Italian maltese - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Italian maltese are the Maltese people who supported Italian irredentism in Malta

Malta

Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

and believe the Maltese islands are part of Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

Characteristics

During the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

the Maltese islands were integrated with Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

(even during the arab conquest). The Normans

Normans

The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...

united politically Malta to their Kingdom of Sicily and since then practically all the history of the Maltese islands was connected to southern Italy until Napoleonic times.

Officially Malta (even if ruled for some centuries by the Knights of Malta) was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, commonly known as the Two Sicilies even before formally coming into being, was the largest and wealthiest of the Italian states before Italian unification...

until the Congress of Vienna

Congress of Vienna

The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...

in 1814, when was given to Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

.

Indeed the Italian language

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

was official in Malta until the 20th century, the nobility of Malta was made of Italian families (who moved to Malta mainly in the XIII century) and the culture of Malta was fully integrated with the Italian one even because based on Roman catholicism

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

.

After Great Britain obtained the islands after the Congress of Vienna, a process of Anglicisation

Anglicisation

Anglicisation, or anglicization , is the process of converting verbal or written elements of any other language into a form that is more comprehensible to an English speaker, or, more generally, of altering something such that it becomes English in form or character.The term most often refers to...

has started to be promoted by the British authorities in Malta. This process has been done together with a process of de-Italianisation of Malta, according to some Maltese irredentists like Carmelo Borg Pisani

Carmelo Borg Pisani

Carmelo Borg Pisani was a Maltese-born Italian Fascist who was found guilty by a Maltese war tribunal established by the Government under British rule and executed for treason against His Majesty's Government....

History

The Normans

Normans

from the Duchy of Normandy

Duchy of Normandy

The Duchy of Normandy stems from various Danish, Norwegian, Hiberno-Norse, Orkney Viking and Anglo-Danish invasions of France in the 9th century...

conquered Sicily and the Maltese Islands in 1091 and Roger I of Sicily

Roger I of Sicily

Roger I , called Bosso and the Great Count, was the Norman Count of Sicily from 1071 to 1101. He was the last great leader of the Norman conquest of southern Italy.-Conquest of Calabria and Sicily:...

was warmly welcomed by the few native Christians of Malta. He started a process of latinisation

Latinisation

Latinisation or Latinization could refer to:* Latinisation of names, a literary practice of writing a name in a Latin style when writing in Latin** List of Latinised names...

.

During the Norman period Malta became part of the newly formed Kingdom of Sicily

Kingdom of Sicily

The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in the south of Italy from its founding by Roger II in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of southern Italy...

which also covered the island of Sicily and the southern half of the Italian Peninsula

Italian Peninsula

The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is one of the three large peninsulas of Southern Europe , spanning from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula's shape gives it the nickname Lo Stivale...

. The Catholic Church was re-instated as the state religion with Malta under the See of Palermo

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Palermo

The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese of Palermo was founded as the Diocese of Palermo in the 1st Century but was raised to the level of an archdiocese in the 11th century...

.

Most of the early counts were skilled Genoese

Republic of Genoa

The Most Serene Republic of Genoa |Ligurian]]: Repúbrica de Zêna) was an independent state from 1005 to 1797 in Liguria on the northwestern Italian coast, as well as Corsica from 1347 to 1768, and numerous other territories throughout the Mediterranean....

soldiers and knights. In 1191, Tancred of Sicily

Tancred of Sicily

Tancred was King of Sicily from 1189 to 1194. He was an illegitimate son of Roger III, Duke of Apulia, the eldest son of King Roger II, and of Emma, daughter of Achard II, Count of Lecce...

appointed Margaritus of Brindisi

Margaritus of Brindisi

Margaritus of Brindisi , called the new Neptune, was the last great ammiratus ammiratorum of Sicily...

the first Count of Malta

Count of Malta

The County of Malta was a Feudal Lordship of the Kingdom of Sicily, relating to the islands of Malta and Gozo. Malta was essentially a fief within the kingdom, with the title given by Tancred of Sicily the last Norman king of Sicily to Margaritus of Brindisi in 1190 who earned acclaim as the Grand...

