Hunting and game in Malta in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries : a historical anthrolopogical approach

Abstract

The rule of the Order of St John (1530‒1798) in Malta coincides with the promulgation of stiff regulations that successive Grand Masters issued to curb snaring and hunting rights. For the ruling knights of Malta and the local gentry, hunting was essentially a sport and a pastime, but the mass of the population, particularly the country folk, perceived hunting differently. For the peasantry, hunting bans meant deprivation from access to a cheap and abundant supply of meat as well as a denial of their legitimate right to use common land. The abrogation of the strict hunting regulations by the British in the early nineteenth-century, was a blessing to the rural population. In time, however, peasants no longer viewed game as a source of protein with the result that hunting ceased to be a necessity. Within decades of British rule, it became a pastime much enjoyed by peasant men who transformed it into the top male rural sport in Malta.