Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country located in the central Mediterranean Sea. It consists of a number of islands, of which Malta and Gozo are the two main ones—south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. Valletta is the country's capital. Malta is the world's tenth-smallest country by area, ninth-most densely populated, and 166th most populated. It consists of a single urban region, because of which it is often described as a city-state. The two official languages are Maltese—recognised as the national language—and English.
The island of Malta has been inhabited since at least 6500 BC, during the Mesolithic period. Its location at the centre of the Mediterranean has historically given it great geostrategic importance, with multiple powers having ruled the islands and shaped its culture and society. Included among these powers the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans in antiquity; the Arabs, Normans, and Aragonese during the Middle Ages; and the Knights Hospitaller, French, and British in the modern era.
Malta came under British rule as a crown colony in the early 19th century and served as the headquarters of the British Mediterranean Fleet. It was sieged by the Axis powers during World War II and was also an Allied base for its area. The country gained independence in 1964, and established its current parliamentary republic in 1974. It has been a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations since its independence, joining the European Union (EU) in 2004 and the eurozone monetary union in 2008. Malta's history of foreign rule and its proximity to both Europe and North Africa have influenced its art, music, cuisine, and architecture. It has close historical and cultural ties to Italy, especially to the island of Sicily, with 66 percent of Maltese people speaking or having significant knowledge of the Italian language. The country was an early centre of Christianity, and Catholicism is the state religion, although the country's constitution guarantees freedom of religion.
Malta is now a developed country with an advanced, high-income economy. It is heavily reliant on tourism, attracting travellers because of its warm climate, recreational areas, and architectural and historical monuments.
Etymology
The English name Malta derives from classical Latin Melita, from Latinised forms of the ancient Greek Melítē (Μελίτη), of uncertain meaning, possibly from the Phoenician Maleth. The name Melítē—shared by the Croatian island Mljet in antiquity—literally means "place of honey" or "place of sweetness", derived from the combining form of méli (μέλι, honey or any similarly sweet thing), and the suffix -ē (-η). The ancient Greeks may have named the island this after Malta's endemic subspecies of bees.
Other scholars, however, argue for derivation of the Greek name from an original Phoenician or Punic Maleth (𐤌𐤋𐤈, mlṭ), meaning "haven", "refuge", or "port", in reference to its Grand Harbour and its primary settlement at Cospicua following the rise in sea level that separated the Maltese islands and flooded their original coastal settlements in the 10th century BC. The name was then applied to all of Malta by the Greeks and to its ancient capital by the Romans.
History
Prehistory
The earliest reliable evidence of human habitation of Malta dates to 6500 BC with the arrival of Mesolithic era hunter-gatherers, likely from Sicily as evidenced by the finds in Latnija Cave on the northern part of the island of Malta. Neolithic farmers, also originating from Sicily, are thought to have arrived on the islands by around 5400 BC, who brought domesticated animals and cereal crops. Prehistoric settlements dating to the Early Neolithic era include the Għar Dalam cave site in the uppermost layers.
Later, the Maltese started to build megalithic temples. Around 3500 BC, these people built some of the world's oldest existing free-standing structures in the form of the Ġgantija temples on Gozo. Other early temples include those at Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra. These temples are among the oldest free standing megalithic structures in the world, constructed even before the Egyptian pyramids.
After 2500 BC, Malta was depopulated until came an influx of immigrants, a culture that cremated its dead and introduced smaller structures called dolmens as tombs. They likely belonged to a different population from the builders of the previous temples. The dolmens are generally about 4 metres (13 ft) long and less than 1 metre (3 ft) high.
Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans
Phoenician traders colonised the islands at some time around 1000 BC, having conquered most of the Mediterranean at that time. Their seat of government was at Mdina, and their primary port at Cospicua on the Grand Harbour, which they called Maleth. After the fall of Phonecia, the area came under the control of Carthage. During this time, the people of Malta primarily produced perishable goods, such as textiles.
