” and also Fusaro, “After Braudel: A Reassessment of Mediterranean History Between the Northern Invasion and the Caravan Maritime,” and Heywood, “The English in the Mediterranean, 1600–1630: A Post-Braudelian Perspective on the ‘Northern Invasion’,” chapters 1 and 2.
5 On the British merchant community in Livorno, and on continuity generally in the world of such expatriate merchants across the dividing line of the Napoleonic Wars, see Galani, British Shipping in the Mediterranean During the Napoleonic Wars.
6 Hoggins, Geography and History of British America, and of the Other Colonies, 121.
7 That is to say, powerful foreign secretaries like George Canning or Lord Palmerston were intermittent enthusiasts of expanded Mediterranean power, but their attention to the area was limited in time and fixed on certain particular issues and events.
8 Holland, Blue Water Empire, chapter 2.
9 Though distinct, both philhellenism and neo-classicism stoked interest in Mediterranean locales among many British thinkers. Among many other works on these movements, see Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain; Cunningham, “The Philhellenes, George Canning, and Greek Independence”; Bass, Freedom’s Battle, Part II; and, most recently, Goldhill, Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity.
10 Alexander Kinglake, Eothen, 1.
11 ‘Tyrtaeus,’ “On the Retention of Malta,” Cobbett’s Annual Register, December 18, 1802.
12 Lord Hobart to Alexander Ball, October 22, 1802. National Archives of Malta (NAM), Rabat. GOV 2/1/1.
13 As did Charles James Fox. See Holland, Blue-Water Empire, 13.
14 Parliamentary History of England, vol. 36, 1424.
15 Maitland’s official title in the Ionian Islands was ‘Lord High Commissioner.’
16 Wood, Importance of Malta, 5–6.
17 Ibid., 7.
18 Penn, Policy and Interest of Great Britain with Respect to Malta, 16.
19 See Mahan, Life of Nelson, vol. II, 195. On Nelson’s view of Malta’s strategic value, see also Bayly, Imperial Meridian, 103.
20 “Malta,” Caledonian Mercury, February 10, 1806.
21 Ibid.
22 Slade, Turkey, Greece, and Malta, vol. I, 56.
23 Ballantyne, Webs of Empire, 45–46.
24 See Darwin, Empire Project, 49–57. A similar understanding of earlier forms of colonisation as a ‘bridgehead’ for further imperial encroachment can be found in Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead.
25 Anon., Considerations on the Nurseries for British Seamen, 10–13.
26 Galt, Voyages and Travels, 121.
27 For a succinct articulation of this hybrid style of imperial economic strategy, see Darwin, Empire Project, 49.
28 Figures derived from Levant Company, Proceedings Respecting the Surrender of their Charters (London: J. Darling, 1825).
29 G. Liddell to Lord Grenville. April 18, 1824. BL Add. Ms. 59266.
30 Booker, Maritime Quarantine, 487.
31 On Mediterranean quarantine in this period see Panzac, Quarantaines et Lazarets; Chircop and Javier Martinez, eds., Mediterranean Quarantines; Chase-Levenson, Yellow Flag.
32 Benjamin Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, October 17, 1831. Quoted in Sultana, Benjamin Disraeli, 42.
33 See National Library of Malta (hereafter, NLM), Valletta, LIBR 810/I.
34 According to a statement from Emmanuelle Bonavia, Superintendent of Quarantine at Malta, some 1629 individuals performed quarantine in Malta’s lazaretto in 1835. This statement was provided in full in Holroyd, Quarantine Laws, 41. By contrast, Marseille, whose board of health was the most powerful in the Mediterranean, saw a total of a few hundred passengers each year throughout the 1830s. See Archives Départmentales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseille. 200 E 875.
35 See Miège, Histoire de Malte, vol. I, 151.
36 Anonymous, “Bulard, Clot-Bey, Davy, Ségur-Dupeyron, Williams &c.,” 307.
37 Ibid., 308.
38 Leckie’s enthusiasm for Sicily seems to derive from his having lived there for a decade around the turn of the nineteenth century. His major work was published after his return to England in 1808 and more extensively in 1810. See Leckie, Historical Survey. On Leckie’s ‘insular strategy’ and its influence, see D’Andrea, “‘Insular Strategy’ of Gould Francis Leckie.”
39 See Lehmann, “Infinite Power.”
40 “Practical States of Barbary,” The Times. Jan. 2, 1816.
41 “Church Missionary Literary Representative at Malta,” Missionary Register, October 1, 1813.
42 Major Protestant missionary societies only began to send missions to Quebec from the late 1830s, more than seventy years after the British acquired the territory in 1763. Just as occurred later in Malta, the Quebec Act of 1774 guaranteed the rights of the Catholic Church and removed a Protestant oath required for service in the colonial government. On these conciliatory efforts, see Colin Calloway, Scratch of a Pen, 118–121. On mid-nineteenth-century Protestant missions in Quebec, see Lalonde, “French Protestant Missionary Activity,” 163.
