What makes us a nation?

Today is the 50th anniversary of Malta’s independence, achieved on 21 September, 1964. But while there is a case to be made that independence is what first made our country a nation state, there can be little doubt that Malta has been a nation for far longer than the last half-century alone.

Yet even today, 50 years later, the fundamental question of what makes us a nation is not easy to answer. Politically we are divided: a fact reflected even in our historical treatment of today’s commemoration, which had been removed from the calendar of national festivities between 1971 and 1987.

To their credit, both Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Opposition leader Simon Busuttil have made significant gestures towards bridging these otherwise unbridgeable divides. Their mutual agreement to commemorate Independence as a celebration for all the Maltese people attests to this commitment.

But this takes us no closer to answering the question of what makes us the nation we are. So perhaps today’s festivity also provides the perfect opportunity to celebrate the curious idiosyncrasies that set us apart from other peoples around the world. And surely, the simple fact that we are divided on so many issues is one of them.

This is reflected throughout all the seminal stages in our history. Towards the top of the list of our unique characteristics would have to be our national language, Maltese: which has now risen to be the uncontested language of proceedings in all institutions, from parliament, to the law-courts, to the broadcasting media, as well as being the spoken first language of choice for an overwhelming majority.

But it wasn’t always this way. Part of our colonial heritage also involved concerted efforts to minimise or even eradicate the language altogether. People alive today may remember a time when Maltese was prohibited in certain schools. Malta also came closest to serious civil strife precisely over language issues in the 1930s… though paradoxically the argument revolved around whether the institutional language of Malta should be English or Italian, with Maltese not even considered for the role.

English language newspapers such as this one are perhaps the last reminder of where we are all coming from in this respect. On all other levels, however, the triumph of Maltese as the language now accepted by one and all must surely rank among the most culturally important of our national achievements. If nothing else, it attests to one of our more commendable characteristics as a nation: our resilience, which has allowed us to survive and even thrive in our first 50 years as a sovereign state, despite widespread predictions of economic catastrophe when we first became independent 50 years ago.

Religion, too, has up to a point united us throughout much of our history; but even the otherwise hegemonic hold on Malta of the Catholic Church has at times been a source of division, particularly in the early 1960s. Nonetheless it would be futile to deny that the Church has had an enormous contribution to the formation of a national psyche, especially for the long periods of our history when the very idea of Malta as an independent state was simply inconceivable.

In former years – such as during the Priests’ Revolt of 1775, or the Maltese insurrection against the French a few years later – religion also proved to be a focal point for popular angst against (real or perceived) social injustices. Some of these events have had a direct impact on Malta’s national identity. It was the two-year insurrection between 1798 and 1800 that arguably first planted the seeds of self-determination in our collective subconscious. The Knights’ victory over the Ottoman Turks in 1565 was also ultimately a religious victory of Christianity over Islam: as such, it confirmed Malta as belonging to a family of culturally related nations which would, in time, consolidate into today’s Europe.

On a separate level, Catholicism has imbued our country with a recognisable iconography of its own, in particular where architecture is concerned. To this day, the village feast – with its pageantry and tradition… and yes, even with its intrinsic culture of pique – remains at the very core of Maltese community life.

Threading through all these considerations is a survival instinct that also undeniably forms part of our collective identity. At its most commendable, this instinct involves Malta’s typically robust and energetic sense of entrepreneurship: our ability to adapt, at times with astonishing speed, to rapidly changing events and conditions.

But there are other factors to this same survivor element. History has bequeathed to Malta a pervasive sense of family attachment and the mutual belief that all problems can somehow be overcome. We tend to refer to this as a culture of ‘arrangements’: in all circumstances, there is an underlying conviction that – through negotiation, discussion, and yes, sometimes even through manipulation and deceit – some form of ‘arrangement’ can always be found to the mutual benefit of all parties.

It might not always be our most attractive characteristic; yet this same ability to somehow cope with even the most difficult circumstances has undeniably contributed, not just towards our continued existence as a country, but also to our relative success as an independent state.