Britains Need for Benevolent Despotism Imperial Policy in Malta 1934-1939

Simone Azzopardi holds a B.A. (Hons) History degree from the University of Malta (2010) and obtained an M.A. in Global and Imperial History from the University of Oxford (2012). She participated in the Piredeu Programme 2009 with the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter, serving as a coder in a study on the 2009 European Parliament elections. Currently, she is an assistant lecturer of Maltese History at the University of Malta Junior College. She also worked as a History research officer with the University of Malta History Department. Her chief research interests concern political and socio-economic development in Malta during the British period. She joined the Gozo Rotary Club in December 2014.

 

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Sponsored by the Alfred Mizzi Foundation. Maltese constitutional development since Malta became a British possession in 1800 came slowly but progressively. It reached an apex in 1921 with the granting of a self-government constitution conferring power and responsibility to an elected Maltese legislative assembly and senate. The British suspended this constitution in 1930 because of a heated politico-religious conflict in the context of growing British concerns over their relations with Italy. Restored in 1932, self-rule was suspended again and indefinitely in 1933 for reasons of geo-strategic and political security. Malta reverted to crown colony government in 1933 until 1939. This direct British administration was peculiar to the very particular Maltese case in the 1930s. On the one hand, British authorities invested primarily in the urgent policy of de-Italianisation that sought to eliminate pro-Italian elements that threatened Malta’s geo-strategic security in the stormy 1930s. On the other, the British additionally and simultaneously pursued a proactive policy of ‘benevolent despotism’, reportedly meant to obtain for Malta all that which the preceding self-government administration should have, but failed to achieve.

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