Wikipedia - Benutzerbeiträge [de]

Rilindja

2009-04-23T03:45:17Z

ABXDataLogic: removed "Unreferenced", given the references section at the end.

{{POV-check|date=May 2008}}
{{histalbania}}
{{National Awakening in the Balkans}}

'''National Renaissance''' ({{lang-sq|Rilindja Kombëtare}}) refers to the period of [[History of Albania]] between 1831 until the [[Albanian Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence]] in 1912. It starts after the fall of semi-independent Albanian-ruled Pashaliks of [[Janina]] and [[Shkodra]].
==The rise of Albanian nationalism==
{{see|Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire}}
The 1877-1878 [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78|Russo-Turkish War]] dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the [[Balkan Peninsula]], leaving the [[Ottoman empire|empire]] with only a precarious hold on [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among [[Montenegro]], [[Serbia]], [[Bulgaria]], and [[Greece]] fueled the rise of Albanian [[nationalism]]. The first postwar treaty, the abortive [[Treaty of San Stefano]] signed on March 3, 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] blocked the arrangement because it awarded [[Russia]] a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in [[Berlin]].{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

The [[Treaty of San Stefano]] triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in [[Constantinople]]--including [[Abdyl Frashëri]], the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On June 10, 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly [[Muslim]] religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman [[vilayet]]s, met in the [[Kosovo]] city of [[Prizren]]. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the [[Congress of Berlin]], which was called to settle the unresolved problems of [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878|Turkish War]], demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and [[Germany]]'s [[Otto von Bismarck]] even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and [[Podgorica]] and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible loss of [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] to Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in [[Gusinje]], [[Plav]], [[Shkodër]], [[Prizren]], [[Prevesa]], and [[Janina]]. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The [[Sublime Porte]], in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of [[Ulcinj]]. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only [[Thessaly]] and the district of [[Arta]].{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under [[Dervish Turgut Pasha]] to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the [[Latin]], [[Cyrillic]], and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- [[Gjirokastër]], [[Berat]], and [[Vlorë]]--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, [[Sami Frashëri]] founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, [[Catholic]], and Orthodox Albanians. [[Naim Frashëri]], the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in [[Bulgaria]], [[Egypt]], Italy, Romania, and the [[United States]] supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented [[Abdul Hamid II|Sultan Abdül Hamid II]] from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the League of Prizren in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian terrorists assassinated [[Korçë]]'s [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] metropolitan.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the ''bastinado'', or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

==1911 Highlanders Uprising==
The rise of Albanian nationalism first sparked with the [[Battle of Deçiq]] on April 6, 1911, which was located in the town of [[Tuzi]], [[Malësi e Madhe]]. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians led by [[Ded Gjo Luli]], against the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Turgut Pasha. The long and bloody battle was victorious toward the Albanians. During the battle, the Albanian Flag was raised for the first time since [[Gjergj Kastrioti]] in 1443. As a result to the victory of this battle, the Albanians found a sense of confidence and nationalism that led to other events toward Independence, which eventually came about on November 28, 1912. Today, many songs and stories of the Albanians are passed in honor of the important battle that led to the Independence of Albania.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

==The Balkan Wars and creation of independent Albania==
The [[First Balkan War]], however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded [[Shkodër]] with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the [[Ottoman Turks]].{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and [[Christian]] leaders meeting in [[Vlorë]] in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding [[Treaty of London, 1913|Treaty of London]] of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by [[Aubrey Herbert]], [[Member of Parliament|MP]], a passionate advocate of their cause.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir [[Edward Grey]], the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1913|Treaty of Bucharest]] established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Shkodër (or as they called it Skadar) after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and [[Serbs]] since the [[Middle Ages]], but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider [[Kosovo]] their [[Holy Land]]. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the 7th century, that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, [[Stefan Dusan]], established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]], are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the [[Battle of Kosovo|battle]] against the Ottoman Turks, took place at [[Kosovo Polje]] in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the [[ancient Illyria]]ns, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century. See also [[Kosovo population data-points]].{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of [[Essad Pasha|Essad Pasha Toptani]], who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}

==Culture==
Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, Sami Frasheri founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, Catholic, and [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox]] Albanians. Naim Frasheri, the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in Bulgaria, Egypt, Italy, Romania, and the United States supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education{{Fact|date=November 2008}}. In 1886 the [[ecumenical patriarch]] of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian{{Fact|date=November 2008}}.

==References==
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
*''[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html Library of Congress Country Study] of Albania''
* {{cite book |last=Mazower |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Mazower |title=The Balkans: A Short History |series=Modern Library Chronicles |year=2000 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-679-64087-8 }}
* Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', Indiana University Press (2002), ISBN 0253215706.

==See also==

* [[League of Prizren]]
* [[Origin of the Albanians]]

{{History of Albania}}
{{Albania topics}}

[[Category:History of Albania]]
[[Category:History of Kosovo]]
[[Category:Nationalism|Albania]]

[[sv:Albaniens självständighet]]

Rilindja

2008-07-25T13:27:31Z

ABXDataLogic: /* After WWII */

{{POV-check|date=May 2008}}
{{Unreferenced|date=June 2008}}
{{histalbania}}

==The rise of Albanian nationalism==
{{see|Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire}}
The [[1877]]-[[1878]] [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78|Russo-Turkish War]] dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the [[Balkan Peninsula]], leaving the [[Ottoman empire|empire]] with only a precarious hold on [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among [[Montenegro]], [[Serbia]], [[Bulgaria]], and [[Greece]] fueled the rise of Albanian [[nationalism]]. The first postwar treaty, the abortive [[Treaty of San Stefano]] signed on [[March 3]], 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] blocked the arrangement because it awarded [[Russia]] a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in [[Berlin]].

The [[Treaty of San Stefano]] triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in [[Constantinople]]--including [[Abdyl Frashëri]], the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On [[June 10]], 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly [[Muslim]] religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman [[vilayet]]s, met in the [[Kosovo]] city of [[Prizren]]. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the [[Congress of Berlin]], which was called to settle the unresolved problems of [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878|Turkish War]], demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.

The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and [[Germany]]'s [[Otto von Bismarck]] even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and [[Podgorica]] and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible "loss" of [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] to Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in [[Gusinje]], [[Plav]], [[Shkodër]], [[Prizren]], [[Prevesa]], and [[Janina]]. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."

In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The [[Sublime Porte]], in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of [[Ulcinj]]. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only [[Thessaly]] and the district of [[Arta]].

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under [[Dervish Turgut Pasha]] to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.

Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the [[Latin]], [[Cyrillic]], and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- [[Gjirokastër]], [[Berat]], and [[Vlorë]]--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek.

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, [[Sami Frashëri]] founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, [[Catholic]], and Orthodox Albanians. [[Naim Frashëri]], the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in [[Bulgaria]], [[Egypt]], Italy, Romania, and the [[United States]] supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.

The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented [[Abdul Hamid II|Sultan Abdül Hamid II]] from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the League of Prizren in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian terrorists assassinated [[Korçë]]'s [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] metropolitan.

In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the ''bastinado'', or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.

The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.

==1911 Highlanders Uprising==
The rise of Albanian nationalism first sparked with the Battle of Deçiq on April 6, [[1911]], which was located in the town of [[Tuzi]], [[Malësi e Madhe]]. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians led by [[Ded Gjo Luli]], against the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Turgut Pasha. The long and bloody battle was victorious toward the Albanians. During the battle, the Albanian Flag was raised for the first time since [[Gjergj Kastrioti]] in 1443. As a result to the victory of this battle, the Albanians found a sense of confidence and nationalism that led to other events toward Independence, which eventually came about on November 28, [[1912]]. Today, many songs and stories of the Albanians are passed in honor of the important battle that led to the Independence of Albania.

==The Balkan Wars and creation of independent Albania==
The [[First Balkan War]], however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded [[Shkodër]] with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the [[Ottoman Turks]].

An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and [[Christian]] leaders meeting in [[Vlorë]] in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding [[Treaty of London, 1913|Treaty of London]] of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by [[Aubrey Herbert]], [[Member of Parliament|MP]], a passionate advocate of their cause.

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir [[Edward Grey]], the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1913|Treaty of Bucharest]] established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Shkodër (or as they called it Skadar) after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and [[Serbs]] since the [[Middle Ages]], but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider [[Kosovo]] their [[Holy Land]]. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the [[7th century]], that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, [[Stefan Dusan]], established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]], are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the [[Battle of Kosovo|battle]] against the Ottoman Turks, took place at [[Kosovo Polje]] in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the [[ancient Illyria]]ns, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century. See also [[Kosovo population data-points]].

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of [[Essad Pasha|Essad Pasha Toptani]], who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.

The Albanians offered the throne to [[Aubrey Herbert]], but he was dissuaded from accepting by the British [[prime minister]], [[Herbert Asquith]]. The Great Powers chose instead [[William of Albania|Prince Wilhelm]] of Wied, a thirty-five-year-old German army captain, to head the new [[Principality of Albania]]. In March 1914, he moved into a Durrës building hastily converted into a palace.

After independence local power struggles, foreign provocations, miserable economic conditions, and modest attempts at social and religious reform fueled Albanian uprisings aimed at the prince and the control commission. Ottoman propaganda, which appealed to uneducated peasants loyal to [[Islam]] and Islamic spiritual leaders, attacked the Albanian regime as a puppet of the large landowners and Europe's Christian powers. Greece, dissatisfied that the Great Powers did not award it southern Albania, also encouraged uprisings against the Albanian government, and armed Greek bands carried out atrocities against Albanian villagers. Italy plotted with Esad Pasha to overthrow the new prince. Montenegro and Serbia plotted with the northern tribesmen. For their part, the Great Powers gave Prince Wilhelm, who was unversed in Albanian affairs, intrigue, or diplomacy, little moral or material backing. A general insurrection in the summer of 1914 stripped the prince of control except in Durrës and Vlorë.

==World War I and its effects on Albania==
Political chaos engulfed Albania after the outbreak of World War I. Surrounded by insurgents in Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September [[1914]], just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to Turkey as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Other Albanians became little more than agents of Italy and Serbia. Still others, including many beys and clan chiefs, recognized no superior authority. In late 1914, Greece occupied southern Albania, including [[Korçë]] and [[Gjirokastër]]. Italy occupied [[Vlorë]], and Serbia and Montenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until a [[Central Powers]] offensive scattered the Serbian army, which was evacuated by the French to [[Thessaloniki]]. [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.

Under the secret [[Treaty of London, 1915|Treaty of London]] signed in April [[1915]], [[Triple Entente]] powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia and Montenegro were promised much of northern Albania, and Greece was promised much of the country's southern half. The treaty left a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers. In September 1918, Entente forces broke through the Central Powers' lines north of Thessaloniki, and within days Austro-Hungarian forces began to withdraw from Albania. When the war ended on [[November 11]], [[1918]], Italy's army had occupied most of Albania; Serbia held much of the country's northern mountains; Greece occupied a sliver of land within Albania's 1913 borders; and French forces occupied Korçë and Shkodër as well as other regions with sizable Albanian populations such as [[Kosovo]], which were later handed over to [[Serbia]].

== After WWII ==
{{Refimprove|date=June 2008}}
The [[Albanian communists]] state supported<ref>Wilkes, John. ''The Illyrians (The Peoples of Europe)''. Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. ISBN-10: 0631198075, p. 10: "... Since the Second World War archaeological exploration has been impelled by a national policy to establish the link between modern Albanians and ancient Illyrians.</ref> the notion that Albanians were the ancestors of [[Illyrians]] even when the evidence are so scanty and nothing has been proven (See [[Origin of the Albanians]]) . The state also imposed with lists of supposed<ref>Vickers, Miranda. ''The Albanians'', ''Chapter 9. "Albania Isolates itself"'', p. 196: "From time to time official lists were published with pagan, so-called Illyrian or freshly minted names considered appropriate for the new breed of revolutionary Albanians." (See also Logoreci, ''"The Albanians"'', p. 157.)</ref> Illyrian names to the populace to establish this notion.

Also the [[national myth]] that Albanians are ancestors of the [[Pelasgians]] is also popular and had reached the level of a contemporary<ref>N. Malcolm, ''Myth of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements'', in: Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'' (2002), 76ff.</ref> [[urban legend]] more powerful then that of the Illyrians. This belief is used in supporting [[irredentism]] and [[revanchism]] {{fact}}.

==References==
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
*''[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html Library of Congress Country Study] of Albania''
* {{cite book |last=Mazower |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Mazower |title=The Balkans: A Short History |series=Modern Library Chronicles |year=2000 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-679-64087-8 }}
* Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', Indiana University Press (2002), ISBN 0253215706.

