Murder in Jerba : honour, shame and hospitality among Maltese in Ottoman Tunisia

Little is known about the sizeable Maltese communities developing along the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean in the mid-nineteenth century and the extent to which the migrants reproduced Maltese cultural traditions and practices overseas. This article considers this question through a microhistorical analysis of events culminating in the murder of a Maltese woman in the Ottoman Regency of Tunis in 1866. A close reading of transcripts from the interrogation of witnesses and the accused, all members of a Maltese community in Jerba reveals their shared cultural practices and beliefs surrounding the provision of hospitality, honour and shame. Viewed from this perspective, the curious responses of the witnesses to the murder of their compatriot become meaningful, and the crime is reframed as an honour killing.peer-reviewe

Religious colonialism in early modern Malta : inquisitorial imprisonment and inmate graffiti

Early modern Malta was governed by three institutions—the Order of St. John, the Bishopric, and the Roman Inquisition—which all ultimately answered to the Holy See. By focusing on the institution under the most direct Papal control, the inquisition, this paper seeks to explore the role of imprisonment in furthering the Vatican’s cultural and political control on the island. Through analyses of the prison cells and the inmate’s graffiti, I argue that the inquisition’s ability to imprison and negate the spectacle of public suffering was crucial to the Vatican’s colonial position in Malta