British Protectorate of Malta | |||||||||||
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1800–1813 | |||||||||||
Flag | |||||||||||
Anthem: | |||||||||||
Status | Part of the Kingdom of Sicily under British protection | ||||||||||
Capital | Valletta | ||||||||||
Common languages | |||||||||||
Religion | Roman Catholicism | ||||||||||
Government | Protectorate | ||||||||||
Monarch | |||||||||||
• 1800–02 | Ferdinand III | ||||||||||
• 1802–13 | George III | ||||||||||
Civil Commissioner | |||||||||||
• 1799–1801 | Alexander Ball | ||||||||||
• 1801 | Henry Pigot | ||||||||||
• 1801–02 | Charles Cameron | ||||||||||
• 1802–09 | Alexander Ball | ||||||||||
• 1810–13 | Hildebrand Oakes | ||||||||||
Historical era | Napoleonic Wars | ||||||||||
• British presence | 9 February 1799 | ||||||||||
• Established | 4 September 1800 | ||||||||||
• Declaration of Rights | June 1802 | ||||||||||
• Disestablished | 23 July 1813 | ||||||||||
Population | |||||||||||
• 1807 [1] | 93,054 | ||||||||||
Currency | Maltese scudo | ||||||||||
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Malta Protectorate (Italian : Protettorato di Malta, Maltese : Protettorat ta' Malta) was the political term for Malta when it was de jure part of the Kingdom of Sicily but under British protection. This protectorate existed between the capitulation of the French forces in Malta in 1800 and the transformation of the islands to the Crown Colony of Malta in 1813.
During the Maltese uprising against the French, the Maltese people formed a National Assembly as a provisional government. Messengers were sent to the British fleet in Sicily for help, and a British convoy consisting of 13 battered ships under Captain Sir James Saumarez appeared off the island in late September 1798. In October Sir Alexander Ball arrived in Malta, and a year later he was appointed as Civil Commissioner.
The French garrison under General Vaubois had been driven to Mosta, and finally surrendered on 4 September 1800. Malta therefore became a British protectorate. In August 1801, the Civil Commissioner, Charles Cameron, appointed Emmanuel Vitale as Governor of commino instead of Saverio Cassar. This effectively brought an end to Gozo's independence as la Nazione Gozitana .
Under the terms of the 1802 Treaty of Amiens with France, Britain was supposed to evacuate the islands, but failed to keep this obligation – one of several mutual cases of non-adherence to the treaty, which eventually led to its collapse and the resumption of war between the two countries.
In June 1802, 104 representatives from the Maltese towns and villages signed a declaration entitled La Dichiarazione dei Diritti degli abitanti delle Isole di Malta e Gozo (The Declaration of Rights of the inhabitants of the Islands of Malta and Gozo) by which they proclaimed George III to be their king, and that he had no right to surrender Malta to another power. By the Declaration they also proclaimed that Malta should be self-governing while under British protection. [2]
Politically, Lampedusa was also part of the Kingdom of Sicily. In the late 18th century, while Malta was still under the Knights, the Prince of Lampedusa had let the island to Salvatore Gatt, a Maltese entrepreneur, who settled on the island with a few Maltese workers.
The British considered taking over Lampedusa as a naval base instead of Malta, but the idea was dropped as the island did not have deep harbours and was not well developed. Despite this, the authorities in Malta and the British government still attempted to take over the island as they believed that it could be used to supply Malta with food in case Sicily fell to Napoleon.
In 1800, Ball sent a Commissariat to Lampedusa to assess the feasibility of this and the result was that the island could easily be used to supply Malta with food at a relatively low cost as there was grazing ground and an adequate water supply. In 1803, some Maltese farmers settled on Lampedusa with cattle and sheep, and they began to grow barley.
In 1810, Salvatore Gatt transferred the lease to Alexander Fernandez, the British Commissariat, and the latter attempted to create a large Maltese colony on the island. This never materialized as a Royal commission in 1812 stated that this was just a business venture and Britain refused to help Fernandez. Further problems arose when the plague devastated Malta in 1813–14, and on 25 September 1814, Sir Thomas Maitland withdrew British troops from Lampedusa.
