https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/30428 2026-04-14T12:41:50Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/122934 Title: Maltese tailors and dress making, 1850-1930 Abstract: Malta has always been important for its cotton industries since the middle ages. This was often exported and economically beneficial for the Maltese society. Specialized tailors are known to have come to Malta with the coming of the Order of St John in 1530. most of them being Rhodiots who came to Malta with the Knights. The description of nineteenth and twentieth century paintings in certain books, help us to form an idea on the type of dresses Maltese people wore, and that the common knowledge that all of them wore the same type of dresses is not true at all. Differences in dress clearly showed social class and status, and indeed dress and class is one of the elements which this thesis attempts to discuss in relation to the exosphere of tailors and their different specializations. When Malta was a British colony several tailors both Maltese and foreigners (especially from Sicily), opened their own tailor's shops in several villages on the Islands. Most of them though were held in Valletta and the harbour area. This work attempts to analyze the statistical records from a geographical and social perspective. For instance we will ask why there were so many specialized tailors in the inner Harbour area during most of the nineteenth century. Amount of advertisements found in newspapers such as the II-Malta and The Malta Daily Chronicle of these shops made evidence the trends of dresses they sew. Some of these shops were specified for making military clothes, considering the fact that there were a lot of British sailors who were residents in Malta. Description: B.A.(HONS)HISTORY 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/122713 Title: Reggie Miller and the post-war socio-political challenges Abstract: This study attempts to analyse some salient points of Miller's General Workers Union from its foundation in 1943 to his retirement in 1958. This is done in the context of the conflict of interests between Britain and the islanders seeking to enjoy and maintain a good standard of living and an acceptable constitutional status for their island home. Soon after its foundation the G. W. U. was instrumental in the reorganisation and the revitalization of the Labour Party that then led to the establishment of the Labour Front. As a trade union embracing all classes and sectors of workers, the G. W. U. was distinct from all previous trade unions both in character and scope. The welfare of the mass of workers it embraced could not be attained without the Union's total involvement in the general economic and constitutional progress of Malta. Inborn cooperation between the G.W.U. and the Labour Party was inevitable and in the National Assembly they had their first training in unity, collaboration, and mutual support. Miller, however, always insisted on keeping the Union's identity intact - a task sometimes difficult in view of the majority support enjoyed by the Labour Party within the G.W.U.'s membership. The 1949 split in the Labour Party over the ultimatum issue may be said to have deprived the workers' movement for five years of an effective say in the running of their country. The G. W. U., after initially trying to keep equidistant from the two factions, slowly moved towards supporting Mintoffs M.L.P. and the Labour Movement reappeared as a united and solid front whose efforts were crowned by an overwhelming success at the 1955 elections. This success was taken to mean that the Labour Government had a clear mandate to insist on Integration. In Reggie Miller the Union had a founder who was a staunch supporter of Malta's right to an enhanced constitutional status that would give the island both dignity and economic prosperity. When in the fifties the Malta Labour Party proclaimed that Malta's constitutional future lay in either Integration or self-determination, with an option for the first alternative, Miller's G.W.U. found it naturally easy to give wholehearted support to the M.L.P. For the Maltese workers Integration meant parity with their British counterparts. Miller had proposed union with Britain at a G.W.U. rally in Pawla in May 1943. The Union's loyal support was not affected when the Catholic Church opposed Integration. Britain's reappraisal of its international commitments after the Suez crisis led to discharges at the Dockyard and a general rundown in employment as a result of diminished Defence spending. This posed a threat to Malta's future, and created problems for the G.W.U. and the Government. The Defence workers were heartened by the national support, particularly when the Legislative Assembly unanimously adopted the historic 'break with Britain' resolution. This was followed by the resignation of the Labour Government, a general strike called by the G.W.U., and anti-British manifestations. The Integration proposals were no longer possible and the struggle for Independence was set in motion. Miller retired from his position as General Secretary of the G.W.U. in the same period. By this time the workers he had led were organized in a strong union. They had attained both self-respect as a class as well as vastly improved social and working conditions. Description: B.A.(HONS)HISTORY 1993-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/102224 Title: The organisation of the Order of St John's fleet in the eighteenth century Abstract: 'The military and naval exploits of the Knights of St John have naturally captured the attention of numerous authors. But further studies should be made of espionage and of various auxiliary services, such as engineering and sanitation,' wrote Professor Bernard C. Weber way back in 1958. Continuing on the same lines, he went on to assert that 'Topics connected with the administrative organisation of the navy, the recruitment of seamen, the use of Maltese and foreigners not Knights in the naval service of the Order, and the life on the galleys have not been exhausted. The numerous ship logs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries preserved in the Royal Malta Library deserve careful examination by the qualified researcher.' In 1975, these words prompted me to carry out research on the general organisation of the galley squadron in the first half of the seventeenth century and have also spurred me on to present an account of the organisation of the Order's fleet, that is, the two distinct squadrons of galleys and third rates, in the eighteenth. [...] Description: PH.D.HISTORY 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/101816 Title: Some aspects of Veneto-Maltese relations from the War of Cyprus to the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War Abstract: This is a study of Veneto-Maltese relations. When I first approached the subject, I held one major consideration in mind. Given the disparate nature of Maltese historical scholarship, the need was felt to relate my present research to work I have already done. This approach, I trust, would help to contribute, on a modest scale, towards a future synthesis of the various aspects and levels of relationship that existed between Venice and Malta .from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Located within the external framework of the Mediterranean situation and the political, diplomatic and the economic conditions prevailing in both States, this dissertation attempts to establish the facts and determine the nature of some aspects of these relations from the War of Cyprus to the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. I have triad to combine narrative and analysis in a fairly balanced way. In broad terms, it is a study in the process by which the Venetian Republic, through its seemingly culpable and cynical collaboration with, and commitment ta, the Sultan at Constantinople, was able to 'enforce its will' upon the complaisant principality of Malta in the sixteenth century and the partial reversal of the process at the dawn of the seventeenth. In a narrower sense, it is a case-study Description: PH.D. 1980-01-01T00:00:00Z