Election of the First Representatives 1849

A hand dropping a ballot paper into an urn. Below it, the year “2011”. Along the inner rim, running from upper left to lower right, the words “Malta – First elected representatives 1849” are struck.

This 2-euro commemorative coin exists in two varieties. The 2-euro commemorative coins in ST (MT-11 G1) have an uneven background, while the 2-euro commemorative coins in PP (MT-11 G2) have a smooth background.

In 1849, Malta, then under British colonial rule, held its first elections to a council of elected representatives - a step that places the island within the early history of European parliamentarism. The British Crown had taken control of Malta in 1800, and the population had since been pressing for a political voice. The 1849 constitution established a council in which elected Maltese representatives sat alongside appointed British officials. This model fell short of full self-government, but it marked the beginning of a decades-long struggle for constitutional autonomy that runs through the whole of Malta's colonial history.

The series on Malta's constitutional history, to which this Maltese 2-euro commemorative coin from 2011 belongs, sheds light on exactly these stages on the path to full independence, which Malta finally achieved in 1964. The island state looks back on an unusually layered political history: Normans, Aragonese, the Order of St John and finally the British Empire each shaped Malta's institutional structures in turn. The 1849 election stands for the moment when the Maltese first appeared as political actors within a formal framework - a date regarded in Maltese historiography as an early foundation of democratic participation.