Hidden Figures in Malta’s Past
Par: Elise Nguema
Hidden Figures in Malta's Past
Publié le 10 avril 2025
What realities lie behind the brushstrokes of an artwork, in the quiet details of a painting, waiting to be uncovered?
While walking through the 17th and 18th paintings displayed at the MUZA gallery in Valletta (Malta), I stumbled across an unexpected find. As the words of the lecturer, I was up until this point paying attention to, faded in the distance, I took it upon myself to inspect the landscape paintings hung in the gallery, sticking out from the white walls quintessentially characteristic of European Art Museums. These paintings, with such intricate attention to detail, reminded me of the ‘‘Where’s Wally?’’ book I grew up on, where the tiniest human figures, barely perceptible, vacate to their occupation, incognito, lost in the vastness of the scenery depicted. Musing to myself that this would be a fun game to play, and now fully distracted by my new endeavor, I began inching my nose closer to each canvas, appreciating the fine brushstrokes, detail, care and thought that had gone into the making of these works.
I stopped in front of an Anonymous painting entitled View of Pjazza San Gorg and Palace, dating back to the seventeenth century and my brain rushed with thoughts of stories behind each little human, ladies wearing their Għonnellas, men carrying heavy loads through the street. Then I paused, in between the column and the fountain, a trio of men caught my eye. I squinted and mentally made a note to bring my glasses the next time I went to the museum. There, perched on the ledge of the wall, coiffed with a red hat, was a black man. This might seem like a trivial and uneventful occurrence, but this tiny shadowy figure was a visual proof of a topic I had been debating with my teachers since I arrived in Malta: Were there African enslaved people in Malta?
As a Mixed French/ English/ Gabonese person, I have a strong interest in the ties European nations have to the mass enslavement of African people and the subsequent colonization that has deeply impacted their history and its retelling in institutions such as Museums. Studying Museums, Heritage and Education has taught me that silences ( what is omitted or not discussed) in displays echo louder than the active voice in the exhibition (what figures on the explanation panels). As a person of African heritage, these silences have a bitter taste and a harsh, sharp-cutting feeling, an invisible lens that colors all these paintings blood-red. During my lectures, I asked questions, which were met with less-than-convincing answers:
‘‘ Slavery was not like in America’’;
‘‘There is little evidence to suggest that there were African ‘‘slaves’’ in Malta’’.
Although each response could have merit, I kept rehashing this nagging query: how could an Island, that belonged to the King of Spain (Malta Maritime Museum, 2024), a nation who ‘‘pioneered the transatlantic slave trade’’ (The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2025), that was ruled over by the Order of St John who practiced Corsairing to plunder Ottoman trade, an empire in which the majority of enslaved people came from sub-Saharan Africa, Western Africa, and the Red Sea area (Bonazza, 2023), NOT have any enslaved African people? I therefore went down a couple of rabbit holes and ended up writing one of my assignments on it. Here are some rebuttals to the aforementioned assertions based on the literature accessed around the topic.
- ‘‘ Slavery was not like in America’’
Indeed, this assertion is correct. African individuals became enslaved in the Mediterranean primarily through three pathways. Firstly, they could be ‘‘acquired’’ for private households through European slave markets. Godfrey Wettinger (2006, p.67) a renowned Maltese historian, corroborates this fact and argues that Africans made up the majority of privately owned slaves on the Island up until the mid-16th century. Alternatively, Bonazza (2023, p.230) affirms that African individuals would also become captives of raids from Ottoman ships. Although Ransoming captives was a common practice, Sub-Saharan African captives were less likely to benefit from this exchange than the records show for North African captives. Bonazza (2023, p.229) explains that as their status on the Ottoman boat was usually already that of servitude, and through lack of family connections, institutions, or state interest in their release, these occurrences would be less frequent. Lastly, Bonazza’s writings indicate that African enslaved people could illegally be brought to Europe from the colonial world via the Mediterranean through commercial ships. (Bonazza, 2023, p.229).
- ‘‘There is little evidence to suggest that there were African ‘‘slaves’’ in Malta’’.
Wettinger (2006), asserts that enslaved people of African heritage in the Maltese Islands are an overlooked topic. Indeed, if slavery is at all mentioned, it is qualified through the lens of religious groups, often emphasizing the stories and fates of the Christian captives that were caught in the crossfire of two Corsairing naval forces (European Mainland Corsairs and Ottoman Galleys). Wettinger (2006) also notes that although one would assume that the majority of these captives were ‘‘white or off-white captives’’, architectural remnants all around the island, through statues of African enslaved people can be found in front of some Maltese houses. Wettinger (2006) argues that it is complicated to quantify how many enslaved Africans were in Malta at a given time, as records written at different times have varying terminology. Some of the Church records and archives he consulted might have added the mention ‘‘ Ethiopico/a’’ to specify the ethnicity of the enslaved person, while others weren’t as meticulous. But the evidence is there.
As I stepped back from the painting in MUZA, the figure in the red hat lingered in my mind—a reminder of histories obscured by time, oversight, or deliberate silence. His image has stuck with me to this day, no face and no name, anonymous yet ever prompting me to dive deeper into the stories of those merely etched into history through paint and brush. As Brazelton, (2021) argues, ‘’The legacy of slavery is by no means something that is past us but rather something that pervades our present social/political/economic reality’’(p.2). My background in Museums, Heritage and Education prompts me to ponder the many stories buried beneath the “white walls” of Eurocentric historiography and display practices. This mysterious African man, to me, is more than just a compositional detail—he is a provocation. His presence demands we ask not only who is missing from these frames, but also why they so often are erased from our memorial institutions.
This post is based on an assignment written by Myself, Elise NGUEMA (2025) handed in at the University of Malta.
Références de cet article
Brazelton, B. (2021). Ethical Considerations on Representing Slavery in Curriculum. The Radical Teacher, 121, 55–65. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48694858
Bonazza, G. (2023). Slavery in the Mediterranean. In: Pargas, D.A., Schiel, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13260-5_13
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. (2025). Iberian Slave Trade, Slavery and Remembrance. https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0146
Malta Maritime Museum. (2024, January 15). 1565, THE GREAT SIEGE. https://maltamaritimemuseum.mt/1565-the-great-siege/
Wettinger, G. (2006). Black African slaves in Malta. In S. Mercieca (Ed.), Mediterranean seascapes : proceedings of an International Conference held in Malta in conjunction with Euromed Heritage II, Navigation du Savoir Project (Valletta, 2004) (pp. 65-82). Msida: Malta University Publishers Ltd
Additional Reading
https://timesofmalta.com/article/tragic-tales-slaves-malta.967480
Elise Nguema
I’m Elise Nguema, and I am currently pursuing an International Master’s in Education, Museums, and Heritage. I am a future museum educator, researcher, and multidisciplinary creative exploring the intersections of decoloniality, exhibition design, visual culture, and intersectional feminism. As a Franco-Anglo-Gabonese professional, my work focuses on museum silences and how these institutions shape cultural narratives, particularly regarding African heritage. Passionate about challenging Eurocentric frameworks, I seek to rethink museum practices through a decolonial lens. Beyond research, I engage with these themes through collage art, photography, and writing articles, using visual storytelling to spark critical conversations. I have contributed to an exhibition with Agafricardie, a charity that aims to share heritage heralding from Gabon, and have designed educational programs for adults and children, centering on West and Central African heritage more generally.
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