It is unsure if Roman rule began after the first or second Punic war, although Malta was held by Rome after the second, after it was surrendered by Hamilcar, a son of Gisco, having been conquered by Titus Sempronius Longus, a Roman consul. After, the Denarius started becoming the only currency, allowing for better trading.
In 395, when the Roman Empire was divided for the last time at the death of Theodosius I, Malta and Sicily fell under the control of the Western Roman Empire. As that empire declined during Europe's Migration Period, Malta was conquered or occupied a number of times. In 454, the islands were subdued by the Vandals and the Ostrogoths (Germanic tribes) in 464. In 533, Belisarius, a Byzantine general, and his army went to conquer the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, and reunited the islands under Byzantine rule. Little is known about Byzantine Malta: the island depended on the theme of Sicily and had Greek governors and a small Greek garrison. Although the bulk of the population continued to consist of the old Latinised dwellers, Malta's religious allegiance oscillated between the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople. Byzantine rule introduced Greek families to the Maltese collective. Malta remained in the Byzantine Empire until 870, when it was conquered by the Arabs.
Arab period and the Middle Ages
Malta became involved in the Arab–Byzantine wars, and its conquest is linked with the Muslim conquest of Sicily that began in 827 after Admiral Euphemius killed Constantine V. The Muslim chronicler and geographer Ibn ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Ḥimyarī recounts that, in 870, following a violent struggle against the defending Byzantines, the Arab invaders—first led by Halaf al-Hadim and later by Sawada ibn Muhammad—pillaged the island, destroying the most important buildings and leaving it practically uninhabited until it was recolonised by the Arabs.
Malta was a settlement for Banu Matkud, a vassalised tribal city state of the Berbers, from Misrata during both the Fatimid Caliphate and the Aghlabid dynasty. It is uncertain whether this new settlement resulted from demographic expansion in Sicily, a higher standard of living in Sicily, or the civil war that broke out among the rulers of Sicily in 1038. The Siculo-Arabic language from Sicily was adopted on the island, eventually evolving into the Maltese language.
Norman conquest
The Normans attacked Malta in 1091 as part of their conquest of Sicily. Their leader, Roger I of Sicily, was welcomed by the Christians, who came out from Muslim rule. Malta became part of the new Kingdom of Sicily, which also covered the southern Italian Peninsula. The Catholic Church was reinstated as the state religion, with Malta under the Archdiocese of Palermo, and some Norman architecture sprang up around Malta, especially in its previous capital, Mdina.
Because of the strategic importance of the islands, they were particularly coveted, and it was during this time that the men of Malta were militarised to fend off attempted conquest. King Tancred made Malta a fief and installed a count of Malta in 1192. The early counts were privateers of Genoese ancestry.
The kingdom passed on to the German Hohenstaufen dynasty from 1194 until 1266. As Emperor Frederick II began to reorganise the Sicilian kingdom, Western culture and religion started to exert their influence more intensely. Malta was declared a county and a marquisate, but its trade was destroyed and for a long time it remained solely a fortified garrison.
A mass expulsion of Arabs occurred in 1224, and the entire male Christian population of Celano, Italy in Abruzzo was deported to Malta in the same year. In 1249, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II decreed that all remaining Muslims be either expelled from Malta or compelled to convert. In 1266, the kingdom passed to the French Capetian House of Anjou, but high taxes made the dynasty unpopular in Malta, due in part to Charles of Anjou's war against the Republic of Genoa, and the island of Gozo was sacked in 1275.
Crown of Aragon and the Knights of Malta
Malta was ruled by the Catalan House of Barcelona, the ruling dynasty of the Crown of Aragon, from 1282 to 1409, which aided Aragonese Malta in the Sicilian Vespers in the naval battle in Grand Harbour in 1283. Relatives of the crown ruled Malta until it formally passed to the Crown of Aragon.
