What is it?
Sam Spade, describing the Maltese falcon in “The Maltese Falcon”
The stuff that dreams are made of…
Fast Facts
- Named for: Greek meli (μέλη) for honeyed. There are native bees.
- Capital: Valletta
- Long/Lat: 35.5 N/14.3 E , 6700 mi East/11 hours East of CV. Nearly directly south of Liechtenstein.
- Population: 520,000, or 9x Castro Valleys
- Size: 122 sq mi, 8x CV. The population density and size of about 10 CVs.
- Avg temp in April: 62 F/16 C (CV-like)
- Median household income: $60,000, also high on a world standard
- Ethnicity: 78% Maltese, meaning a mix of Italian, Spanish, Arab, French etc.
- Main industries: Tourism, banking. In theory, limestone, but not too much.
Unlike Liechtenstein from yesterday, Malta is a tiny dot of great strategic importance. It’s in the Mediterranean, just south of Sicily and Italy but just East of Tunis and North Africa. Tunis was the springboard for the Phoenicians, who advanced sailing and the alphabet, but they were more traders than conquerors. The Romans took over in their turn, as did Hannibal and the Carthaginians. The Goths and Visigoths came through, followed by Islam sweeping across southern Europe and northern Africa. And that’s just the first half of their story of civilization.
It was a place of launching dreams of conquest or re-conquest. When the Crusaders made their move to “take back” land, they pushed from Europe south, establishing footholds in the Mediterranean from Venice and the Riviera to islands like Malta and Cyprus going down to Jerusalem. There were multiple waves of Crusades in the Middle Ages, and, at some point, a group of Benedictine monks built a hospital to minister to the wounded and sick Christian Crusaders. This was the Order of the Knights Hospitallers, affiliated with St. John. Their surcoat with the white cross against the red background is the inverse to the Knight’s Templar, but both captured the idea of a monastic order, beginning from ministering to the sick and needy, yet grounded in a military base.
Continue reading “M is for Malta”