Republic of Malta Attractions

The high population density has long given rise to economic difficulties, since for many years there have been insufficient jobs to provide employment for all those of working age. Since the country achieved independence the problems have become increasingly acute, for the British withdrawal has meant the loss of the work in British military installations which in 1955 gave employment to 29% of the working population. Over the years, therefore, there have been a number of great waves of emigration to Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States, and for many decades the population of Malta tended to decline in spite of a relatively high excess of births over death. In more recent years there had been a slight improvement in the trend, and the rate of unemployment had been brought down to some 2%; but the return of Maltese "guest workers" from other European countries and the loss of the last few thousand military jobs after the final British withdrawal In 1979 have once again aggravated Malta with problems.

Many of the workers who lost their jobs as a result of the phased British withdrawal were able to find employment in the former naval dockyard, now converted to civilian use, and in a number of other newly established industries. The largest employer of labor is the drydock at Fort Ricasoli, with installations for cleaning out tankers which are among the most modern and most efficient in the world. In addition, thanks to investments of foreign capital, several tens of thousands of new jobs have been created in the foodstuffs, textile and chemical industries and in engineering, supplementing the traditional small-scale and craft industries. In recent years, too, there has been a remarkable development of folk arts and crafts, and Maltese lace and silver, for example, are much bought by visitors. Many of the unemployed are enrolled in State-financed labor corps and employed in emergency and infrastructure programs.

Malta has some 37,000 acres/15,000 hectares of cultivable land, representing about half its total area. The limestone soils in the karstic terrain of western Malta and Gaza have been brought into cultivation by the addition of good soil and artificial irrigation (about 1,630 acres/660 hectares). The only fully irrigated areas (totaling about 250 acres/100 hectares), however, are in the II Ghadira and Pwales valleys. In these areas the yields are more than double those achieved in the dry farming areas, since it is possible to take three crops a year with the help of irrigation. But the total area of cultivable land, irrigated and unirrigated, falls far short of what is required to feed the population of Malta; and antiquated farming methods, the fragmentation of holdings and lack of water for irrigation militate against any expansion of agricultural production. Some three-quarters of Malta's food-supply, therefore, has to be imported. The main Maltese products are wheat, barley, oil, carobs, vegetables, tomatoes and tobacco, together with figs and citrus fruits. The principal exports are early potatoes, grapes and garden produce.

Malta has an excellent network of roads, radiating from the Valletta area and from the town of Victoria on Gozo. There are no railroads on the islands. There are, however, bus services from these two central points to almost every village in the country. Further away from the centers, it is true, connections between the radial roads are sometimes lacking, so that to get from one peripheral village to another may involve a rather roundabout journey. The thinly populated areas in the west and southwest are poorly served by roads. Between Malta and Gozo there are two good and rapid ferry services, from Marfa to Mgarr from Valletta to Mgarr (hydrofoil). International shipping traffic mostly uses the Grand Harbor of Valletta which can take vessels of any size. There are also ferry services from Valletta to Catania, Syracuse, Reggio di Calabria and Naples, as well as to Libya, the main customer for Malta's exports.

The international airport at Luqa, 4mi/7km southwest of Valletta, is used by a number of airlines, and there are regular connections, mainly flown by Air Malta, with Britain, Austria, Switzerland, West Germany, Italy, Tunisia and Libya. Luqa Airport has gained increased importance with the rapid growth of the tourist trade, a welcome source of the foreign exchange which Malta so urgently requires. The government has accordingly made great efforts to foster the development of tourism; and the successful marketing of Malta's mild and healthy climate and its monuments of the Neolithic period and the period of the Knights brought in 12% of the country's gross national product.

About 2400 B.C., Bronze Age peoples from Sicily and the Peloponnese came to Malta. War, which had been unknown to their predecessors, now played a part in their lives, and they built the islands first fortifications to provide defense against attack from the sea.

