Knights of Malta

The Knights of Malta shaped the history of the central Mediterranean for many centuries and their mid-sixteenth century tenacious defence of the island against the Ottoman Turks has stirred the imagination of many Europeans ever since. In order to assess their complex legacy, the Centre for Geopolitics invites noted expert on the Knights Dr Valeria Vanesio, along with Aleksa Andrejevic and Luke Wilkinson, to discuss the Order and its relationship, including its encounter with the United Kingdom, the new ordering power in the area from the late eighteenth century until the end of the Second World War.

The main lecture introduces the Order of St John as one of the most enduring and adaptable geopolitical actors in Mediterranean history. Founded in Jerusalem as a hospitaller lay community, the Order transformed into a sovereign religious and military-naval power that shaped political, legal, and cultural dynamics across the Mediterranean and wider Europe from the Crusades to the early modern period and beyond. Focusing on its archives as a central instrument of authority, control, continuity, and political power, the lecture highlights the Order’s plural identity—military and religious, central and peripheral—and considers how this tension informed its governance, diplomacy, and political strategies across a fragmented Mediterranean world.

Subsequent interventions will focus on the paradox in the Order between its Crusader mission and its enmeshment in deeply inter-religious economic, legal, and intellectual networks. This paradox has informed Malta’s identity as distinctly Catholic. These interventions will also focus on how the Knights of Malta have shaped the British imperial imagination during their years of governing Malta as a protectorate.

The event will be followed by a drinks reception.

Speaker Bios

Valeria Vanesio is a Lecturer in the Department of Library, Information and Archive Sciences at the University of Malta. She has published extensively in the field and co-edited The Land and the Cross: Properties of the Order of St John between Centre and Periphery (16th–18th Centuries) (2025).

Aleksa Andrejević is PhD student at the War Studies Department at King’s College London. His research focuses on the different forms of British colonial governance in the Mediterranean Sea between 1793 and 1836.

Luke Wilkinson is a PhD student at the Faculty of Divinity and a member of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on Muslim-Christian relations in Malta in the long seventeenth century.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Pembroke College, Old Library, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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