https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/48907 Fri, 22 May 2026 09:43:28 GMT 2026-05-22T09:43:28Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/50830 Title: Hospitallers in early modern Malta : a study of the Order of St. John’s Military Complex, 1530 – 1650 Abstract: There exists a prevailing notion among academics, that military history is very much the realm of retired generals, whose tedious focus on campaign narratives and battle strategies does little to live up to the modern intellectual rigours of the academic historian. With such an outlook firmly embedded in the academic world and university campuses, one should feel no surprise to see that military history has, with a few exceptions, become the forte of the popular historian, whose audience is far more willing to accept generalisations and sensationalist interpretations. Ironically, military history’s popularity with the general public and the popular historians who eagerly satisfy this demand, tarnish the reputation of the same subject in the academic world. Such divisiveness between the academic and the historically inclined non–academic readership does not bode well for history in all its forms, whether military, political or social. Yet, warfare is as much of a cultural phenomenon as literature, art, fashion and philosophical thought. By extension military history is not just about campaign narratives and strategy, but equally as much about understanding the participants and their experience of battle, for the warriors’ behaviour on the battlefield was conditioned by their cultural values and ideology, as much as the societal norms from which the accepted methods of combat emerged. It is this realisation which endeared me to the discipline, although a background rich in years of martial art practice, both Japanese and European, as well as growing up on a Mediterranean island rich with the Hospitaller Knight’s military heritage, furthered by the imagination of youth and influence of fantastical movies and literature concerning battlefield heroics, often occurring in a vaguely medieval setting, certainly ploughed the proverbial field eagerly awaiting for the seed to germinate. This dissertation is equally the result of all these influences as much as it is the natural extension of my previous dissertation regarding the Military Revolution and its influences on early modern Hospitaller Malta. While researching the latter in 2017, I came to realise how lacking Hospitaller military historiography was in presenting a comprehensive overview of the Order’s military establishment. This is not to say that no studies on the matter have been produced, quite the contrary in fact, yet these studies although technical and well researched tend to treat the various components of the Hospitaller military in isolation, both from the wider international framework, and from the other facets of Order’s war machine. Furthermore, the majority of these studies focus on the institutional capacity of the Order rather than focusing on the warrior himself. This dissertation seeks to fulfil this lacuna in Hospitaller military historiography by the inclusion of human oriented themes within a wider discussion of the Order’s military complex. It should be clear that discussions of human aspects do not infer an exercise in microhistory, where diaries and letters feature as the primary source material from which a personal and individual outlook on a soldiers’ life, in peace and wartime, can be extrapolated. Such an exercise, while intellectually stimulating, is difficult to undertake with respects to the Hospitallers as the source material is limited. Rather, human aspects here are defined as the individual martial skills, and the material culture which the Hospitallers employed in warfare. The methodology employed in analysing the Order’s military complex will thus vacillate between a bird’s eye view when covering the Order’s military institutional history, to a worm’s eye view for those case studies which bring the human aspects, that is, martial training and material artefacts owned by the individual knights and militiamen, to the fore. Chapter 1 sets the stage by clearly presenting the aims of this study and engaging with the historiography of military history, and providing a detailed review of the sources consulted for this work. Chapter 2 establishes the wider context to the study, focusing on Mediterranean geo–politics and the changing nature of warfare, as well as the Hospitaller experience of island life. Chapter 3 tackles the origins of the Maltese militia, its development under the Order’s rule, and a comparison between the Maltese and European militia forces. Chapter 4 continues the same theme focusing particularly on the first half of the 17th century and presents some newly discovered information of great significance. Chapter 5 turns towards the knight himself and addresses the issue of martial training in the Hospitaller convent, with Chapter 6 investigating the Order’s military equipment from a morphological and metallurgical perspective. The concluding chapter synthesises the key observations uncovered in the preceding chapters. Description: M.A.HISTORY Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/50830 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/50801 Title: Italy’s elite and Malta : an evaluation of the state of readiness of Italian elite units in Operazione Malta Due and preparations for Esigenza C3 during the Second World War Abstract: Italy’s armed forces could have entered the Second World War with strong military traditions. The perils the Regno faced during the Great War brought about a complete rethinking of its military’s offensive tactics. The creation of the Reparti d’Assalto and the first MAS units had a profound effect on the war effort against the Central Powers. Truly, such tactics were quite ahead of their time, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to assert that they would have fit in well with the even more asymmetrical methods of warfare characterizing the following conflict. Instead, however, the Reparti d’Assalto were disbanded after the war, whilst the efforts of the MAS units and other Italian maritime sabotage operatives interpreted as wartime expediencies against an Austrian fleet in the Adriatic initially led to nowhere. One cannot talk about the effect of the Second World War on the Italian war effort or, at least, its fate in the Mediterranean, without discussing the role of the British base in Malta in all of this. The aerial siege, a three-year-long ordeal experienced by hundreds of thousands, is no forgotten memory. But the attempted Italian incursion of the night of the 25th and 26th July 1941? Perhaps not so much. And the plans for the invasion of Malta? It would not be too arduous to imply that most underestimate such