==See also==

* [[League of Prizren]]
* [[Origin of the Albanians]]

{{History of Albania}}
{{National Awakening in the Balkans}}
{{Albania topics}}

[[Category:History of Albania]]
[[Category:History of Kosovo]]
[[Category:Nationalism|Albania]]

Rilindja

2008-07-25T13:26:32Z

ABXDataLogic: /* After WWII */ - citation needed

{{POV-check|date=May 2008}}
{{Unreferenced|date=June 2008}}
{{histalbania}}

==The rise of Albanian nationalism==
{{see|Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire}}
The [[1877]]-[[1878]] [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78|Russo-Turkish War]] dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the [[Balkan Peninsula]], leaving the [[Ottoman empire|empire]] with only a precarious hold on [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among [[Montenegro]], [[Serbia]], [[Bulgaria]], and [[Greece]] fueled the rise of Albanian [[nationalism]]. The first postwar treaty, the abortive [[Treaty of San Stefano]] signed on [[March 3]], 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] blocked the arrangement because it awarded [[Russia]] a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in [[Berlin]].

The [[Treaty of San Stefano]] triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in [[Constantinople]]--including [[Abdyl Frashëri]], the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On [[June 10]], 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly [[Muslim]] religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman [[vilayet]]s, met in the [[Kosovo]] city of [[Prizren]]. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the [[Congress of Berlin]], which was called to settle the unresolved problems of [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878|Turkish War]], demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.

The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and [[Germany]]'s [[Otto von Bismarck]] even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and [[Podgorica]] and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible "loss" of [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] to Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in [[Gusinje]], [[Plav]], [[Shkodër]], [[Prizren]], [[Prevesa]], and [[Janina]]. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."

In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The [[Sublime Porte]], in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of [[Ulcinj]]. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only [[Thessaly]] and the district of [[Arta]].

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under [[Dervish Turgut Pasha]] to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.

Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the [[Latin]], [[Cyrillic]], and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- [[Gjirokastër]], [[Berat]], and [[Vlorë]]--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek.

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, [[Sami Frashëri]] founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, [[Catholic]], and Orthodox Albanians. [[Naim Frashëri]], the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in [[Bulgaria]], [[Egypt]], Italy, Romania, and the [[United States]] supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.

The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented [[Abdul Hamid II|Sultan Abdül Hamid II]] from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the League of Prizren in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian terrorists assassinated [[Korçë]]'s [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] metropolitan.

In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the ''bastinado'', or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.

The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.

==1911 Highlanders Uprising==
The rise of Albanian nationalism first sparked with the Battle of Deçiq on April 6, [[1911]], which was located in the town of [[Tuzi]], [[Malësi e Madhe]]. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians led by [[Ded Gjo Luli]], against the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Turgut Pasha. The long and bloody battle was victorious toward the Albanians. During the battle, the Albanian Flag was raised for the first time since [[Gjergj Kastrioti]] in 1443. As a result to the victory of this battle, the Albanians found a sense of confidence and nationalism that led to other events toward Independence, which eventually came about on November 28, [[1912]]. Today, many songs and stories of the Albanians are passed in honor of the important battle that led to the Independence of Albania.

==The Balkan Wars and creation of independent Albania==
The [[First Balkan War]], however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded [[Shkodër]] with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the [[Ottoman Turks]].

An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and [[Christian]] leaders meeting in [[Vlorë]] in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding [[Treaty of London, 1913|Treaty of London]] of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by [[Aubrey Herbert]], [[Member of Parliament|MP]], a passionate advocate of their cause.

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir [[Edward Grey]], the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1913|Treaty of Bucharest]] established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Shkodër (or as they called it Skadar) after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and [[Serbs]] since the [[Middle Ages]], but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider [[Kosovo]] their [[Holy Land]]. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the [[7th century]], that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, [[Stefan Dusan]], established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]], are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the [[Battle of Kosovo|battle]] against the Ottoman Turks, took place at [[Kosovo Polje]] in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the [[ancient Illyria]]ns, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century. See also [[Kosovo population data-points]].

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of [[Essad Pasha|Essad Pasha Toptani]], who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.

The Albanians offered the throne to [[Aubrey Herbert]], but he was dissuaded from accepting by the British [[prime minister]], [[Herbert Asquith]]. The Great Powers chose instead [[William of Albania|Prince Wilhelm]] of Wied, a thirty-five-year-old German army captain, to head the new [[Principality of Albania]]. In March 1914, he moved into a Durrës building hastily converted into a palace.

After independence local power struggles, foreign provocations, miserable economic conditions, and modest attempts at social and religious reform fueled Albanian uprisings aimed at the prince and the control commission. Ottoman propaganda, which appealed to uneducated peasants loyal to [[Islam]] and Islamic spiritual leaders, attacked the Albanian regime as a puppet of the large landowners and Europe's Christian powers. Greece, dissatisfied that the Great Powers did not award it southern Albania, also encouraged uprisings against the Albanian government, and armed Greek bands carried out atrocities against Albanian villagers. Italy plotted with Esad Pasha to overthrow the new prince. Montenegro and Serbia plotted with the northern tribesmen. For their part, the Great Powers gave Prince Wilhelm, who was unversed in Albanian affairs, intrigue, or diplomacy, little moral or material backing. A general insurrection in the summer of 1914 stripped the prince of control except in Durrës and Vlorë.

==World War I and its effects on Albania==
Political chaos engulfed Albania after the outbreak of World War I. Surrounded by insurgents in Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September [[1914]], just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to Turkey as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Other Albanians became little more than agents of Italy and Serbia. Still others, including many beys and clan chiefs, recognized no superior authority. In late 1914, Greece occupied southern Albania, including [[Korçë]] and [[Gjirokastër]]. Italy occupied [[Vlorë]], and Serbia and Montenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until a [[Central Powers]] offensive scattered the Serbian army, which was evacuated by the French to [[Thessaloniki]]. [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.

Under the secret [[Treaty of London, 1915|Treaty of London]] signed in April [[1915]], [[Triple Entente]] powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia and Montenegro were promised much of northern Albania, and Greece was promised much of the country's southern half. The treaty left a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers. In September 1918, Entente forces broke through the Central Powers' lines north of Thessaloniki, and within days Austro-Hungarian forces began to withdraw from Albania. When the war ended on [[November 11]], [[1918]], Italy's army had occupied most of Albania; Serbia held much of the country's northern mountains; Greece occupied a sliver of land within Albania's 1913 borders; and French forces occupied Korçë and Shkodër as well as other regions with sizable Albanian populations such as [[Kosovo]], which were later handed over to [[Serbia]].

