The political career of George Mitrovich

Abstract

The political career of George Mitrovich falls into three periods: 1835 to 1838, 1838 to 1840, and 1855 to 1858. The first period sees Mitrovich and the Committee attacking the conception of Malta as an island fortress by sending the Petition and disposing the English public to effect reforms in Malta. The culminating point is the Royal Commission of 1838. In the second period Mitrovich once again leaves for London where he does his best to preserve what had been gained by the Maltese, including a free press. In the last period of political activity Mitrovich is elected as member of the Council, as reformed by the 1848 Constitution. But on finding it not to his liking he resigns and thinks of resorting to a Petition to the Crown. For this purpose, he sets up a Patriotic Committee. As for the sources for the first period I had to go through the published material and manuscripts of the time which are found in the Royal Malta Library. Some of the publications by Mitrovich are not really helpful to build an account of his career since they mostly repeat themselves. An indispensable source for any study of the political history of Malta in the 1830s are the volumes containing the minutes, projects and papers of the Maltese General Committee. These are in possession of Dr. Albert Ganado who kindly allowed me to consult them. For the other two periods I had to rely for the most part on newspapers. Having nothing on which to go I went through the newspapers published in Malta from 1838 to 1864 to make sure that if there is anayting related to the subject I would find it. This meant a lot of unrewarding work until I came to the year 1855. At least, however, this helped me ‘negatively’ to locate the periods of Mitrovich’s political activity. The Manuscript, ‘Servizi resi alla Patria 1838-1878’, which I came across after the general plan of the dissertation was completed confirmed my conclusions