The 'Radical Underworld' of the Mediterranean: William Eton, Malta, and the British Mediterranean Empire, 1770-1806

Abstract

In 1806, the British protectorate of Malta was engulfed in political scandal when accusations of ‘despotism’, ‘tyranny’ and ‘torture’, were made against the island’s Civil Commissioner, Sir Alexander Ball. This episode, alongside other contemporary colonial controversies, has recently attracted attention as a starting point for histories charting British attempts to construct a coherent imperial legal system across the first half of the nineteenth century. Rather than viewing the events at Malta in 1806 as the beginnings of a nineteenth-century story, this thesis however argues for the need to understand them as the culmination of a longer eighteenth-century saga. Applying a biographical lens, this thesis traces the Mediterranean career of William Eton, the minor colonial official who was chiefly responsible for the accusations made at Malta. As this thesis argues, ostensibly marginal figures such as Eton make particularly useful subjects for such an approach due to the fact that their life stories do not fit neatly into existing historical narratives, and thus cut across and connect supposedly distinct historical processes. Through Eton, this thesis connects the political scandal at Malta in 1806 to the intellectual and cultural circles of the North-German Enlightenment, to London networks of metropolitan political radicalism in the 1790s, as well as to the secret diplomacy, espionage, and foreign policy endeavours of the British and Russian empires in the Mediterranean in the late-eighteenth century. By piecing together the fragmentary traces of Eton’s transient career, with his diverse networks and multi-layered sociability, as well as his many endeavours to succeed, this thesis therefore provides a clear insight into just how interconnected British and Mediterranean trade was with diplomacy, politics, and the social and intellectual currents of European life during the ‘Age of Revolutions,’ as well as the lasting impacts these connections had on shaping British imperial governance at Malta.