Though hardly twenty six square miles in area, the little island of Gozo, some
four miles to the north-west of Malta, has its own particular history to boast
of, parallel to that of Malta and that of Sicily but not so identical that it has
not had its own individual story to tell. 1 In general outline, one might certainly
think that there was little to differentiate the history of the two main
Maltese islands. They normally changed foreign domination in the same way
and pretty much at the same time, Arabs following Byzantines, Normans that
of the former, then the Suabians, the Angevins, the Aragonese, the Order of
St. John of Jerusalem or Rhodes, the French, the British and finally independence.
2 The main geographical factors influencing one have influenced the
other, whether climatological, telluric or geopolitical. In broad outline the
main cultural currents influencing both islands have been the same. For most
practical purposes, consequently, there is little to distinguish culturally a Gozitan person from a Maltese one.peer-reviewe