== After WWII ==
{{Refimprove|date=June 2008}}
The [[Albanian communists]] state supported<ref>Wilkes, John. ''The Illyrians (The Peoples of Europe)''. Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. ISBN-10: 0631198075, p. 10: "... Since the Second World War archaeological exploration has been impelled by a national policy to establish the link between modern Albanians and ancient Illyrians.</ref> the notion that Albanians were the ancestors of [[Illyrians]] even when the evidence are so scanty and nothing has been proven (See [[Origin of the Albanians]]) . The state also imposed with lists of supposed<ref>Vickers, Miranda. ''The Albanians'', ''Chapter 9. "Albania Isolates itself"'', p. 196: "From time to time official lists were published with pagan, so-called Illyrian or freshly minted names considered appropriate for the new breed of revolutionary Albanians." (See also Logoreci, ''"The Albanians"'', p. 157.)</ref> Illyrian names to the populace to establish this notion.

Also the [[national myth]] that Albanians are ancestors of the [[Pelasgians]] is also popular and had reached the level of a contemporary<ref>N. Malcolm, ''Myth of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements'', in: Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'' (2002), 76ff.</ref> [[urban legend]] more powerful then that of the Illyrians. This belief is used in supporting [[irredentism]] and [[revanchism]] {{citation}}.

==References==
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
*''[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html Library of Congress Country Study] of Albania''
* {{cite book |last=Mazower |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Mazower |title=The Balkans: A Short History |series=Modern Library Chronicles |year=2000 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-679-64087-8 }}
* Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', Indiana University Press (2002), ISBN 0253215706.

==See also==

* [[League of Prizren]]
* [[Origin of the Albanians]]

{{History of Albania}}
{{National Awakening in the Balkans}}
{{Albania topics}}

[[Category:History of Albania]]
[[Category:History of Kosovo]]
[[Category:Nationalism|Albania]]

Rilindja

2008-07-25T13:25:34Z

ABXDataLogic: /* After WWII */ - added paranthesis

{{POV-check|date=May 2008}}
{{Unreferenced|date=June 2008}}
{{histalbania}}

==The rise of Albanian nationalism==
{{see|Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire}}
The [[1877]]-[[1878]] [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78|Russo-Turkish War]] dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the [[Balkan Peninsula]], leaving the [[Ottoman empire|empire]] with only a precarious hold on [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among [[Montenegro]], [[Serbia]], [[Bulgaria]], and [[Greece]] fueled the rise of Albanian [[nationalism]]. The first postwar treaty, the abortive [[Treaty of San Stefano]] signed on [[March 3]], 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] blocked the arrangement because it awarded [[Russia]] a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in [[Berlin]].

The [[Treaty of San Stefano]] triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in [[Constantinople]]--including [[Abdyl Frashëri]], the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On [[June 10]], 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly [[Muslim]] religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman [[vilayet]]s, met in the [[Kosovo]] city of [[Prizren]]. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the [[Congress of Berlin]], which was called to settle the unresolved problems of [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878|Turkish War]], demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.

The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and [[Germany]]'s [[Otto von Bismarck]] even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and [[Podgorica]] and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible "loss" of [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] to Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in [[Gusinje]], [[Plav]], [[Shkodër]], [[Prizren]], [[Prevesa]], and [[Janina]]. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."

In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The [[Sublime Porte]], in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of [[Ulcinj]]. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only [[Thessaly]] and the district of [[Arta]].

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under [[Dervish Turgut Pasha]] to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.

Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the [[Latin]], [[Cyrillic]], and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- [[Gjirokastër]], [[Berat]], and [[Vlorë]]--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek.

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, [[Sami Frashëri]] founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, [[Catholic]], and Orthodox Albanians. [[Naim Frashëri]], the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in [[Bulgaria]], [[Egypt]], Italy, Romania, and the [[United States]] supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.

The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented [[Abdul Hamid II|Sultan Abdül Hamid II]] from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the League of Prizren in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian terrorists assassinated [[Korçë]]'s [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] metropolitan.

In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the ''bastinado'', or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.

The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.

==1911 Highlanders Uprising==
The rise of Albanian nationalism first sparked with the Battle of Deçiq on April 6, [[1911]], which was located in the town of [[Tuzi]], [[Malësi e Madhe]]. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians led by [[Ded Gjo Luli]], against the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Turgut Pasha. The long and bloody battle was victorious toward the Albanians. During the battle, the Albanian Flag was raised for the first time since [[Gjergj Kastrioti]] in 1443. As a result to the victory of this battle, the Albanians found a sense of confidence and nationalism that led to other events toward Independence, which eventually came about on November 28, [[1912]]. Today, many songs and stories of the Albanians are passed in honor of the important battle that led to the Independence of Albania.

==The Balkan Wars and creation of independent Albania==
The [[First Balkan War]], however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded [[Shkodër]] with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the [[Ottoman Turks]].

An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and [[Christian]] leaders meeting in [[Vlorë]] in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding [[Treaty of London, 1913|Treaty of London]] of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by [[Aubrey Herbert]], [[Member of Parliament|MP]], a passionate advocate of their cause.

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir [[Edward Grey]], the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1913|Treaty of Bucharest]] established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Shkodër (or as they called it Skadar) after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and [[Serbs]] since the [[Middle Ages]], but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider [[Kosovo]] their [[Holy Land]]. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the [[7th century]], that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, [[Stefan Dusan]], established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]], are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the [[Battle of Kosovo|battle]] against the Ottoman Turks, took place at [[Kosovo Polje]] in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the [[ancient Illyria]]ns, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century. See also [[Kosovo population data-points]].

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of [[Essad Pasha|Essad Pasha Toptani]], who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.

The Albanians offered the throne to [[Aubrey Herbert]], but he was dissuaded from accepting by the British [[prime minister]], [[Herbert Asquith]]. The Great Powers chose instead [[William of Albania|Prince Wilhelm]] of Wied, a thirty-five-year-old German army captain, to head the new [[Principality of Albania]]. In March 1914, he moved into a Durrës building hastily converted into a palace.

After independence local power struggles, foreign provocations, miserable economic conditions, and modest attempts at social and religious reform fueled Albanian uprisings aimed at the prince and the control commission. Ottoman propaganda, which appealed to uneducated peasants loyal to [[Islam]] and Islamic spiritual leaders, attacked the Albanian regime as a puppet of the large landowners and Europe's Christian powers. Greece, dissatisfied that the Great Powers did not award it southern Albania, also encouraged uprisings against the Albanian government, and armed Greek bands carried out atrocities against Albanian villagers. Italy plotted with Esad Pasha to overthrow the new prince. Montenegro and Serbia plotted with the northern tribesmen. For their part, the Great Powers gave Prince Wilhelm, who was unversed in Albanian affairs, intrigue, or diplomacy, little moral or material backing. A general insurrection in the summer of 1914 stripped the prince of control except in Durrës and Vlorë.

