In his fierce reaction to Joe Bugeja’s ‘The role of British colonialism in Malta’ (The Sunday Times, November 14), Mario Farrugia (November 28) is hoist by his own petard when he lumps together and roundly dismisses critics of colonialism as “yet another stereotypical rant of our old-fashioned anti-British brigade”.

What seems to mark out still surviving Maltese fans of the British Empire, one or two of whom spent the best part of their lives earning a living in England before retiring to sunny Malta, is the passionate ferocity with which they assail anyone who dares criticise its practices and doings, as if that were not a standard feature of post-colonial historiography, not least in Britain itself and throughout the Commonwealth. (Yes, but not in Malta.)

One may choose to praise the positive rather than criticise negative aspects – there are always pros and cons by accident or design – but there can be little doubt that colonialism as a system of governance was abhorrent.

Mr Farrugia dismisses as “totally untrue” a statement as given in his own words that “Malta was almost bartered for peace with Mussolini”.

What is so “totally untrue” about this? Although I am not party to this exchange, might I say that in my introduction to The Epic of Malta (Valletta Publishing, facsimile edition, 1990), I quoted two authoritative British historians who referred to British Cabinet papers to this effect, and after some further research at the Cambridge University Library I shall return to this in my forthcoming book Malta in Europe and Empire: Culture, Politics and Identity.

Mr Farrugia also describes as a “myth” Nerik Mizzi’s suggested exchange of Malta for Eritrea. What is so mythical about this proposal, made in an article, ‘Il Convegno di Malta e una nuova soluzione della questione Maltese’, published in Rome in Rassegna Contemporanea (anno v, n. 7) in 1912?

I discussed this recently in my Andrew Vella Memorial Lecture at the Aula Magna, published by the University of Malta History Society as Nerik Mizzi: The Formative Years (2009), and earlier still in Party Politics in a Fortress Colony (1979, 2nd ed. 1991).

With all due respect to divergent interpretations, Mr Bugeja, my onetime teacher of English at the Lyceum, was one of the first to attempt an understanding of this serious problematic while at Oxford: his research article was published in Hyphen back in 1984.

The inter-war period, especially the 1930s and 1940s, constitute a complex, seminal and still sensitive period of our history, and they remain under-researched, as many seem to prefer the relative safety of delving into the ancient, medieval or early modern periods, which naturally exert their own fascination and are also important.

Moreover, very few in Malta bother to look up pertinent studies published in peer-reviewed international journals.

While I certainly never knew Mr Farrugia as ‘an anglophile’, and I respect his formidable contribution to Wirt Artna, I found his concluding “octogenarian” remarks in particularly bad taste.