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.