==World War I and its effects on Albania==
Political chaos engulfed Albania after the outbreak of World War I. Surrounded by insurgents in Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September [[1914]], just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to Turkey as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Other Albanians became little more than agents of Italy and Serbia. Still others, including many beys and clan chiefs, recognized no superior authority. In late 1914, Greece occupied southern Albania, including [[Korçë]] and [[Gjirokastër]]. Italy occupied [[Vlorë]], and Serbia and Montenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until a [[Central Powers]] offensive scattered the Serbian army, which was evacuated by the French to [[Thessaloniki]]. [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.

Under the secret [[Treaty of London, 1915|Treaty of London]] signed in April [[1915]], [[Triple Entente]] powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia and Montenegro were promised much of northern Albania, and Greece was promised much of the country's southern half. The treaty left a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers. In September 1918, Entente forces broke through the Central Powers' lines north of Thessaloniki, and within days Austro-Hungarian forces began to withdraw from Albania. When the war ended on [[November 11]], [[1918]], Italy's army had occupied most of Albania; Serbia held much of the country's northern mountains; Greece occupied a sliver of land within Albania's 1913 borders; and French forces occupied Korçë and Shkodër as well as other regions with sizable Albanian populations such as [[Kosovo]], which were later handed over to [[Serbia]].

== After WWII ==
{{Refimprove|date=June 2008}}
The [[Albanian communists]] state supported<ref>Wilkes, John. ''The Illyrians (The Peoples of Europe)''. Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. ISBN-10: 0631198075, p. 10: "... Since the Second World War archaeological exploration has been impelled by a national policy to establish the link between modern Albanians and ancient Illyrians.</ref> the notion that Albanians were the ancestors of [[Illyrians]] even when the evidence are so scanty and nothing has been proven (See [[Origin of the Albanians]]) . The state also imposed with lists of supposed<ref>Vickers, Miranda. ''The Albanians'', ''Chapter 9. "Albania Isolates itself"'', p. 196: "From time to time official lists were published with pagan, so-called Illyrian or freshly minted names considered appropriate for the new breed of revolutionary Albanians." (See also Logoreci, ''"The Albanians"'', p. 157.)</ref> Illyrian names to the populace to establish this notion.

Also the [[national myth]] that Albanians are ancestors of the [[Pelasgians]] is also popular and had reached the level of a contemporary<ref>N. Malcolm, ''Myth of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements'', in: Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'' (2002), 76ff.</ref> [[urban legend]] more powerful then that of the Illyrians. This belief is used in supporting [[irredentism]] and [[revanchism]].

==References==
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
*''[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html Library of Congress Country Study] of Albania''
* {{cite book |last=Mazower |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Mazower |title=The Balkans: A Short History |series=Modern Library Chronicles |year=2000 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-679-64087-8 }}
* Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', Indiana University Press (2002), ISBN 0253215706.

==See also==

* [[League of Prizren]]
* [[Origin of the Albanians]]

{{History of Albania}}
{{National Awakening in the Balkans}}
{{Albania topics}}

[[Category:History of Albania]]
[[Category:History of Kosovo]]
[[Category:Nationalism|Albania]]

Rilindja

2008-07-25T13:24:47Z

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==The rise of Albanian nationalism==
{{see|Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire}}
The [[1877]]-[[1878]] [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78|Russo-Turkish War]] dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the [[Balkan Peninsula]], leaving the [[Ottoman empire|empire]] with only a precarious hold on [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among [[Montenegro]], [[Serbia]], [[Bulgaria]], and [[Greece]] fueled the rise of Albanian [[nationalism]]. The first postwar treaty, the abortive [[Treaty of San Stefano]] signed on [[March 3]], 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] blocked the arrangement because it awarded [[Russia]] a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in [[Berlin]].

The [[Treaty of San Stefano]] triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in [[Constantinople]]--including [[Abdyl Frashëri]], the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On [[June 10]], 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly [[Muslim]] religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman [[vilayet]]s, met in the [[Kosovo]] city of [[Prizren]]. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the [[Congress of Berlin]], which was called to settle the unresolved problems of [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878|Turkish War]], demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.

The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and [[Germany]]'s [[Otto von Bismarck]] even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and [[Podgorica]] and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible "loss" of [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] to Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in [[Gusinje]], [[Plav]], [[Shkodër]], [[Prizren]], [[Prevesa]], and [[Janina]]. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."

In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The [[Sublime Porte]], in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of [[Ulcinj]]. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only [[Thessaly]] and the district of [[Arta]].

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under [[Dervish Turgut Pasha]] to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.

Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the [[Latin]], [[Cyrillic]], and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- [[Gjirokastër]], [[Berat]], and [[Vlorë]]--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek.

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, [[Sami Frashëri]] founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, [[Catholic]], and Orthodox Albanians. [[Naim Frashëri]], the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in [[Bulgaria]], [[Egypt]], Italy, Romania, and the [[United States]] supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.

The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented [[Abdul Hamid II|Sultan Abdül Hamid II]] from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the League of Prizren in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian terrorists assassinated [[Korçë]]'s [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] metropolitan.

In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the ''bastinado'', or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.

The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.

==1911 Highlanders Uprising==
The rise of Albanian nationalism first sparked with the Battle of Deçiq on April 6, [[1911]], which was located in the town of [[Tuzi]], [[Malësi e Madhe]]. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians led by [[Ded Gjo Luli]], against the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Turgut Pasha. The long and bloody battle was victorious toward the Albanians. During the battle, the Albanian Flag was raised for the first time since [[Gjergj Kastrioti]] in 1443. As a result to the victory of this battle, the Albanians found a sense of confidence and nationalism that led to other events toward Independence, which eventually came about on November 28, [[1912]]. Today, many songs and stories of the Albanians are passed in honor of the important battle that led to the Independence of Albania.

==The Balkan Wars and creation of independent Albania==
The [[First Balkan War]], however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded [[Shkodër]] with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the [[Ottoman Turks]].

An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and [[Christian]] leaders meeting in [[Vlorë]] in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding [[Treaty of London, 1913|Treaty of London]] of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by [[Aubrey Herbert]], [[Member of Parliament|MP]], a passionate advocate of their cause.

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir [[Edward Grey]], the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1913|Treaty of Bucharest]] established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Shkodër (or as they called it Skadar) after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and [[Serbs]] since the [[Middle Ages]], but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider [[Kosovo]] their [[Holy Land]]. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the [[7th century]], that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, [[Stefan Dusan]], established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]], are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the [[Battle of Kosovo|battle]] against the Ottoman Turks, took place at [[Kosovo Polje]] in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the [[ancient Illyria]]ns, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century. See also [[Kosovo population data-points]].

