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“Maltese Maritime Historiography: A Critical Assessment“
- from Contributions-Dummy
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- By John Chircop, Lecturer in social and economic history in the Department of History at the University of Malta
- Edited by Gelina Harlaftis, Carmel Vassallo
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- Book:
- New Directions in Mediterranean Maritime History
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 05 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2004, pp 83-102
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Summary
The most striking feature of the literature on Malta's maritime history is that it has been almost totally monopolized by naval and commercial themes to the exclusion of a wide range of other important matters about the relationship between people and the sea. As a consequence, a substantial part of this essay will centre on publications in these two fields of inquiry, which have in common both similar perceptions of the sea's role in geopolitical events and a spatial focus on Valletta's Grand Harbour, the principal port of the small Maltese archipelago.
Equipped with a critical historical approach, and drawing on postcolonial and other theoretical perspectives, this paper will identify the key notions and methods that characterize the geo-strategic model adopted by traditional Maltese maritime historians. The works under review are marked by a “history from above,” male-gendered approach that is largely Eurocentric. These preconceived notions pervade the bulk of the literature and exemplify Edward Said's claim that cultural practices, discourses and texts cannot be separated from the structures and relations of power. The dominant power arrangements have decisively affected the selection of both the themes and the spatial focus to an astonishing degree, excluding groups such as fishers and those who live outside the Grand Harbour area. The spatial focus highlights privileged views of the past and excludes certain social groups, leading to a conventional history that is replete with “cultural prejudices,” or what Pierre Bourdieu has called “the cultural arbitrary.” This practice of selection nourishes and reproduces the already entrenched geo-strategic model of history as the sole “regime of truth” - the commonsense view of Maltese maritime history. This totalising view of the past projects Malta's colonially-constructed, maritime-frontier function in defence of Western European civilisation as a “natural,” all-determining law of history. More recently, the dominant post- Cold War discourse has reaffirmed and validated the view of the island's history as a frontier within the Western European defence system. In the fashionable discourse of Samuel P. Huntington, Malta therefore could be construed as lying on one of the major “fault lines between Civilisations” which “will be the battle lines of the future.“
Even a cursory review of the historiography of this model demonstrates the presence of the geopolitical perspectives of at least two rival European colonial powers with direct interests in the occupation of Malta in modern times.
“The Narrow Sea Complex: A Hidden Dimension in Mediterranean Maritime History”
- from Part 1 - Intangible Infrastructures and their Components
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- By John Chircop, lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Malta.
- Edited by Gordon Boyce, Richard Gorski
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- Book:
- Resources and Infrastructures in the Maritime Economy, 1500–2000
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 05 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 01 December 2002, pp 43-62
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Summary
The reality of past narrow-sea nexuses in the Mediterranean can best be reconstructed from an in-depth analysis that includes the historical outlooks of native maritime communities. This indigenous historical perspective can be constructed from a range of sources that provide evidence about specific narrowsea arrangements. The bulk of the material used in this study comprises local portolani, log books, guides and descriptive accounts, supplemented by sea charts and the more figurative maritime votive paintings still permanently exhibited in Catholic and Orthodox churches dotted around these maritime zones. These sources record and preserve detailed local knowledge about the seascape, prevalent winds and sea currents, locations of creeks and anchorages, and maritime practices and other aspects of seafaring intelligence which have since disappeared. A large proportion of this evidence has been examined in the archives and libraries of Corfu, Cephalonia, Malta and Gozo. A more extensive investigation of narrow-sea complexes should also include oral history. To a considerable extent the native inhabitants of these maritime zones transmitted practical knowledge of their adjacent waters and customary laws, beliefs and rights relating to the custody, management and exploitation of the sea orally from one generation to the next, and it is still alive in their collective memory.
The indigenous perspective which frames this study, however, also requires an examination of “external” Western European discourse which, in its earlier encounter with the Mediterranean, provided depictions of the dynamic exchanges which comprised the Ionian and Central narrow-sea complexes. In this way, Western European narratives can corroborate the historical reality of these narrow-sea orbits. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the dominant Western European, and particularly British, representation of the Mediterranean was moulded into an imperial geo-strategic discourse in which the very existence of these narrow-sea nexuses was disregarded. In this way, the imperial political-economic subjugation of these regional seas was validated. For these reasons it was necessary to examine official correspondence, travelogues, journals and literary accounts left by European travellers, colonial administrators, agents and functionaries. This colonial evidence, in conjunction with hydrographie surveys, cartography and classified reports by the British Admiralty, most of which are archived in the Public Record Office in London, have proved indispensable in demonstrating the process by which the narrow-sea complexes were eradicated from official history once they disintegrated materially.