Imperial policy in Malta, 1934-1939 : Britain’s need for benevolent despotism

Abstract

After a century of constitutional development, and a decade of self-rule (1921-1930, 1932-1933), Malta reverted to Crown-Colony government in 1934 until 1939. This thesis analyses the nature as well as the ramifications of the British political policy adopted during this period. Malta was run autocratically under absolute British control, while self-government remained a distant promise. In the context of Britain’s uneasy position in the Mediterranean in the 1930s, the British authorities started a process of de-Italianisation. This further defined the autocratic nature of the administration as it sought to eliminate potentially dangerous Italian elements in Malta. Nevertheless, as much as being despotic, British rule was equally benevolent. British authorities sought to harness Maltese consent to this type of Crown- Colony rule through a multi-level policy of ‘good’ governance. To this end, Governor David Campbell initiated a process of social modernisation in the moribund areas of agriculture and health. Governor Bonham-Carter went a step further. He committed himself to closing the distance between the Maltese and the British by attempting to remove racial imperial attitudes towards the natives. Through the constitutional experiment of 1936, Bonham-Carter also set out to ‘teach’ the conduct of responsible politics to Maltese politicians by passing them the values of civic duty. Although the Maltese politicians opposed Britain’s investment in domestic modernisation, and remained resilient in their demand for self-government, the nation’s pulse measured differently. The 1935 Jubilee and the 1937 Coronation festivities, used as case studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the benevolent policy as it developed in different stages, both revealed and confirmed Maltese support for British rule. Upon the reintroduction of elections in 1939, both the electorate’s poor turnout and the election results reaffirmed this point. Meanwhile, the nation’s participation in WWII removed any doubt of where the nation’s sympathies truly lay.