. Until the 13th century, however, there remained a strong Muslim segment of society.

Malta was an appendage of Sicily

Sicily

for nearly 440 years.

Indeed the Kingdom of Sicily with Malta passed on to the House of Hohenstaufen from 1194 as part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation

Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...

.

Under Frederick I

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

Frederick II , was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany, and even to Jerusalem, were enormous...

all remaining Muslims were expelled from Malta (in 1224). Sice then Malta has been a stronghold of Roman catholicism in the central Mediterranean sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

.

After the Norman conquest

Norman conquest of southern Italy

The Norman conquest of southern Italy spanned the late eleventh and much of the twelfth centuries, involving many battles and many independent players conquering territories of their own...

the population of the Maltese islands kept growing mainly through immigration from the north (Sicily and Italy), with the exile to Malta of the entire male population of the town of Celano

Celano

Celano is a town and comune in the Province of L'Aquila, central Italy, east of Rome by rail.-Geography:Celano rises on the top of a hill in the territory of Marsica, below the mountain range of Sirente. It faces the valley of Fucino, once filled by the large Fucine Lake, which was drained during...

(in Abruzzo

Abruzzo

Abruzzo is a region in Italy, its western border lying less than due east of Rome. Abruzzo borders the region of Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east, and the Adriatic Sea to the east...

, Italy) in 1223, the stationing of a Norman and Sicilian garrison on Malta in 1240 and the settlement in Malta of noble families from Sicily mainly between 1372 and 1450. As a consequence of this one major academic study found that "the contemporary males of Malta most likely originated from Southern Italy, including Sicily and up to Calabria".

The Order of Saint John brought prosperity to the island, raising it to the social levels of a contemporary European town (from 17,000 in 1530 to 96,000 in 1797). The Knights of Malta chose the Italian language as their official language.

The British gained military control of Malta in 1800. However, in the first years Italian kept on enjoying its de facto official status. After all, Malta was still formally part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, commonly known as the Two Sicilies even before formally coming into being, was the largest and wealthiest of the Italian states before Italian unification...

. It was only in 1814 with the Congress of Vienna that Malta formally became a British Crown Colony and the first attempts at Anglicisation were made. These were weak efforts and so were the results: in 1842, when only 11% of the total population of Malta was literate, all literate Maltese learned Italian while only 4.5% could read, write and speak English.

Efforts grew stronger in the later 19th century. In 1878 a Royal Commission (the Rowsell-Julyan-Keenan Commission) recommended in its report the Anglicisation of the educational and judicial systems. While the latter had to wait until the 20th century teaching of the English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

started to be enforced in State schools at the expense of Italian. In 1911, English overtook Italian as the secondary language after Maltese, spoken by 13.1% of the population vs. 11.5%. The Royal Commission's report also had significant political impact. Supporters and opponents organised themselves into a Reform and Anti-Reform parties which, apart from being the forerunners of the present day two main political parties in Malta, assumed respectively the anglophile and Italophile imprint (and also, subsequently, pro-colonial and anti-colonial policies) that were to characterise them for decades to come.

Political organizations, like the Nationalist Party

Nationalist Party (Malta)

The Nationalist Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in Malta, along with the Labour Party. It was founded by Fortunato Mizzi in 1880 as the Anti-Reform Party, opposing taxation decreed by the British colonial authorities and measures to Anglicise the educational and the...

, were created or had as one of their aims, the protection of the Italian language

Italian language

in Malta. These organizations started to support even the Italian irredentism in Malta

Italian irredentism in Malta

Italian irredentism in Malta refers to past support in Malta for Italian territorial claims on the islands. It is therefore not be confused with Italophilia...

.

