Malta became a British colony in 1800 and its function was that of a fortress
within an imperial network. This influenced all that happened in the colony
along the nineteenth century. Not least affected was the sphere of education
where a main feature of Anglicisation was the forceful attempt to change
Malta’s everyday school language from Italian to English. This was no easy
task as the Maltese pro-Italian party, the Nationalists, made every effort to
impede and overturn any such British attempt. To add to the tension, the
British were religiously Protestant and this clashed with the sentiments of
the predominantly Roman Catholic native population. Thus the vigilant
Catholic Church viewed with suspicion all that was attempted in education
by the colonial Government. There was a continuous concern that the British
would use schools to convert the Maltese to Protestantism. In such an
atmosphere life in schools was by no means easygoing. Teachers bore the
brunt of contrasts and concerns without having the space to show their
distress.peer-reviewe
