After two years of COVID restrictions, Fort Manoel will be opening its doors again to the public on May 1 between 9am and 6pm.
Built in the early years of 1700
The plague has never been endemic in Malta but it has been ‘imported’ several times from the Levant and spread rapidly throughout the islands with heavy loss of life. After the Order of St John was expelled from Malta in 1798, the first plague outbreak under the new British rulers occurred in April 1813. This is the basis of this month’s anniversary story.
Lieutenant-General Sir Hildebrand Oakes (1754-1822), Civil Commissioner of Malta, 1810-13, in a portrait attributed to Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), The National Trust, Killerton, UK.
One of the results of the economic war then being waged by Napoleon Bonaparte and France against Great Britain – his well-known ‘Continental System’ and the British response through Orders in Council – was a commercial boom in Malta, which became an emporium of commerce in the Mediterranean. J.D. Tully also noted that “one of the most material branches of this commercial intercourse was the trade carried on between Malta and the Levant,