“The Gozitans are happily depressed” : narratives concerning the Gozitan mindset : past and present

Abstract

The Maltese archipelago has always been the object of intense migration patterns and is a site of intense historical as well as modern competition over sovereignty. It is also the object of intense Anthropological intrigue specifically in the instance of Jeremy Boissevain and others. Possible reasons for this include its colourful history of occupations by various peoples from the Mediterranean, the Middle East as well as North Africa. It is also a series of Islands of immense strategic value, both historically and more recently as one of three southern maritime borders of “Fortress Europe”. Malta lies 200 miles north of Libya and 220 miles to the west of Tunisia. The most immediate observations of the Maltese lifestyle, their diet and religious disposition (98% being Roman-Catholic) one might be quick to discount their sustained relationship with North Africa in exchange for understanding Malta as a more conventionally-Mediterranean land.