The National Identity and Others of Malta Throughout History

 The National Identity and Others of Malta Throughout History

National Identity is an interesting and complex topic. How much does it really mean? What impacts a nation's identity? How can we see it from the outside? Because so many things go into a country's national identity, it is very hard to define and it can be good or bad depending on who you ask and how much they fit the mold of their country. One way of describing it is "defining who is a member of the community but also who is a foreigner" (Triandafyllidou, 1988, p.1) but there are many aspects that can go into defining insiders and outsiders including language, ethnicity, and religion. This is especially interesting in an ethnostate like Malta because a very large majority of the people have all of those things in common. Here, we will take a look at how Malta seems to separate insiders from outsiders or "others".

Others are people that don’t fit the projected national identity of the country. The insiders tend to look down on or are afraid of. There can be others within the country and outside of it and entire nations can be classified as significant others. In most cases, others, especially significant others are much more disliked or feared in times of unrest or hardship for a nation. With these things in mind, we can look at the connection between Malta's national identity and how they have perceived others.

Malta is a very small country and has a very homogeneous culture. Around ninety percent of Maltese people are ethnically Maltese, around ninety percent of Maltese people speak Maltese, and around ninety percent of Maltese people are Roman Catholic which means that most of the big factors of nationalism are covered by almost everyone in the same way. But not everyone fits that mold. The others in Malta have been treated differently throughout the country's history.

Malta was under the rule of many different countries, and because of that, they had many different versions of their culture and national identity come and go. The most recent one was England from 1800 to 1964. During this time, the country was very divided. People were deciding between pro-England and pro-Italy politicians which caused strong differences in views on cultural and economic issues and norms. There were also many language barriers, including between politicians, because Maltese hadn't been created or recognized yet and many people spoke different languages. These differences split Malta in a very significant way and caused rifts that made all Maltese people seem like outsiders to one another. There was so little unity that there was nearly a civil war. There was, however, one thing that almost everyone in Malta was a part of and that was the Roman Catholic church. Because of this, the country was incredibly religious.

After declaring independence from England, declaring common languages, and becoming more independent culturally, Malta was "a relatively homogeneous, patriotic, religious, and intolerant society..." (Abela, 2005, p.12) but once things were more stable, cultures and ideas started changing. Because Malta is in the Mediterranean sea and is close to so many European countries it had a very good trade system and started to attract a lot more tourism than it ever had before. Along the same time frame, Malta started valuing the individual more than the homogeneous culture. Between these factors, Maltese people have become much more tolerant, but this has also caused some people to see Malta as not having a strong culture of its own and its people as "ambivalent Europeans" (Abela, 2005, p.12)

Malta has gone through many different phases and levels in their sense of national identity. Before they were an independent nation, they had a lot of disagreements and differences within their country because of leaders that made people turn against each other and made everyone an other to someone else. This can be linked to so many different nations trying to control them and push pieces of their culture onto Malta. Once they claimed independence they bridged the gap between themselves and worked together to create a strong sense of national identity, but because of that, they looked down on

any others that there were, wanting people to conform to the norms. We can imagine that this reaction was because they had their own culture that they could claim fully for the first time and wanted to establish that strongly, but because of that, were afraid of anyone who was different. More recently, Malta has become a more welcoming and inclusive place with increasing tourism, but they have also lost a solid sense of national identity.

“From today’s standpoint, the question is not whether or not Malta was a nation before achieving independence in 1964, or before accession in to the European Union in 2004, but rather whether or not the people of the Maltese islands as citizens of the enlarged European Union are willing to take up the challenge to reshape a national and European identity” (Abela, 2005, p.14)

While national identity can be useful to some to identify themselves and give a sense of community, it can also be harmful to other people in the nation and can lead to prejudice about parts of people's identities. Since Malta is so homogeneous and so new compared to other countries around them, their national identity is still shifting.

Abela, A. (2005). Shaping a national identity: Malta in the European Union. International Journal of Sociology, 35(4), 10–27. https://doi.org/10.2753/ijs0020-7659350401

Triandafyllidou, A. (1998). National identity and the 'other'. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21(4), 593-612.