ABSTRACT
The chapter deals with the frontier-like specificity of the Maltese world, which is firstly put in comparison with that of Izmir. Both Malta and Izmir were border spaces: the first one based on the blurring of cultural divides and the second one based on a highly defined conceptualization of otherness in the strongest possible way. However, also in Malta, border-space cultures not only clashed but also encountered and overlapped. Even if the Maltese myth was built on the status of ‘bulwark of Christianity’ against the Muslim powers, the island was sharing common codes with the religious enemy. The chapter provides a wide fresco of the Maltese space as described by three travellers throughout 100 years (1672–1776). Albert Jouvin de Rochefort, John Dryden Jr. and Partick Brydon described in their narratives of the island in its morphology, history and institutions of the Order of the Knights of Saint, the places to visit on the island, the language and origin of the islanders, the presence of otherness in the urban fabric and the Maltese corsair economy. The 100 years’ diachronic look allows tracing changes in the perception of the Maltese international role in the Mediterranean balance of power.
