The Maltese Islands have a long and fascinating history and indeed pre-history. But what mattered to the British in the early nineteenth century was the main island's strategic value

— though even that was hardly apparent at first. Napoleon had easily captured Malta from the Knights of the Order of St John in 1798, and, having been approached by the Maltese for help, the British sent in warships and troops to assist in a blockade of the Grand Harbour. When the French surrendered in Gozo, the second largest island, it was the Sicilian flag, rather than the British, that flew from the ramparts, because nominally the Order had held Malta in fief from the "Kingdom of the Two Sicilies" (Naples and Sicily). The final surrender of the French took place in 1800, the armistice being signed near the Portes des Bombes, Floriana. The British and the Maltese celebrated their victory in the Auberge de Castille, the Grand Master's flamboyantly baroque eighteenth-century palace. The British were then ready to move on: by the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, Malta was to be returned to a reformed Order, under Sicilian protection. However, while the British were there trade had begun to recover after the blockade, and the people "had become accustomed to British protection " (Grech 28). A deputation was sent to George III, and eventually, by the Treaty of Paris in 1814, Malta became a British Crown colony. By now the British were very well aware of Malta's value as a military and naval base.

Malta now became a place for the British to visit, especially for its warm climate. The first visitors were quite amazed by what they found. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, having accepted a friend's invitation, went out for health reasons in 1804. He found the heavy fortifications, steep and uneven grid-patterned roads, long flights of steps and flat-roofed houses all quite extraordinary. The natural environment too was totally unfamiliar, leading him to remark later upon the "noiseless dews of Malta, where rain comes seldom and no regular streams are to be met with" (Letters 7). Nevertheless, he came to understand the place, and stayed several years, becoming Private and then Public Secretary to Captain Alexander Ball, Britain's first governor there. The poet praised Ball highly as "the abstract Idea of a wise & good Governor," but was to confide that the machinery of colonial government was "awkward & wicked" (Collected Letters 2: 668,1178 ). He appears to have taken little interest in Valletta's richly baroque architectural heritage (see Ashton 228). He returned in 1807 no better in health, and now firmly addicted to opium. Another early visitor was Lord Byron, who found Malta a useful staging-post on his travels, visiting it in 1809 and 1811, and describing it once as his "perpetual post-office, from which my letters are forwarded to all habitable parts of the globe" (Moore 180). He stayed there long enough to have a brief flirtation with the wife of a minister at Constantinople (the woman who inspired Florence in Childe Harold [Nichol 56]), and nearly had a duel with an officer over some trivial misunderstanding. Valletta had already become a garrison town with a colourful colonial ambience. But those endless stone steps were a particular problem for Byron, and, unfortunately, he fell ill with a fever there on his way home.

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Part II - Social and Cultural Life

Part III - Architecture and Civil and Military Engineering Projects

Author: Jacqueline Banerjee, PhD

Article Source: www.victorianweb.org

Image -  Samuel Taylor Coleridge - One of the first Victorian visitors to Malta and eventual secretary to Alexander Ball