Malta

Overview

Malta is an island republic in the central Mediterranean, an archipelago of which only Malta, Gozo, and Comino are inhabited, lying about 80 km south of Sicily, 284 km east of Tunisia, and 333 km north of Libya. With roughly 316 km² of land it is among the world's smallest and most densely populated countries — often described as a city-state — and its position at the crossroads of the Mediterranean has given it outsized strategic importance for millennia.

History

Inhabited since at least 6500 BC, Malta hosts the megalithic Ġgantija temples (c. 3500 BC), among the oldest free-standing structures on earth. It was ruled successively by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, and Arabs (870–1091), whose Siculo-Arabic speech evolved into the Maltese language — the only Semitic language written in the Latin script and an official EU language. The Normans, Hohenstaufen, and Aragonese followed; in 1530 Charles V granted the islands to the Knights Hospitaller, who famously withstood the Ottoman Great Siege of 1565 and built Valletta. Napoleon seized Malta in 1798, but a Maltese revolt backed by Britain ended French rule in 1800, and the 1814 Treaty of Paris made Malta British.

Under the Crown, Malta served as headquarters of the Mediterranean Fleet, endured a devastating Axis siege in 1940–42 (earning the George Cross, still on its flag), and gained independence on 21 September 1964 as the State of Malta, initially retaining Elizabeth II as head of state. Under Labour prime minister Dom Mintoff it became a republic within the Commonwealth on 13 December 1974; the British military base closed in 1979 (Freedom Day), and Malta adopted neutrality in 1980. It joined the European Union in 2004 and the eurozone in 2008.

Later history and present status

Malta is today a high-income economy driven by tourism, financial services, iGaming, and maritime trade. Catholicism is the state religion (about 83% of the population), with freedom of worship guaranteed; Maltese and English are official languages. A 1989 Bush–Gorbachev summit on Malta heralded the end of the Cold War. The country remains a stable parliamentary democracy led (as of the mid-2020s) by Prime Minister Robert Abela and President Myriam Spiteri Debono.