In 1919, there were riots over the excessive price of bread. These would lead to greater autonomy for the locals. Indeed in 1919 British troops fired on a rally protesting against new taxes, killing four Maltese men. This led to increased resistance and support for the pro-Italian parties that had challenged the British presence on the island. The event, known as Sette Giugno

Sette Giugno

Sette Giugno is a Maltese national holiday celebrated annually on 7 June. It commemorates events which occurred on that day in 1919 when, following a series of riots by the Maltese population, British troops fired into the crowd, killing four.-Historical setting:In the aftermath of World War I,...

(Italian for 7 June), is commemorated every year.

As a consequence of the "Sette Giugno" events, Malta obtained a bicameral parliament

Parliament of Malta

The Parliament of the Republic of Malta is the constitutional legislative body in Malta, located in Valletta...

with a Senate (abolished in 1949) and an elected Legislative Assembly.

But the Malta Constitution was suspended twice. The first time in 1930, when it was suspended because Brutish authorities assumed that a free and fair election would not be possible following a clash between the governing Constitutional Party

Constitutional Party (Malta)

The Constitutional Party was a Maltese political party which had representatives in the Maltese Legislative Assembly and Council of Government between 1921 and 1945 and 1950 and 1953, forming a government between 1927 and 1930 with the support of the Labour Party. A splinter group, the Progressive...

and the Church and the latter's subsequent imposition of mortal sin on voters of the party and its allies. And the second time in 1934, when the Constitution was revoked over the Government's budgetary vote for the teaching of Italian in elementary schools.

The Fascists invested heavily in promoting Italian culture in Malta. They were making overtures to a minority who not only loved Italy's language but also saw Malta as a geographical extension of the Italian mainland. Malta was described as "the extreme end of Italian soil" (Senator Caruana Gatto who represented the nobility in the Maltese in 1923).

The battle, however, was still being fought in largely cultural terms, as the "Language Question" on the role of Italian in education. This led to the revoking (the second) of the Maltese Constitution in 1934 over the Government's budgetary vote for the teaching of Italian in elementary schools. Italian was eventually dropped from official language status in Malta in 1934, its place being taken by Maltese. Italian ceased to be taught at all levels of education and the language of instruction at the University of Malta

University of Malta

The University of Malta is the highest educational institution in Malta Europe and is one of the most respected universities in Europe. The University offers undergraduate Bachelor's Degrees, postgraduate Master's Degrees and postgraduate Doctorates .-History:The University of Malta was founded in...

and the Law Courts. When Italy

Italy

entered the war on the side of the Axis powers

Axis Powers

The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...

and aerial bombardments of Malta began, what little interest in Italian irredentism that existed in Malta was lost. The colonial authorities took precautions: they interned and eventually deported to Uganda 49 italophile Maltese including the leader of the Nationalist Party

Nationalist Party (Malta)

, Enrico Mizzi

Enrico Mizzi

Enrico "Nerik" Mizzi was a Maltese politician, leader of the Nationalist Party and Prime Minister of Malta....

.

A number of Maltese living in Italy participated in fascist organizations and joined the Italian military forces during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Among them were Carmelo Borg Pisani

Carmelo Borg Pisani

, Antonio Cortis, Paolo Frendo, Ivo Leone Ganado, Roberto Mallia, Manuele Mizzi, Antonio Vassallo, Joe d’Ancona and Carlo Liberto. Carmelo Borġ Pisani attempted to enter Malta during the war, was captured and executed as a supposed spy in 1942, even if he had the Italian citizenship. He was posthumously awarded the highest Italian military medal (the "Medaglia d'oro al Valor Militare alla memoria") by King Victor Emmanuel III a few days after his death. Requests have been made by his family and the Italian government to exhume his body and give it a burial outside prison grounds, which request has never been acceded to. The same Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

called him a "Maltese Martyr" and created in his honor in Liguria

Liguria

Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions. Its capital is Genoa. It is a popular region with tourists for its beautiful beaches, picturesque little towns, and good food.-Geography:...

the "Battaglione Borg Pisani" in November 1943, in which other Maltese irredentists fought.

After WWII the Italian Maltese had successfully promoted the independence of Malta from the Britisn Empire.

Characteristics

History

See also