Malta is a culturally diverse country with a complex social and political sphere—the fact which might come across as unexpected of an island state of such a minuscule size. And due to this complexity, Malta’s everyday political and social realities could be a treacherous terrain to navigate.
By the 1830’s, the ‘proud and overbearing Maltese’ of the first decade of British rule had turned into a submissive people who cringed before their colonial overlords and had internalized, even at a bodily level, a complete dependency on them.