In the ninth century B.C. the Phoenicians established a colony and an important trading post on Malta, giving it the name of Melite. Thereafter the islands, lying at the intersection of the shortest route between Sicily and Carthage in North Africa with the seaways between the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Strait of Gibraltar, occupied a position of great political and strategic importance - as indeed they still do. The Greeks tried unsuccessfully to gain control of Malta in order to strengthen the position of the colonies they had founded in Sicily in the eighth and seventh centuries. What they failed to do was soon afterward achieved by the Carthaginians, who occupied the islands about 600 B.C. and held on to them until the outbreak of the Second Punic War (218 B.C.). They were then conquered by Titus Sempronius for Rome. Although Roman rule lasted for almost 1,000 years and the people of Malta achieved a high degree of prosperity during this period, it has left surprisingly little in the way of architectural and artistic remains.

When the Roman Empire was split into two in A.D. 395 the Maltese Islands fell to the Byzantine East Roman Empire. In 429, however, they are apparently captured by the Vandals under Genseric. In 494 the Vandals were succeeded by the Ostrogoths under Theodoric; but 39 years later, in 533, the islands were recovered by the Byzantines. In 870 they were taken by the Arabs (Aghlabites). Although the Arabs held Malta for only 221 years they left an enduring mark on its language and culture. The present-day Maltese language consists of a mixture of various North African dialects of Arabic with the addition, in terms of vocabulary, of bits and pieces taken over from Sicilian Italian and English. Many place-names and family names still recall the period of Arab rule, as do a variety of architectural details to be seen on Maltese buildings. The methods of irrigating the fields, which are strikingly similar to the methods used in Andalusia, also reflect Arab influence. Unfortunately, however, practically no examples of Arab architecture have survived, since the Order of St John systematically destroyed all traces of "Saracen" activity in the 16th century.

The Arabs were succeeded in 1091 by the Normans, coming from Sicily, under Count Roger I de Hauteville. In 1194 their kingdom fell by inheritance to the Hohenstaufens, who lost it in 1268 to Charles of Anjou. In 1284 Charles was displaced by Peter of Aragon, taking over the Inheritance of the Hobanstaufens. In 1412 the Maltese Islands fell to the Habsburgs by marriage; and in 1530 the Emperor Charles V granted them to the Order of St John, which had been expelled from Rhodes by the Turks. This was an event of decisive importance in the history of Malta which now, for the first time since the Norman period, emerged from limbo and began to feature on the world stage. Its heroic resistance to the Turkish siege of 1565, which held back the western advance of Islam, made it famed throughout Europe. The Order of St John, also known as the Knights of Malta, now received large grants of money and property, with the help of which the new capital of Valletta (named after the then Grand Master, J.P. de la Valette) was founded in 1566 to the design of Franodsca Laparelli, the most celebrated military engineer of the day. In the course of the next two centuries the Order of St John brought Malta unprecedented prosperity, far exceeding the splendors of earlier periods. During these years were erected the magnificent buildings which are still the glory of Malta.

The rule of the Knights was brought to an end by Napoleon in 1798 at the beginning of his Egyptian expedition; for the Order, whose members were recruited from great noble families, was a thorn in the flesh of Revolutionary France. The irresolute German Grand Master, von Hompesch surrendered the islands without a fight after two days. Two years later, in 1880, the Maltese drove out the French with the help of a British fleet, and in 1814 the Maltese Archipelago was assigned to Britain under the First Treaty of Paris and became a Crown Colony. The islands were now developed into an important naval base. In 1921 Malta was granted limited self-government, and in 1947, after its heroic resistance to mass German and Italian air attacks during WWII, full self-government. Full independence was achieved in 1964, and since December 13, 1974 Malta has been a Republic within the British Commonwealth. The last British troops were withdrawn on March 31, 1979, under a treaty signed in 1972. On September 16, 1980 Italy and Malta signed a treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of the island republic.