https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/38436 2026-04-05T13:10:42Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/17976 Title: A fragment of the Maltese exodus : child migration to Australia 1953-1965 Authors: Plowman, David H. Abstract: In March 2009, Maltese Prime Minister Gonzi unveiled a memorial to child migration in Grand Harbour. The wording to the monument notes that there were 310 such migrants. It records respect for the achievements of these migrants, joy at their successes and regret at any unintended consequences of child migration. It is evident from letters to the press at the time and from other sources that many in Malta had little knowledge of such migration, and that others did not understand the concept of ‘child migration’. This paper seeks to correct these deficiencies. In doing so it is broken into a number of sections. The next section locates the Maltese experience within the contours of British child migration and to this end provides an historical overview. Section 3 explores the push and pull factors resulting in the commencement of Maltese child migration in 1953. Section 4 provides details of the mechanics of child migration and Section 5 reflects on the child migrant experience. The final section is by way of summary and conclusion 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/17973 Title: Living on fishing, caught in the market : the Maltese fishing communities,1860s-1920 Authors: Chircop, John Abstract: The absence of the fishing folk, of their daily livelihood, communal ways of life and culture, characterizes modern Maltese historiography. This conspicuous neglect must be treated as a serious omission indeed, particularly when one considers the fact that we are dealing with the history of a small archipelago. Certainly, the lack of early official quantitative and qualitative sources on Maltese fishing culture, apart that is from the rudimentary annotations in censuses or colonial reports published from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, has definitely not assisted the generation of research interest in this field of inquiry. More disturbingly still, conventional authors have interpreted this scarcity of official records on the fishing people as proof of their irrelevance to Maltese history. This is indeed an essentially linear view of history, narrowly positivist in nature, which alas still structures the bulk of Maltese historical productions. In contrast, to the critical historiographer, it is immediately apparent that the causes of such a surprising neglect are of a methodological, historiographical as much as of a historical nature. Adopting this critical historical approach, the present study treats the exclusion of these coastal labouring people and their daily work activities from modern Maltese historiography as replicating the laissez-faire attitude and practice of the colonial state during most of the nineteenth century, which discarded domestic fishing culture. It was only on some occasions that the administration gave a fleeting look to this sector, airing the idea that this indigenous economic activity was insignificant, and thus inconsequential to Malta’s ‘modern’ colonial economy, if anything because of a supposed low productivity of the surrounding seas. This long-standing stance, expressed in various official comments, was employed as a legitimizing device for the actual abandonment of this economic sector, and of the fishing population, by the governing establishment, whose principal task was to secure Malta’s role as a strategic imperial outpost in the Mediterranean. In the context of the resulting economic system, imperial spending and native capital flows were directed into the naval-military infrastructure and the trade facilities located in the Grand Harbour area, while most indigenous productive activities were starved of capital. The impact left on the fishing sector by this economic system, managed by the colonial state and articulated with the dominant market relations, during the period under review, forms the central concern of this study. Against this structural economic backdrop, this work will focus on the nodal problems actually faced by the fishers in their daily exertions. Extensive space is here allocated to an investigation of the inequitable market relations occurring in the wholesale fish-market (Pixkerija). The ways in which this market institution hindered the transformation of domestic fishing from a traditional and low productivity activity into a viable commercialized sector, and how it kept the fishers’ standards of living at subsistence level, are discussed in some detail. Certainly, investigating in some depth the structure and operations of this institution, and particularly the dominant role of the middlemen, will trigger a further inquiry on how these coastal fishing people managed to survive as households and as communities in coastal villages in the long term, considering their total exclusion from any state assistance or legal protection from market exploitation. Moreover, to add to their proverbial burdens, the state, during the period under review, was gradually making itself present in the lives of the fishing people but only through the imposition of restrictions on traditional fishing and by curbing, or strictly prohibiting, access to large stretches of the sea and coastal areas, particularly in the Grand Harbour, officially in order to protect spawning fish from depletion. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/17970 Title: Searching for a national cuisine Authors: Billiard, Elise Abstract: As the marketing of national cuisines is spreading at an epidemic rate all around the world and as we witness countless aberrations it is necessary to shed light on the gastronomic search for identity. In this article I will be looking at some common postulates on national food. The discussion will tackle four main issues: are we really what we eat? What makes a cuisine unique? What is the place of tradition in national cuisine and how can food heritage be used to define group identity? Taking Maltese national cuisine as an example, I hope to start an indispensable debate. This article does not intend to define what is national cuisine but exposes the pitfalls and contradictions that are endemic to such definitions. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/17968 Title: M’hemm l-ebda post iehor bhad-dar (there’s no place like home) : Maltese migration to French Algeria in the nineteenth century Authors: Hayes, Joshua M. Abstract: The Maltese islands have long been a place of movement.1 Part of this tradition involves leaving the home islands to seek economic opportunities in neighboring areas.2 The nature of this movement fundamentally changed in the mid-nineteenth century with the French invasion of Algeria. What had previously been a migration of limited quantity grew to encompass a much greater percentage of the population.3 The circular movement of Maltese to North Africa, particularly to Algeria, defined Maltese migration in the nineteenth century.4 Over the course of the century, Maltese came to form a significant part of the non-French European contingent in French North Africa. Fluctuating international and domestic forces in the political, economic, social, and cultural realms all influenced Maltese migration to Algeria in the nineteenth century. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z