Displacing the natives in early British Malta : bastion burials, tournaments and gibbets

Abstract

In my previous article on Carnival in the early British period, I argued that British colonial rule was premised upon a ‘strategy of continuity’ with the Knights, which had various political uses and has left an impact even on contemporary Maltese society.

This essay explores how military ritual served both to symbolically assert British military continuity with the Knights and also to put the ‘native civilian population’ in their place, culminating in the effective eviction of native Maltese from property which had belonged to the Knights.

Here, I focus on three areas of ritual/symbolic activity through which the legitimacy of exclusive British control of Knight-period spaces was affirmed: using bastions as burial sites for British high-profile officials, appropriating squares for military parades and public executions.