News Background : Malta: Christian-Muslim Buffer

Malta, a tiny island republic in the Mediterranean, has been a bridgehead between the Christian and Muslim worlds for centuries.

Its significance has stemmed from its location, commanding as it does a stretch of the Mediterranean midway between Gibraltar and Suez. It lies about 60 miles south of Sicily.

One of the most densely populated countries in the world, Malta crams 378,000 people into two main islands (the other is Gozo) with a combined area one-tenth that of Rhode Island. There are no mountains or rivers, and the climate is typically Mediterranean.

The people have a church attendance higher than in any other Roman Catholic country. St. Paul is reputed to have been shipwrecked near Malta in roughly the year 60 and to have converted the inhabitants.

The islands’ history dates to 4000 BC, but the Phoenicians and Carthaginians are considered the antecedents of the present-day Maltese.

In 1530, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire ceded Malta to the rich and powerful Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, homeless since their eviction from the island of Rhodes by the Turks in 1522-23. For the next 275 years, the islands flourished under these famous “Knights of Malta” as a cultural and commercial center and the southern bastion of Christendom.

Malta was seized in 1798 by Napoleon, who gave way to the British two years later. They used the islands to control the trade lifeline between Britain and India. During World War II, the vital sea lanes between Italy and Africa were controlled from Malta. (Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the island “our only unsinkable aircraft carrier.”)

A part of the British Empire since 1814, Malta was granted full independence in 1964, becoming a parliamentary democracy within the Commonwealth. In 1974, its constitution was revised, making Malta a republic with a House of Representatives.

For the first 15 years of independence, Malta followed a policy of close cooperation with Britain and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries. But this relationship ceased when British forces departed in 1979 and the ruling Malta Labor Party, under Prime Minister Dom Mintoff, charted a new course of neutrality and nonalignment.