The establishment of the Malta Chamber of Commerce

Abstract

Associations of merchants to promote trade and defend commercial interests are known to have existed at least as early as the Roman Empire but the Chambre de Commerce of Marseilles, with origins in 1599, would seem to have been the first such organization bearing the modem name. It was, nevertheless, not until the massive expansion of commerce in the nineteenth century that Chambers of Commerce, sponsored by the state or the result of private initiative, really became established as important articulators of business interests. The Malta Chamber of Commerce, which has existed without interruption since 1848, was one of the earliest to be established in what was then the British Empire, even preceding such important chambers as Liverpool ( 1851 ), Sheffield (1857) and London itself, which was established in 1881. The fore-runners of the Chamber may of course be sought as far back as the late fourteenth century in the shape of the Maltese Universita, responsible for the provisioning of the island. Some of the functions of the later Consolata di Mare, created in 1697, would also devolve on to the Chamber of Commerce, while a short-lived Camera dei Negozi or Camera di Commercio actually existed in the eighteenth century. But the Malta Chamber of Commerce, whose 150 years of existence we are celebrating this year, was the direct result of the fusion of two institutions, a Society of British Merchants on the verge of extinction and a Society or Committee of Maltese Merchants which was very much in the ascendency.