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of [[Essad Pasha|Essad Pasha Toptani]], who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.

The Albanians offered the throne to [[Aubrey Herbert]], but he was dissuaded from accepting by the British [[prime minister]], [[Herbert Asquith]]. The Great Powers chose instead [[William of Albania|Prince Wilhelm]] of Wied, a thirty-five-year-old German army captain, to head the new [[Principality of Albania]]. In March 1914, he moved into a Durrës building hastily converted into a palace.

After independence local power struggles, foreign provocations, miserable economic conditions, and modest attempts at social and religious reform fueled Albanian uprisings aimed at the prince and the control commission. Ottoman propaganda, which appealed to uneducated peasants loyal to [[Islam]] and Islamic spiritual leaders, attacked the Albanian regime as a puppet of the large landowners and Europe's Christian powers. Greece, dissatisfied that the Great Powers did not award it southern Albania, also encouraged uprisings against the Albanian government, and armed Greek bands carried out atrocities against Albanian villagers. Italy plotted with Esad Pasha to overthrow the new prince. Montenegro and Serbia plotted with the northern tribesmen. For their part, the Great Powers gave Prince Wilhelm, who was unversed in Albanian affairs, intrigue, or diplomacy, little moral or material backing. A general insurrection in the summer of 1914 stripped the prince of control except in Durrës and Vlorë.

==World War I and its effects on Albania==
Political chaos engulfed Albania after the outbreak of World War I. Surrounded by insurgents in Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September [[1914]], just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to Turkey as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Other Albanians became little more than agents of Italy and Serbia. Still others, including many beys and clan chiefs, recognized no superior authority. In late 1914, Greece occupied southern Albania, including [[Korçë]] and [[Gjirokastër]]. Italy occupied [[Vlorë]], and Serbia and Montenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until a [[Central Powers]] offensive scattered the Serbian army, which was evacuated by the French to [[Thessaloniki]]. [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.

Under the secret [[Treaty of London, 1915|Treaty of London]] signed in April [[1915]], [[Triple Entente]] powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia and Montenegro were promised much of northern Albania, and Greece was promised much of the country's southern half. The treaty left a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers. In September 1918, Entente forces broke through the Central Powers' lines north of Thessaloniki, and within days Austro-Hungarian forces began to withdraw from Albania. When the war ended on [[November 11]], [[1918]], Italy's army had occupied most of Albania; Serbia held much of the country's northern mountains; Greece occupied a sliver of land within Albania's 1913 borders; and French forces occupied Korçë and Shkodër as well as other regions with sizable Albanian populations such as [[Kosovo]], which were later handed over to [[Serbia]].

== After WWII ==
{{Refimprove|date=June 2008}}
The [[Albanian communists]] state supported<ref>Wilkes, John. ''The Illyrians (The Peoples of Europe)''. Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. ISBN-10: 0631198075, p. 10: "... Since the Second World War archaeological exploration has been impelled by a national policy to establish the link between modern Albanians and ancient Illyrians.</ref> the notion that Albanians were the ancestors of [[Illyrians]] even when the evidence are so scanty and nothing has been proven (See [[Origin of the Albanians]]) . The state also imposed with lists of supposed<ref>Vickers, Miranda. ''The Albanians'', ''Chapter 9. "Albania Isolates itself"'', p. 196: "From time to time official lists were published with pagan, so-called Illyrian or freshly minted names considered appropriate for the new breed of revolutionary Albanians." (See also Logoreci, ''"The Albanians"'', p. 157.</ref> Illyrian names to the populace to establish this notion.

Also the [[national myth]] that Albanians are ancestors of the [[Pelasgians]] is also popular and had reached the level of a contemporary<ref>N. Malcolm, ''Myth of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements'', in: Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'' (2002), 76ff.</ref> [[urban legend]] more powerful then that of the Illyrians. This belief is used in supporting [[irredentism]] and [[revanchism]].

==References==
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
*''[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html Library of Congress Country Study] of Albania''
* {{cite book |last=Mazower |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Mazower |title=The Balkans: A Short History |series=Modern Library Chronicles |year=2000 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-679-64087-8 }}
* Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', Indiana University Press (2002), ISBN 0253215706.

==See also==

* [[League of Prizren]]
* [[Origin of the Albanians]]

{{History of Albania}}
{{National Awakening in the Balkans}}
{{Albania topics}}

[[Category:History of Albania]]
[[Category:History of Kosovo]]
[[Category:Nationalism|Albania]]

Rilindja

2008-07-25T13:21:03Z

ABXDataLogic: MLA style for references

{{POV-check|date=May 2008}}
{{Unreferenced|date=June 2008}}
{{histalbania}}

==The rise of Albanian nationalism==
{{see|Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire}}
The [[1877]]-[[1878]] [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78|Russo-Turkish War]] dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the [[Balkan Peninsula]], leaving the [[Ottoman empire|empire]] with only a precarious hold on [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among [[Montenegro]], [[Serbia]], [[Bulgaria]], and [[Greece]] fueled the rise of Albanian [[nationalism]]. The first postwar treaty, the abortive [[Treaty of San Stefano]] signed on [[March 3]], 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] blocked the arrangement because it awarded [[Russia]] a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in [[Berlin]].

The [[Treaty of San Stefano]] triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in [[Constantinople]]--including [[Abdyl Frashëri]], the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On [[June 10]], 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly [[Muslim]] religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman [[vilayet]]s, met in the [[Kosovo]] city of [[Prizren]]. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the [[Congress of Berlin]], which was called to settle the unresolved problems of [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878|Turkish War]], demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.

The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and [[Germany]]'s [[Otto von Bismarck]] even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and [[Podgorica]] and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible "loss" of [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] to Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in [[Gusinje]], [[Plav]], [[Shkodër]], [[Prizren]], [[Prevesa]], and [[Janina]]. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."

In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The [[Sublime Porte]], in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of [[Ulcinj]]. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only [[Thessaly]] and the district of [[Arta]].

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under [[Dervish Turgut Pasha]] to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.

Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the [[Latin]], [[Cyrillic]], and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- [[Gjirokastër]], [[Berat]], and [[Vlorë]]--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek.

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, [[Sami Frashëri]] founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, [[Catholic]], and Orthodox Albanians. [[Naim Frashëri]], the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in [[Bulgaria]], [[Egypt]], Italy, Romania, and the [[United States]] supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.