Early in the Aragonese ascendancy, the sons of the monarchs received the title Count of Malta. During this time, much of the local nobility was created, but by 1397 the bearing of the title of count reverted to a feudal basis with two families fighting over the distinction. This led King Martin I of Sicily to abolish the title, but it returned a few years later. The Maltese, led by the local nobility, rose up against Count Gonsalvo Monroy although they voiced their loyalty to the Sicilian Crown, which impressed King Alfonso V of Aragon to the extent that he did not punish Malta, and chose never to grant the title to a third party, moving it back under the crown's control.
On 23 March 1530, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V gave the islands to the Knights Hospitaller under the leadership of the French Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, for which they had to pay an annual tribute of a Maltese falcon. These knights, a military religious order also known as the Order of Saint John and later as the Knights of Malta, had been driven from the Greek island of Rhodes by the Ottoman Empire in 1522. The Knights ruled Malta until 1798. During this period, the island's strategic and military importance grew as the Knights' efficient fleet launched attacks from this new base, targeting the shipping lanes of the Ottoman territories around the Mediterranean.
Led by the French Jean Parisot de Valette, the Knights withstood the Siege of Malta by the Ottomans in 1565 with the help of Portuguese, Spanish, and Maltese forces. After the siege, the Knights increased Malta's fortifications, particularly in the inner-harbour area, where the new city of Valletta was built.
French period and British conquest
The Knights' reign ended when Napoleon captured Malta on his way to Egypt during the French Revolutionary Wars in 1798. From 12 to 18 June 1798, Napoleon resided at the Palazzo Parisio in Valletta. He reformed Maltese administration with the creation of a government commission, 12 municipalities, a public finance administration, abolition of feudal rights and slavery, and freedom to all Turkish and Jewish slaves. On the judicial level, a family code was framed and 12 judges nominated.
The French forces left behind became unpopular in Malta, mainly due to their being anti-Catholic. French financial and religious policies so angered the Maltese that they rebelled, forcing the French to depart. Great Britain, along with Naples and Sicily, sent ammunition and aid to the Maltese, and Britain also sent a navy to blockade the islands.
On 28 October 1798, British Captain Alexander Ball completed negotiations with the French garrison on Gozo for a transfer of Malta to the British. The British then transferred the island to the locals that day, and Malta was administered by Archpriest Saverio Cassar on behalf of Ferdinand III of Sicily. Gozo remained independent until Cassar was removed by the British in 1801.
The French General Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois surrendered his forces in 1800. Maltese leaders thereupon gave the main island to Alexander Ball, asking that it become a British dominion, with the Maltese creating a Declaration of Rights in which they agreed to come "under the protection and sovereignty of the King of the free people, His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland".
British Empire and World War II
In 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the War of the Sixth Coalition, Malta officially became a part of the British Empire. Between 1915 and 1918, during World War I, Malta became known as "the Nurse of the Mediterranean," due to the large number of wounded soldiers who were accommodated there.
On 7 June 1919, the Maltese public rioted in response to a cost-of-living crisis, but British troops eventually managed to suppress the riots with four fatalities. The event, known as Sette Giugno (Italian: the 7th of June) is commemorated every year on that date, becoming one of Malta's five "National Days". Until World War II, Maltese politics was dominated by the Language Question, a dispute over whether English or Italian would be the national language.
Prior to World War II, Valletta had been the location of the Royal Navy's Mediterranean fleet headquarters. Over Winston Churchill's objections, however, the command was moved to Alexandria, Egypt, in 1937 out of fear that Valletta was too susceptible to air attacks from Europe. Indeed, because of its being a British colony as well as situated close to Sicily and Axis shipping lanes, Malta was bombarded by the Italian and German air forces. During the war, Malta played an important role for the Allies. It was used by the British to launch attacks on the Italian Navy and as a submarine base and as a listening post, intercepting German radio messages including Enigma traffic.