Maltese cotton manufacture : a story of decline and extinction

Abstract

The recent debate over Malta's economic development has been dominated by the assumption that industrialization in this country was only possible by foreign-owned enterprises. This predominant argument implies that Malta never possessed any real indigenous potential for industrial development. The object of this paper is to present a preliminary historical analysis of the way indigenous manufacture was devastated during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This study focuses on how the eradication of traditional cotton manufacturing affected the course of Malta's economic development by further obstructing the country's potential industrial growth. The paper also shows that female work has been fundamental to Malta's manufacturing sector, at least until the first part of the nineteenth century and that the marginalising of the female section from the country's overt productive sector formed part of the whole process of decline and extinction of Malta's domestic cotton proto-industry.