The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented [[Abdul Hamid II|Sultan Abdül Hamid II]] from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the League of Prizren in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian terrorists assassinated [[Korçë]]'s [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] metropolitan.

In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the ''bastinado'', or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.

The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.

==1911 Highlanders Uprising==
The rise of Albanian nationalism first sparked with the Battle of Deçiq on April 6, [[1911]], which was located in the town of [[Tuzi]], [[Malësi e Madhe]]. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians led by [[Ded Gjo Luli]], against the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Turgut Pasha. The long and bloody battle was victorious toward the Albanians. During the battle, the Albanian Flag was raised for the first time since [[Gjergj Kastrioti]] in 1443. As a result to the victory of this battle, the Albanians found a sense of confidence and nationalism that led to other events toward Independence, which eventually came about on November 28, [[1912]]. Today, many songs and stories of the Albanians are passed in honor of the important battle that led to the Independence of Albania.

==The Balkan Wars and creation of independent Albania==
The [[First Balkan War]], however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded [[Shkodër]] with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the [[Ottoman Turks]].

An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and [[Christian]] leaders meeting in [[Vlorë]] in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding [[Treaty of London, 1913|Treaty of London]] of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by [[Aubrey Herbert]], [[Member of Parliament|MP]], a passionate advocate of their cause.

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir [[Edward Grey]], the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1913|Treaty of Bucharest]] established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Shkodër (or as they called it Skadar) after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and [[Serbs]] since the [[Middle Ages]], but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider [[Kosovo]] their [[Holy Land]]. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the [[7th century]], that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, [[Stefan Dusan]], established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]], are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the [[Battle of Kosovo|battle]] against the Ottoman Turks, took place at [[Kosovo Polje]] in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the [[ancient Illyria]]ns, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century. See also [[Kosovo population data-points]].

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of [[Essad Pasha|Essad Pasha Toptani]], who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.

The Albanians offered the throne to [[Aubrey Herbert]], but he was dissuaded from accepting by the British [[prime minister]], [[Herbert Asquith]]. The Great Powers chose instead [[William of Albania|Prince Wilhelm]] of Wied, a thirty-five-year-old German army captain, to head the new [[Principality of Albania]]. In March 1914, he moved into a Durrës building hastily converted into a palace.

After independence local power struggles, foreign provocations, miserable economic conditions, and modest attempts at social and religious reform fueled Albanian uprisings aimed at the prince and the control commission. Ottoman propaganda, which appealed to uneducated peasants loyal to [[Islam]] and Islamic spiritual leaders, attacked the Albanian regime as a puppet of the large landowners and Europe's Christian powers. Greece, dissatisfied that the Great Powers did not award it southern Albania, also encouraged uprisings against the Albanian government, and armed Greek bands carried out atrocities against Albanian villagers. Italy plotted with Esad Pasha to overthrow the new prince. Montenegro and Serbia plotted with the northern tribesmen. For their part, the Great Powers gave Prince Wilhelm, who was unversed in Albanian affairs, intrigue, or diplomacy, little moral or material backing. A general insurrection in the summer of 1914 stripped the prince of control except in Durrës and Vlorë.

==World War I and its effects on Albania==
Political chaos engulfed Albania after the outbreak of World War I. Surrounded by insurgents in Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September [[1914]], just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to Turkey as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Other Albanians became little more than agents of Italy and Serbia. Still others, including many beys and clan chiefs, recognized no superior authority. In late 1914, Greece occupied southern Albania, including [[Korçë]] and [[Gjirokastër]]. Italy occupied [[Vlorë]], and Serbia and Montenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until a [[Central Powers]] offensive scattered the Serbian army, which was evacuated by the French to [[Thessaloniki]]. [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.

Under the secret [[Treaty of London, 1915|Treaty of London]] signed in April [[1915]], [[Triple Entente]] powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia and Montenegro were promised much of northern Albania, and Greece was promised much of the country's southern half. The treaty left a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers. In September 1918, Entente forces broke through the Central Powers' lines north of Thessaloniki, and within days Austro-Hungarian forces began to withdraw from Albania. When the war ended on [[November 11]], [[1918]], Italy's army had occupied most of Albania; Serbia held much of the country's northern mountains; Greece occupied a sliver of land within Albania's 1913 borders; and French forces occupied Korçë and Shkodër as well as other regions with sizable Albanian populations such as [[Kosovo]], which were later handed over to [[Serbia]].

== After WWII ==
{{Refimprove|date=June 2008}}
The [[Albanian communists]] state supported<ref>Wilkes, John. ''The Illyrians (The Peoples of Europe)''. Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. ISBN-10: 0631198075, p. 10: "... Since the Second World War archaeological exploration has been impelled by a national policy to establish the link between modern Albanians and ancient Illyrians.</ref> the notion that Albanians were the ancestors of [[Illyrians]] even when the evidence are so scanty and nothing has been proven (See [[Origin of the Albanians]]) . The state also imposed with lists of supposed<ref>ISBN 960-210-279-9 Miranda Vickers, The Albanians Chapter 9. "Albania Isolates itself" page 196 ,From time to time official lists were published with pagan, so-called Illyrian or freshly minted names considered appropriate for the new breed of revolutionary Albanians.(see also Also Logoreci "the Albanians" page 157.</ref> Illyrian names to the populace to establish this notion.

Also the [[national myth]] that Albanians are ancestors of the [[Pelasgians]] is also popular and had reached the level of a contemporary<ref>N. Malcolm, ''Myth of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements'', in: Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'' (2002), 76ff.</ref> [[urban legend]] more powerful then that of the Illyrians. This belief is used in supporting [[irredentism]] and [[revanchism]].

==References==
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
*''[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html Library of Congress Country Study] of Albania''
* {{cite book |last=Mazower |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Mazower |title=The Balkans: A Short History |series=Modern Library Chronicles |year=2000 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-679-64087-8 }}
* Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', Indiana University Press (2002), ISBN 0253215706.

==See also==

* [[League of Prizren]]

{{History of Albania}}
{{National Awakening in the Balkans}}
{{Albania topics}}

[[Category:History of Albania]]
[[Category:History of Kosovo]]
[[Category:Nationalism|Albania]]

Rilindja

2008-07-25T13:12:50Z

ABXDataLogic: Removed POV link to Serbian government (how did it get here in the first place!)

