WESTERN EUROPE THE SMALL STATES

This week in class we “go small” — to one of Europe's several “small states,” tiny independent nations that each have their own fascinating history and particular reason for being. All Around This World tells the tale of several at our “Small States” page online.

In class we're going to focus on one of those states: the island nation of Malta, a small set of islands in the central Mediterranean about fifty miles south of the Italian island of Sicily. The islands have been inhabited from about 5200 B.C. when Sicilian hunters or farmers stopped by. (Archaeologists suggest this as the arrival date of humans because it coincides roughly with the extinction of the uniquely Maltese dwarf hippos and dwarf elephants.) Over the centuries, little Malta found itself under the thumb of many powerful entities: the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Byzantines, Arabs, the Germans, Barbary Corsairs (pirates), who in 1551 enslaved the entire population of the Maltese island of Gozo and sent them all to the Barbary Coast, the French (specifically Napoleon, who visited for just six days, but in his time there abolished feudalism and freed Malta's slaves) and, from 1814 until its independence in 1964, the British Empire.