The production of salt in Malta during early modern times

Abstract

Studies on the history of salt in Malta are extremely few in number. The scarcity of published material on the subject is such that the ideas put forward by Karl Popper in his book The Poverty of Historicism come to mind. Popper upbraided the use of history for the projection of the future, and rebuked the fact that the poverty of historicism leads to a poverty of imagination. He attributed this situation to the insufficient survival of documentary material on the history of past successive events. Popper's prognosis deepens if it is projected to those periods in history seriously lacking in copious information regarding past events. The little information that came down on salt history in Malta only permits, if anything, to formulate loose trends. The aim of this paper is to fill such a void. Undoubtedly, salt in Malta was an ingredient of utmost importance and one which was prized.