Prof. Yosanne Vella
I've always kept in mind the advice of Prof. Godfrey Wettinger who told me at the beginning of my career "you must know a little about everything and a lot about a little"; wise words for today... in the academic world research has tended to become very highly specialised indeed. However, this means that writing general history books and giving an overview of several epochs has become a dangerous endeavour. For you open yourself to attacks from all the specialists who have devoted their lives to that "little" bit of history which has literally become their baby and boy do they know all there is to know about it, leaving the author who tried to say "a little about everything" exposed to ferocious criticism.
A book I read this summer and which I thoroughly enjoyed is Yuval Noah Harari's bestseller Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind and while this book has some excellent historical explanations I could see the author sometimes fumbling in certain sections which were obviously not his area of expertise. This, however, does not mean that this book should not have been published and is worthless.
While reading Mark Camilleri's book I also had my "specialist moment" and my knee jerk reaction on reading that "the evidence we have of the mistreatment of women is so overwhelming" was a negative one. Hadn't he read my "18th century women troublemakers" paper and did he not know about the brave Maltese women who reacted to crime against them in my "18th century women victims of crime" paper? How dare he say anything about women without reading and referring to my work?
But one needs to step back and look at this book not in this narrow and possibly undemocratic fashion but as a mere overview interpretation of a thousand years of Maltese history. It would be ideal to have an overview history by an author who goes in depth over every single issue but this requires years of full-time study, something in my opinion achieved by Susanna Hoe in her book on the history of Maltese women and even in such a brilliant piece of work specialists will still find nooks and crannies to attack.
The end result is that authors are shying away from writing general histories and to me this is a great pity for we need holistic views of history. History students at university, pupils in schools and the general public cannot just look at history as unconnected little parcels of events and issues without ever seeing the bigger picture; the patterns and continuity in history. So we need history books like Mark Camilleri's work for they produce a linked general narrative of part of Maltese history and they get people to think although not necessarily to agree. It is of course one author's interpretation but destructive criticism of such work is not helpful for despite its lack of in-depth rigour, it is a brave and valid contribution nonetheless.