Fernandez remained proprietor of the island until 1818, when Gatt returned and remained there with his family up to 1824. [3]
In 1813 the island was transformed into a British Crown colony by the Bathurst Constitution. On 23 July Sir Thomas Maitland replaced Sir Hildebrand Oakes and was the first Civil Commissioner to be given the title of "Governor". Malta officially became a colony by the Treaty of Paris in 1814. [2]
Malta has been inhabited since 5900 BC. The first inhabitants were farmers; their agricultural methods degraded the soil until the islands became uninhabitable. The islands were repopulated around 3850 BC by a civilization that at its peak built the Megalithic Temples, which today are among the oldest surviving buildings in the world. Their civilization collapsed in around 2350 BC; the islands were repopulated by Bronze Age warriors soon afterwards.
Lampedusa is the largest island of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean Sea.
Lieutenant General The Right Honourable Sir Thomas Maitland was a British soldier and British colonial governor. He also served as a Member of Parliament for Haddington from 1790 to 1796, 1802–06 and 1812–13. He was made a Privy Councillor on 23 November 1803. He was the second surviving son of James Maitland, 7th Earl of Lauderdale, and the younger brother of James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale. Maitland never married.
The United States of the Ionian Islands was a Greek state and amical protectorate of the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1864. The successor state of the Septinsular Republic, it covered the territory of the Ionian Islands, as well as the town of Parga on the adjacent mainland in modern Greece. It was ceded by the British to Greece as a gift to the newly enthroned King George I, apart from Parga, which was sold to Ali Pasha of Ioannina in 1819.
The Malta Police Force is the national police force of the Republic of Malta. It falls under the responsibility of the Ministry for Home Affairs, Security, Reforms & Equality and its objectives are set out in The Police Act, Chapter 164 of the Laws of Malta.
British protectorates were protectorates—or client states—under protection of the British Empire's armed forces and represented by British diplomats in international arenas, such as the Great Game, in which the Emirate of Afghanistan and the Tibetan Kingdom became protected states for short periods of time. Many territories which became British protectorates already had local rulers with whom the Crown negotiated through treaty, acknowledging their status whilst simultaneously offering protection, e.g. British Paramountcy. British protectorates were therefore governed by indirect rule. In most cases, the local ruler, as well as the subjects of the indigenous ruler were not British subjects. British protected states represented a more loose form of British suzerainty, where the local rulers retained absolute control over the states' internal affairs and the British exercised control over defence and foreign affairs.
The Crown Colony of the Island of Malta and its Dependencies was the British colony in the Maltese islands, today the modern Republic of Malta. It was established when the Malta Protectorate was transformed into a British Crown colony in 1813, and this was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris in 1814.
The Gozitan Nation, commonly known as Gozo, was an unrecognised state located on the island of Gozo between 1798 and 1801 during the French Revolutionary Wars. It was a monarchy recognizing the authority of Ferdinand III of Sicily with a provisional government led by Governor-General Saverio Cassar. Its capital was Rabat. The country was established between 28 and 29 October 1798 from the territory of French-occupied Malta and was eventually incorporated into Malta Protectorate on 20 August 1801.
Hospitaller Malta, officially the Monastic State of the Order of Malta, and known within Maltese history as the Knights' Period, was a polity which existed between 1530 and 1798 when the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were ruled by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. It was formally a vassal state of the Kingdom of Sicily, and it came into being when Emperor Charles V granted the islands as well as the city of Tripoli in modern Libya to the Order, following the latter's loss of Rhodes in 1522. Hospitaller Tripoli was lost to the Ottoman Empire in 1551, but an Ottoman attempt to take Malta in 1565 failed.
Lieutenant-General Sir Hildebrand Oakes, 1st Baronet, GCB was a British Army officer.
The Maltese Provincial Battalions were infantry battalions in the British Army which existed from 1802 to 1815 in Malta, then a British protectorate and later a colony.
The 1813–1814 Malta plague epidemic was the last major outbreak of plague on the islands of Malta and Gozo. It occurred between March 1813 and January 1814 on Malta and between February and May 1814 on Gozo, and the epidemic was officially declared to be over in September 1814. It resulted in approximately 4500 deaths, which was about 5% of the islands' population.