Studying historical landscapes : the cabreo and related archival sources from Italy and Malta — from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century

Abstract

The order of St John in Malta, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, played an important institutional role in Europe's modernised social structure and political scenario. Its geographically-dispersed presence and prolonged history created a Johanniter identity linking a political network of relationships based on the distribution of power. Across Europe and on the island-convent, the 'administrative nodes' of commanderies and agricultural estates, highlight the Order's attentive significance of possessing land as a crucial resource for economic benefit. This demand encouraged landscape recharacterisation and management systems - including administrative records, especially cabrei and legal documents - that ensured property value and economic sustainment. Although Italian and Maltese landed properties are of different geographic and juridical natures, their continued transformation throughout the Order's period and by subsequent rulers - the British in Malta and the Italian States in the nineteenth century - created a sequence of interlinked elements and patterns that formed a landscape palimpsest. The Order’s presence on the islands’ and continent’s regions, as occurred likewise with the British and Italian rulers, formed a social structure defined through political relations of the Order, sovereigns, ecclesiastics, and noble jurisdictions attributing in land holding a means for State control.