Pro-Italian Maltese are italophile Maltese. Historically, views ranged from cultural admiration (particularly for the language) to sympathy for Italian irredentist ideals and support for union with Italy. The issue was important particularly from the political perspective from the mid-nineteenth century to the Second World War, usually in contrast to the views of the pro-British Maltese. The category is today of no political significance. Italophile sympathies remain in Malta because of Italy's proximity and the Italian language is Malta's third language (although having no official status since 1934). Rivalry with pro-British Maltese persists but is largely limited to sport, particularly football. History Early influences The Romans took Malta in 218 BC, and were followed by the Byzantines in 535 AD. During those long periods of colonization the small population, numbering between 5,000 and 10,000, was fully romanized and spoke Latin. The Arabs made a violent raid on the islands in 870 and successively occupied the island for two centuries. The beginnings of present-day Maltese date from this period: in 1048 around 400 families from Moslem Sicily were moved to Malta and the original community absorbed the Siculo-Arabic language of the new arrivals. This has been confirmed by a major study which found that "the contemporary males of Malta most likely originated from Southern Italy, including Sicily and up to Calabria". The and their arrival in Malta in 1090 exposed to islands to Latinisation. The population of the Maltese islands kept growing, mainly through immigration from Italy (especially Sicily), with the exile to Malta of the entire male population of the town of Celano in 1223, the stationing of a Norman and Sicilian garrison on Malta in 1240, the settlement in Malta of noble families from Sicily between 1372 and 1450, and the introduction of several thousand Sicilian labourers in 1551 and again in 1566. The indigenous community remained largely Muslim until 1250 by which time it was Chistianised. The Order of Saint John brought prosperity to the island, raising it to the social levels of a contemporary European town (from 17,000 in 1530 to 96,000 in 1797). The Knights of Malta chose to maintain the Italian language as their official language but rivalry between the larger national groups (Italian, French and Spanish) meant that Italian never gained a strong enough foothold to become the native tongue of the general populace. Anglicanisation The British gained military control of Malta in 1800. However, in the first years Italian kept on enjoying its de facto official status. After all, Malta was still formally part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It was only in 1814 with the Congress of Vienna that Malta formally became a British Crown Colony and the first attempts at anglicanisation were made. These were weak efforts and so were the results: in 1842, when only 11% of the total population of Malta was literate, all literate Maltese learned Italian while only 4.5% could read, write and speak English. Efforts grew stronger in the later 19th century. In 1878 a Royal Commission (the Rowsell-Julyan-Keenan Commission) recommended in its report the anglicanisation of the educational and judicial systems. While the latter had to wait until the 20th century teaching of the English language started to be enforced in State schools at the expense of Italian. In 1911, English overtook Italian as the secondary language after Maltese, spoken by 13.1% of the population vs. 11.5%. . The Royal Commission's report also had significant political impact. Supporters and opponents organised themselves into a Reform and Anti-Reform parties which, apart from being the forerunners of the present day two main political parties in Malta, assumed respectively the anglophile and italophile imprint (and also, subsequently, pro-colonial and anti-colonial policies) that were to characterise them for decades to come. Rise of Italian Fascism and the Second World War There was a huge minority in Malta who not only loved Italy's language but also saw Malta as a geographical extension of the Italian mainland . Senator Caruana Gatto in a speech delivered at the Royal Opera House in honour of the celebrated Maltese tenor Calleia, described Malta as "the extreme end of Italian soil". Caruana Gatto represented the nobility in the Senate (his speech was delivered on March 21, 1923). In the 1930s the policy of Anglicisation reached full steam, mainly after the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in 1936 when many British politicians thought that the pro-Italian organizations in Malta were growing to be predominant inside the Maltese population. Italian was dropped from official status in Malta in 1934 and its place was taken by Maltese. When the Kingdom of Italy and Great Britain found themselves at war, Italian bombers began dropping their bombs on Maltese towns and villages: World War II buried the "Language struggle" about the use of the Italian or English in Malta. At the height of the tensions before World War II which pitted Great Britain against Italy, the Italian language was dropped from official language status in 1934. In these year the Italian Irredentism promoted the unification of Malta to the Kingdom of Italy. A number of pro-Italian Maltese participated in fascist-supported organizations amongst whom was Carmelo Borg Pisani, a prominent proponent for Italian unification, who attempted to enter Malta as a spy and was executed for treason. The nationalist movements together with their leaders evolved into a strong political force. Only in 1926 did the movements merge, although they had the same ideals for quite a long time and have been governing together during the first self-government of 1921. The 1921 constitution granted a considerable measure of self-government, but political tensions reemerged (promoted even by the Italian irredentism in Malta), and the constitution, after having twice been suspended, was revoked in 1936. A new constitution in 1939 reinstated Malta as a British crown colony. During the war, the Nationalist Party was deprived of some of its leaders. Dr Enrico Mizzi (who was even the Director of the "Malta", a newspaper in Italian) and other 49 Maltese Italian supporters were exiled to Uganda by the colonial government on suspicion of pro-Italian leaning. The other leader, Sir Ugo Mifsud died while defending in the Maltese Parliament the cause of these internees (among them: prof. Giulio Cortis of the University of Malta, father Alberto Pantalleresco, prof. Vincenzo Bonello, Alberto Laferla, Herbert Ganado, Berto Gauci and Alberto Baiona). Arturo Mercieca was chief of Justice in Malta in the late 1930s and on 11 June 1940, the day after Italy declared war on Britain and France, aircraft of the Italian Royal Air Force (Regia Aeronautica) attacked Malta. On that same day Mercieca was compelled to resign the Chief Justiceship