The working class and Malta's transition from a British base to a commercial economy : 1943 - 1979

Abstract

Malta's modern development history is relatively recent, and hence is a new topic in Malta's historiography. Until now there have been few attempts to objectively analyze it. It was the article by Russell King, 'Recent Developments in the Political and Economic Geography of Malta' in Tijdschrift voor economische en social geografiem (IXX, 5, 1979, 259-271), which inspired me to start taking a closer look at Malta's development history. What made King's article so interesting to me, was his observation about Malta's rural and city dichotomy, which he claimed had economic and political implications. This impressive fact alone, that a small island could carry a geographic and economic dichotomy was enough to make me interested in modern development history. There are many types of modern development history. Some strictly base themselves on technical economic aspects, others might deal with the politics, while some focus only on social and cultural aspects. Lino Briguglio and Edward Spiteri (especially the former) have tackled Malta's development history with short abstracts which deal with numbers and facts while omitting any historical analysis. The works which come nearest to historic analysis are the Phd theses of Mario Brincat and Joseph Muscat, but even these works lack a proper historic analysis because they focus only on some of the economic and political aspects of Malta's developmental history. Muscat's thesis focuses on the concept of the economic interventionist Government and the Fordist Regime under a Malta Labour Government in the 1970s while Brincat's thesis focuses on the ELIFFIT model of development. On the other hand Joseph M. Pirotta's three volumes, Fortress Colony: The Final Act 1945-1964, provide a detailed historic account of Malta's political history during the post-War period. My thesis is an attempt to concisely explain how Malta achieved the status of a developed country by analyzing the economic, political, social, cultural and ideological trends which historically contributed or were part of Malta's interesting development history. If one restricts oneself solely to figures when studying development history, one can easily fail to understand the trends and factors which brought about the figures. On the other hand figures are essential to understand how society progressed in organic terms.