plans today, or would guess that they were never drafted, to begin with. Yet during the few years preceding and following the start of the war, the Italian military was hard at work from the ground up, or, as it also happened, the other way around, to seek a way to end the threat that was the tiny island standing in the way of Italian naval supremacy in the Mare Nostrum. Inevitably, the hopes of raiding and storming the island fortress, at one point considered by the Italian Navy to be a ‘Maginot’ of the Mediterranean, led to the Italian military leaders to consider the involvement of new elite units. Malta’s harbours were notoriously heavily-defended. There was no other way than to send a secret weapon to prove their vincibility. This was the Decima Flottiglia MAS. Directly improving on sabotage technology of the previous war, it’s safe to say that for an Italian unit in the first years of conflict, there was much in the Decima Flottiglia that was both novel and promising. But the intended incursion, Operazione Malta Due, was a failure. The weather led to the island’s radar defences spotting the raiding convoy early, and the defences were thus on alert. Italian aircraft promised support in the operation, but it was a lacklustre attempt to stop an otherwise unavoidable massacre. But whilst much work has been done on uncovering the reasons for this failure, little has proven that the Italian aerial forces meant to support the operation truly did or could do little to help. In the grand scheme of the island’s siege, the Navy knew too well that neither the first six months of bombing by the Regia Aeronautica nor the first blitz of the Luftwaffe could rest its mind easy on the danger posed by a British Malta on Italian convoys. Prewar and earlywar considerations of an investment of Malta were swiftly revived, and much effort was directed towards forming both a concrete invasion plan and assembling an expeditionary force suitable for the task. In 1940, the studies had already mentioned paratroopers, but by mid-1942, the plan had succeeded to bring together not only an ItaloGerman air corps of two parachute divisions but also hardened naval assault infantry and special detachments of pioneers, combat swimmers and specialist infantry. Nevertheless, few sources treat the subject of the planned invasion, Operazione C3, as a serious undertaking. Fewer still have done more than merely assemble a chronicle of discussions, meetings and studies regarding the invasion plans. And none have attempted to analyze the state of readiness of the expeditionary force and contrast this with the island’s garrison in mid-1942. None have placed the plans in the proper context on a map, taking into account the chronology of the plan; the island’s geography and topography; and the likelihood of opposing forces and their respective orders of battle. The truth is one that has been dismissed by many: the threat of invasion was real and close; a sizeable invasion force was truly assembled; and, should Operazione C3 have been launched, it would have most likely come at the best possible time for the Axis in the Mediterranean, so far as the year 1942 was concerned. Description: M.A.HISTORY Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/50801 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/50733 Title: Medical pluralism in early modern Malta during the eighteenth-century Abstract: The aim of this dissertation is to analyse Malta in the eighteenth-century as a medical pluralistic society, particularly focusing on the practice of folk healing and apothecarists. Medical pluralism can shed light on the social history of a society. Therefore, this research will help to find out the accessibility of medical practitioners to different social classes. The role that these practitioners held in the community will also be assessed. This will help to identify if they had an active role in their community and how they were perceived. The role of folk healers and apothecarists on the European continent will be studied. This will aid to establish the similarities and differences between Maltese practitioners and those on the continent. Other studies about the medical history of Europe will also be consulted to discover how the Maltese islands contributed to the healing sector in Europe. This study is divided into four chapters. The first chapter will provide the general context needed in order to understand this research. Information will be given about the eighteenth- century and medical history. The sources used for this study will also be explained. The second chapter will analyse the role of apothecarists on the island. It will assess their social role and financial situation. The third chapter will study the medical ingredients found in the Maltese apothecaries in the eighteenth-century. Particular attention will be given to medical ingredients that were associated with the Maltese islands all over Europe. The healing properties of these ingredients will be studied to check if previous healing beliefs persisted in the eighteenth-century. The fourth and last chapter will study the role of folk healers on the island. It will help established the medical and social role of folk healers. Description: B.A.(HONS)HISTORY Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/50733 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/50732 Title: Vincenzo Borg Brared 1773-1837 : a portrait of his political, cultural and personal life Abstract: Vincenzo Borg occupies a prominent place in Maltese History, and often the aim of such studies is to study his role during the blockade and its significance. The purpose of this thesis was not only to analyse all this but also to go beyond this historical narrative. In this work I try to make the reader aware of Vincenzo Borg Brared’s personal life. By personal life, I intended his family and also his cultural and religious relevance. Therefore, I attempted to answer who this man was, what he stood for in life and what he achieved. Historians have written about him but none gave any consideration to his early childhood and teenage years or later years. The emphasis lay squarely with his participation in the blockade against the French and his contribution to help the British take over Malta. Yet, despite the importance of such a historical figure, even his date of birth is shrouded in mystery. I hope that through my research, I have succeeded in answering with certainty the year of his birth. Also, through the use of archival material, this study has unearthed a number of facts about Borg Brared’s exploits related to his political activities during the blockade of the French and the first decades of British rule in Malta. Description: B.A.(HONS)HISTORY Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/50732 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z