43 “Malta,” Missionary Notices Relating Principally to the Missions of the Wesleyan Methodists, Sept. 1, 1816.
44 Jowett, “Foreign Intelligence” Missionary Register, March 1, 1817.
45 Rev. Jowett, Christian Researches in the Mediterranean, 360–75.
46 Ibid., 354–5. Emphasis original.
47 Despite the fact that Maltese has a Semitic origin, only about 40% of its vocabulary derives from Arabic; learning it would hardly have prepared missionaries to engage North Africans in complex discussions of theology.
48 Jowett, Christian Researches, 371.
49 Ibid., 369.
50 Ibid., 277 and 355.
51 Ibid., 277.
52 See McCaul, Jerusalem Bishopric, 2. On the quirks of McCaul’s broader missiological ambitions, see Ruderman, Missionaries, Converts, and Rabbis.
53 McCaul, Jerusalem Bishopric, 14.
54 See Bass, Freedom’s Battle; Rodogno, Against Massacre; Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes.
55 General Graham’s address is quoted in its entirety in Mitrovich, Claims of the Maltese, 11.
56 See Lord Hobart to Charles Cameron. May 14, 1801. NAM GOV 2/1/1.
57 Indeed, Barry Hough and Howard Davis persuasively argue that it was precisely the combination of a reliance on older power structures alongside attempts at direct rule that led to a recurrent sense of frustration during the first decade of British rule in Malta. See Hough and Davis, “Malta and the Problems of the New Model Administration.”
58 See Gregory, Malta, Britain, and the European Powers, 105.
59 The Times described the population as deeply enamoured with the British administration with the exception of ‘some discontented Jacobin Maltese, of whom the Government have a perfect knowledge.’ “Malta,” Times, Oct. 10, 1803. See also Gregory, Malta, 158.
60 Hildebrand Oakes to Lord Liverpool, Oct. 15, 1810, and Oakes to Liverpool, Aug. 1, 1811. NAM GOV/1/1/7.
61 See Gregory, Malta, 164
62 For the first order, see Proclamation of October 23, 1813. NAM GMR 2.
63 Lord, Sir Thomas Maitland.
64 Benton and Ford, Rage for Order, 58.
65 See Mitrovich, Claims of the Maltese.
66 Hansard. HC Deb. June 7, 1836. vol 34, col. 161.
67 For a list of earlier commissions, see Benton and Ford, Rage for Order, 58.
68 “Malta” Caledonian Mercury. Feb. 10, 1806.
69 Malta Act, 41st Geo. 3, cap. 103.
70 Blaquiere, Letters from the Mediterranean, 337.
71 Ronald Montgomery Martin, quoted in Mitrovich, Cause of the People of Malta, 67.
72 Lord Byron, “A Farewell to Malta,” 1811.
73 Brougham to Lord Grey. Jan. 4, 1816. Quoted in Brougham, Life and Times of Henry Brougham, 308.
74 That said, Robert Holland argues that a competing discourse to this ‘insular strategy’ of islands projecting power elsewhere was one in which Mediterranean islands could serve as influential prizes to be traded at an eventual peace conference with other European powers. This view, strongly held by William Pitt, is a useful reminder that despite the evangelists of expanded British influence in the Mediterranean quoted in this article, such a disposition was not necessarily present among Britain’s political leaders. See Holland, Blue-Water Empire, 12–13.
75 Stratford Canning to Robert Elliott. September 30, 1827. TNA FO 352/17A, f. 464.
76 Blaqiuere, Letters from the Mediterranean, vii.
77 Ibid., vii.
78 Ibid., 122.
79 On Bentinck in Sicily see also Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck and the British Occupation of Sicily; Roselli, Lord William Bentinck: Liberal Imperialist, chapter 4; Gregory, Sicily, The Insecure Base.
80 Quoted in Riall, Under the Volcano, 48–9.
81 Ibid., 49.
82 Cockburn, A Voyage to Cadiz and Gibraltar, vii–viii.
83 Ibid., vi.
84 Among many other sources for this quotation, see Mahan, Life of Nelson, Vol. II, 195.
85 Lord Charles Somerset to Lord Bathurst. June 19, 1815. Reproduced in Theal, ed. Records of the Cape Colony, 310–11.
86 For example, in ‘Afghanistan’ Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 56 (1844): 141.
87 Griffith, A Journey Across the Desert, 77.
88 Slade, Turkey, Greece, and Malta, 57–8.
89 Numbers derived from www.hansard.millbanksystems.com. Accessed 20 May, 2017.