Bias for or against countries with which Malta had various liaisons account for our present perceptions of those nations.
Having been caught up in a tug-of-war type of relationship England and France had had for centuries, Malta could not but encounter hindrance in its formation of a mature and loyal identity towards its own territorial consciousness.
Living in a British colony and in the first post-colonial decades, one could not always appreciate the island’s shared past with France, a cultural colossus in the world and harbinger of la mission civilisatrice, without obtaining a Francophile ‘antagonist’ timbre.
Scrutinising relative facts pertaining to Malta’s relations with France positions one to be perceived as rival to the other, in this case Britain.
This explanation has been lifted from my published thesis regarding the Maltese collective memory of France with reference to the Napoleonic period. It also seems to suffice as an answer to Carmel Galea’s allegation to my ‘defence of French Napoleonic intentions towards Malta’ (‘The French in Malta’, The Sunday Times of Malta, September 6).
In my research regarding this interlude as Ricoeur would point out, I attempted “to weave a narrative identity to transform a past that is beyond one’s control into a past for which we are responsible and to recognise the inter-subjective nature of that past”.
As regards the “subjugation of a people who never asked for Napoleon’s presence nor that of his armies” one may be interested to know that political movements to topple the Knights’ outdated regime and introduce French republican ‘democracy’ was backed by at least 11,000 adherents to Vassalli’s movement and scores of Jacobins within the Order itself. Bali Loras, Grand Marshal of the Order to St Petersburg, writing on June 21, 1798 at Tretza in Sicily, recalls “4,000 Maltese rebels who gathered in Valletta obliging the Grand Master to receive a delegation from them”.
A signed petition complete with the Università seal included Galea, Dorel, Delicata, G. N. Muscat, P. P. Testaferrata, Benedetto Schembri, Giuseppe Borg Olivier, Francesco Bonanni, S. Scifo, F. Fiore, Saverio Marchesi, G. L. Testaferrata, A. V. Reveau, M. Testaferrata, Paolo Parisio, B. Scifo, F. Gauci, I. Muscat, E. Gavino, V. Marchesi, L. Preziosi, A. Spiteri, G. Guido, Torregiani, G. N. Zammit and M. Portelli, the cream of Malta’s intelligentsia and leadership. Four of them – Baron Testaferrata, lawyers Schembri and Muscat and ex-Counsellor Bonanni – on June 12, 1798 signed, on behalf of the Maltese, the Bonaparte-Order Convention which ushered in French adhesion.
Michael Kammen asserts that the wilful alternation of collective memory becomes a necessity for a valuable, progressive society, more so in cases where the creation of national identity is necessary for functional reasons of political and cultural cohesion, as in the case of post-colonial situations.