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Title: | Servants of Empire : the Maltese in the Royal Navy |
Authors: | Vassallo, Carmel |
Keywords: | Great Britain. Royal Navy -- History -- 19th century Great Britain.Royal Navy -- History -- 20th century Sailors, Maltese |
Issue Date: | 2006 |
Citation: | Vassallo, Carmel. (2006). "Servants of Empire : the Maltese in the Royal Navy". Journal of Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 16(1/2), p. 273-289 |
Abstract: | The British Empire was dependent on the collaboration of key sections of the governed. In India, for example, this involved local potentates, the many tiers of bureaucracy below senior British civil servants, and ultimately, the locally-raised sepoys, or Indian soldiers, who outnumbered British troops in India by nearly two to one. Malta does not fit easily into the wider phenomenon of colonialism. It was essentially a fortress colony and Britain was able to muster support from a wide range of sectors including uniformed personnel in local regiments and the Royal Navy but while the British Army had a long established tradition of recruiting locals for service in native regiments, the Royal Navy relied overwhelmingly on British manpower to staff its first line of defence afloat, at least in the Contemporary period. The Maltese were one of the exceptions. At the height of empire, between 1891 and 1931, the Maltese may have constituted between five and ten percent of the Royal Navy's personnel in the Mediterranean at a time when as much as half of its total strength was based in the Inner Sea. |
URI: | https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/11579 |
Appears in Collections: | Melitensia Works - ERCWHMlt |
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File | Description | Size | Format | |
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Servants of the empire.PDF Restricted Access | 1.05 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open Request a copy |
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