2 - The Grain Trade

Summary

On 27 December 1554 the Mdina municipal council held a general assembly to express its concerns, ‘because in the island we have a great shortage of grain’. Similarly, only five months later, in May 1555 the assembly once again gathered due to the bad harvest which the island was registering. Such references are a recurring feature in the municipal council's meeting minutes; hunger did not augur well for the stability and prosperity of any government. An important factor affecting the import and distribution of grain was the great influx of new arrivals in 1530. An increase in population was the most striking effect of the arrival of the Knights Hospitaller on the island, felt mostly in the port town of Birgu and eventually affecting the whole island.

Lack of reliable documentation means that historians have been able only to speculate on possible population figures. Various official reports, most of which were prepared with a view of acquiring much-needed duty-free grain quotas, need to be treated with caution since they may have reported higher populations in order to achieve the quotas. A report drawn up by the Order's Commissioners in 1524 mentions 12,000 inhabitants on the island of Malta and around 5,000 on Gozo. Although exact numbers for Malta before the arrival of the Order are not known, various sources point to a figure of 20,000. In 1535 the envoys of the Mdina Universita who were sent to Sicily to negotiate wheat quotas informed the Viceroy that the islands had a population of 28,500, while another report drawn up in 1545 by the same Universita informs us that with the arrival of the Knights the population had escalated to 30,000 in 1530.

While this remark may represent an inflated figure, it needs to be evaluated in the light of the Mdina Universita's perception that the large influx of population had drastically affected local grain supplies. However, the report noted further that by the time of writing the number had dwindled to 22,000, due to the fact that many people had fled from the island when faced with a serious food shortage. Was this decrease a cause of worry for the Sicilian authorities?