to avoid removal and was among those for whom the Governor issued detention orders under the terms of the Malta Defence Regulations. He was interned and then in 1942 deported to Uganda, together with his wife and daughter and about 60 other Maltese nationals. Their exile in Uganda lasted until early 1945 Some Maltese Italians decided to fight for the unification of Malta to the Kingdom of Italy and joined the Italian military forces during WWII. Among them, Carmelo Borg Pisani, Antonio Cortis, Paolo Frendo, Ivo Leone Ganado, Roberto Mallia, Manuele Mizzi, Antonio Vassallo, Joe d’Ancona and Carlo Liberto were the most politically renowned in Malta. Carmelo Borg Pisani paid with his life for this decision: he was executed by the British authorities in 1942. Mussolini called him a Maltese Martyr and created in his honor in Liguria the "Battaglione Borg Pisani" in November 1943, where other Maltese irredentists fought. Post-War When the war ended, Dr Enrico Mizzi together with the others Maltese Italians continued to struggle for more political rights for Malta. In 1950, he was appointed Prime Minister. This did not last long, since Dr Mizzi died in office and was succeeded by Dr Giorgio Borg Olivier, another Maltese Italian with links to the Italian irredentism when young (he later promoted and obtained the independence of Malta from the British Empire in 1964). Today, 66% of the Maltese population speak Italian, while the vocabulary of the Maltese language itself is 52.46% Italian (particularly Sicilian). Academic Maltese language frequently adopts a large number of Romance words, which is becoming the norm, a trend which is making the Maltese language more Europeanized. Maltese Grammar is mainly Arabic, although drastically simplified, but syntax, possibly through the influence of schooling, is more akin to Italian, and vocabulary is nearly 55% from Italian language and Sicilian dialect. For many centuries, Maltese was the language of the kitchen and the workshop, while Italian was the language of learning, literature, the arts, law and commerce. Hence, until the early 20th century, the vast majority of literary works in Malta were written in Italian. According to Prof. Oliver Friggieri:
Maltese writers developed an uninterrupted local "Italian" literary movement which went on up to about four decades ago, whereas Maltese as a literary idiom started to coexist on a wide scale in the last decades of the 19th century. Whilst Maltese has the historical priority on the level of the spoken language, Italian has the priority of being the almost exclusive written medium, for the socio-cultural affairs, for the longest period.
Present-day influences Located just 60 miles to the north, Sicily has provided Malta with a virtually continuous exchange of knowledge, ideas, customs and beliefs throughout recorded history. Most modern Maltese families trace their origins to various parts of Sicily and Southern Italy. The geographic proximity has facilitated a considerable amount of intermarriage, cross-migration, and trade between the two groups of islands. The Sicilian influence on Maltese culture is extensive, and is especially evident in the local cuisine, with its emphasis on olive oil, pasta, seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables (especially the tomato), traditional appetizers such as caponata (Maltese: "kapunata") and rice balls (arancini), speciality dishes such as rice timbale (Maltese: "ross fil-forn"), and sweets such as the cassata and cannoli. Sicilian influence is also evident in many of the local superstitions, in children's nursery rhymes, and in the devotion to certain saints, especially St. Agatha. Centuries of dependence on the Diocese of Palermo brought many Sicilian religious traditions to Malta, including the Christmas crib (Maltese: "il-presepju"), the ritual visiting of several Altars of Repose on Good Friday (Maltese: "is-sepulkri"), and the graphic, grim realism of traditional Maltese religious images and sculpture. Despite Malta's rapid transformation into a strategic naval base during the British period, the influence of Italian culture on Malta strengthened considerably throughout the 19th century. This was due in part to increasing levels of literacy among the Maltese, the increased availability of Italian newspapers, and an influx of Italian intelligentsia to Malta. Several leaders of the Italian Risorgimento movement were exiled in Malta by the Bourbon monarchs during this period, including Francesco Crispi, and Ruggiero Settimo. There was even the emigration to Malta of 891 Italian exiles during the Risorgimento in 1849. Malta was also the proposed destination of Giuseppe Garibaldi when he was ordered into exile, but this never came to happen. However, the political writings of Garibaldi and his colleague, Giuseppe Mazzini - who believed that Malta was, at heart, part of the emerging Italian nation - resonated among many of Malta's upper and middle classes. This created the fertile ground on which the Irredentism of the Maltese Italians developed during the last century, mainly during the Fascism decades. That 67% of the Maltese people know Italian 50 years after the war's vicissitudes is confirmation of the cultural and linguistic influence of their northern neighbor through the spread of media from geographic proximity. Italian TV can be viewed with simple terrestrial reception from Malta, with many Maltese learning the Italian language through this means. In the past decade there has been a revival of the Italian and culture in Malta. Actually 66% of Maltese can speak Italian today and nearly all understand Italian (mainly because of the Italian TV transmissions from Sicily) . Although Italian has since been exchanged for English as the official language, it is still used and is spoken commonly in certain professional workplaces. The percentage of speakers today, 66%, is in fact much greater than when the language was actually official, in 1931, when only 14% spoke it. An interesting fact is that a large number of Maltese learn Italian through Italian television, mainly Mediaset and RAI, as their broadcasts reach the Maltese Islands. In addition to this, many products, services, and businesses that reach Malta are Italian, with Malta being too small on its own to produce some things, so many people learn Italian in order to work. In addition to the Italian language itself being spoken in Malta, 52.46% of Maltese vocabulary is of Sicilian and Italian origin. And because in the English language (that influences nearly 15% of Maltese) many words are loan-worded from Italian (mainly in art and music), the presence of Italian words is calculated to be around 60 % of the entire Maltese vocabulary . This means that many words in Italian and Maltese are almost interchangeable , and a Maltese conversation typically includes much Italian vocabulary . In this way, the Italian language influences everyday speech all the time.
