Culture and Identity in Early Modern Malta by Carmel Cassar (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Cassar, Carmel. 2000: CultureandIdentity in Early Modern M alta. M ireva Publications, xlix + 336 pp. ISBN 1870579 -56-9. Lm9.95 (paperback). Maltese history has all-too-often been conceptualised and studied as a closed system, a sort of sui generis small-island history with ‘outsiders’ necessarily (and, some think, unfortunately) playing some of the choicest roles as occupiers and power-mongers. Carmel Cassar’s Society, Culture and Identity in Early Modem Malta is refreshingly— if not uniquely— different. Let us first trace the background to this book, for it is this background which ultimately led the author into producing something different. There aretwo aspects to it—genre and theoretical framework. Cassar’s ‘cultural history’ is partly the result of his collaboration with Professor Peter Burke of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, himself the author of various books on ‘cultural/social history’ and/or ‘historical anthropology’. The profusion of terminology indicates that this is an interdisciplinary field: one which explores the boundary between history, which may be defined as the study of the past, and social anthropology, the study of society based on engaged field research. Because cultural history seeks to understand broad social trends by looking at the intimacies of everyday life, it is social anthropology; because it does this through the study of written records from times gone by, it is history. With regard to theoretical framework, the book belongs squarely within the Annales camp, more specifically to braudelian-type analyses. In this work Cassar observes the three tenets of the Annales school: he favours analytical history over ‘event’ history; he adopts an holistic perspective rather than focus on political history; and he brings to bear his multi-disciplinary experience, notably his studies in social anthropology. Why braudelian? Because although within the broad confines of the Annales school Braudel must share his fame with names such as Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, within the context of Mediterranean Annaleshistory his primacy is undisputed. Consequently any historian working within this double parameter must acknowledge his / her debt to the master, and Cassar does so conspicuously and unashamedly. The collaboration with Peter Burke combines these two aspects. Indeed, Cassar claim s that it was Burke’s enthusiasm for braudelian analysis' as well as ‘cultural history’ which prompted him, havingcompletedhisM.Phil. in social anthropology, to stay on in Cambridge for his doctoral studies in history. Theresearch itself is the product of a decade’s labour (pers. comm.). Butthen braudelianhistory requires massive and broad-sweep under­ takings— note for instance Chaudhuri’s study of Indian Ocean trade.2 ‘How . . . did Maltese society, its culture and identity, evolve in the crucial century following the Turkish siege of 1565?’ This is Cassar’s guiding question in this book. Prior to the coming of the Hospitaller Order, Malta was but an isolated outpost of the Kingdom of Sicily. What characterised the geographical, economic, and political landscape of the islands was their marginality, their insignificance on the world— or at least 451 the Mediterranean— stage. As Cassar notes, we should not let the fact escape us that Malta was never on St. Paul’s itinerary— rather, his visit was an accident of the weather. With the establishment of the Order, however, the Maltese Islands changed from being an obscure outpost of Sicily to becoming a minor entrepot of Mediterranean trade and a nexus of geo­ political networks in the region. This transformation has been noted before3; Cassar, how ever, renders it more vertebrate by directing his gaze towards the intricacies of everyday life in early modern Malta, not least through the inclusion of vignettes from the records of the Inquisition tribunal. Despite their initial reluctance to connectwith the land thathad been granted them, the Hospitallers started to see things differently after the siege of 1565. (Here a theoretical discussion on the ways in which people inscribe themselves on locality, not least through the imagery of spilled blood mingling with earth, would have been apt and very much in tune with current anthropological debate.)4 Cassar draws our attention to four processes that set in as soon as the Order realised that it was here to stay: first, a shift in the local structures of power and authority...