{{POV-check|date=May 2008}}
{{Unreferenced|date=June 2008}}
{{histalbania}}

==The rise of Albanian nationalism==
{{see|Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire}}
The [[1877]]-[[1878]] [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78|Russo-Turkish War]] dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the [[Balkan Peninsula]], leaving the [[Ottoman empire|empire]] with only a precarious hold on [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among [[Montenegro]], [[Serbia]], [[Bulgaria]], and [[Greece]] fueled the rise of Albanian [[nationalism]]. The first postwar treaty, the abortive [[Treaty of San Stefano]] signed on [[March 3]], 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] blocked the arrangement because it awarded [[Russia]] a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in [[Berlin]].

The [[Treaty of San Stefano]] triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in [[Constantinople]]--including [[Abdyl Frashëri]], the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On [[June 10]], 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly [[Muslim]] religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman [[vilayet]]s, met in the [[Kosovo]] city of [[Prizren]]. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the [[Congress of Berlin]], which was called to settle the unresolved problems of [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878|Turkish War]], demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.

The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and [[Germany]]'s [[Otto von Bismarck]] even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and [[Podgorica]] and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible "loss" of [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] to Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in [[Gusinje]], [[Plav]], [[Shkodër]], [[Prizren]], [[Prevesa]], and [[Janina]]. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."

In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The [[Sublime Porte]], in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of [[Ulcinj]]. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only [[Thessaly]] and the district of [[Arta]].

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under [[Dervish Turgut Pasha]] to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.

Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the [[Latin]], [[Cyrillic]], and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- [[Gjirokastër]], [[Berat]], and [[Vlorë]]--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek.

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, [[Sami Frashëri]] founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, [[Catholic]], and Orthodox Albanians. [[Naim Frashëri]], the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in [[Bulgaria]], [[Egypt]], Italy, Romania, and the [[United States]] supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.

The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented [[Abdul Hamid II|Sultan Abdül Hamid II]] from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the League of Prizren in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian terrorists assassinated [[Korçë]]'s [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] metropolitan.

In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the ''bastinado'', or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.

The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.

==1911 Highlanders Uprising==
The rise of Albanian nationalism first sparked with the Battle of Deçiq on April 6, [[1911]], which was located in the town of [[Tuzi]], [[Malësi e Madhe]]. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians led by [[Ded Gjo Luli]], against the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Turgut Pasha. The long and bloody battle was victorious toward the Albanians. During the battle, the Albanian Flag was raised for the first time since [[Gjergj Kastrioti]] in 1443. As a result to the victory of this battle, the Albanians found a sense of confidence and nationalism that led to other events toward Independence, which eventually came about on November 28, [[1912]]. Today, many songs and stories of the Albanians are passed in honor of the important battle that led to the Independence of Albania.

==The Balkan Wars and creation of independent Albania==
The [[First Balkan War]], however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded [[Shkodër]] with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the [[Ottoman Turks]].

An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and [[Christian]] leaders meeting in [[Vlorë]] in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding [[Treaty of London, 1913|Treaty of London]] of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by [[Aubrey Herbert]], [[Member of Parliament|MP]], a passionate advocate of their cause.

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir [[Edward Grey]], the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1913|Treaty of Bucharest]] established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Shkodër (or as they called it Skadar) after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and [[Serbs]] since the [[Middle Ages]], but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider [[Kosovo]] their [[Holy Land]]. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the [[7th century]], that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, [[Stefan Dusan]], established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]], are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the [[Battle of Kosovo|battle]] against the Ottoman Turks, took place at [[Kosovo Polje]] in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the [[ancient Illyria]]ns, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century. See also [[Kosovo population data-points]].

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of [[Essad Pasha|Essad Pasha Toptani]], who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.

The Albanians offered the throne to [[Aubrey Herbert]], but he was dissuaded from accepting by the British [[prime minister]], [[Herbert Asquith]]. The Great Powers chose instead [[William of Albania|Prince Wilhelm]] of Wied, a thirty-five-year-old German army captain, to head the new [[Principality of Albania]]. In March 1914, he moved into a Durrës building hastily converted into a palace.

After independence local power struggles, foreign provocations, miserable economic conditions, and modest attempts at social and religious reform fueled Albanian uprisings aimed at the prince and the control commission. Ottoman propaganda, which appealed to uneducated peasants loyal to [[Islam]] and Islamic spiritual leaders, attacked the Albanian regime as a puppet of the large landowners and Europe's Christian powers. Greece, dissatisfied that the Great Powers did not award it southern Albania, also encouraged uprisings against the Albanian government, and armed Greek bands carried out atrocities against Albanian villagers. Italy plotted with Esad Pasha to overthrow the new prince. Montenegro and Serbia plotted with the northern tribesmen. For their part, the Great Powers gave Prince Wilhelm, who was unversed in Albanian affairs, intrigue, or diplomacy, little moral or material backing. A general insurrection in the summer of 1914 stripped the prince of control except in Durrës and Vlorë.

==World War I and its effects on Albania==
Political chaos engulfed Albania after the outbreak of World War I. Surrounded by insurgents in Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September [[1914]], just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to Turkey as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Other Albanians became little more than agents of Italy and Serbia. Still others, including many beys and clan chiefs, recognized no superior authority. In late 1914, Greece occupied southern Albania, including [[Korçë]] and [[Gjirokastër]]. Italy occupied [[Vlorë]], and Serbia and Montenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until a [[Central Powers]] offensive scattered the Serbian army, which was evacuated by the French to [[Thessaloniki]]. [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.

Under the secret [[Treaty of London, 1915|Treaty of London]] signed in April [[1915]], [[Triple Entente]] powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia and Montenegro were promised much of northern Albania, and Greece was promised much of the country's southern half. The treaty left a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers. In September 1918, Entente forces broke through the Central Powers' lines north of Thessaloniki, and within days Austro-Hungarian forces began to withdraw from Albania. When the war ended on [[November 11]], [[1918]], Italy's army had occupied most of Albania; Serbia held much of the country's northern mountains; Greece occupied a sliver of land within Albania's 1913 borders; and French forces occupied Korçë and Shkodër as well as other regions with sizable Albanian populations such as [[Kosovo]], which were later handed over to [[Serbia]].

== After WWII ==
{{Refimprove|date=June 2008}}
The [[Albanian communists]] state supported<ref>The Illyrians John Wilkes,ISBN-10: 0631198075,1996,Page 10,"... Since the Second World War archaeological exploration has been impelled by a national policy to establish the link between modern Albanians and ancient Illyrians.</ref> the notion that Albanians were the ancestors of [[Illyrians]] even when the evidence are so scanty and nothing has been proven (See [[Origin of the Albanians]]) . The state also imposed with lists of supposed<ref>ISBN 960-210-279-9 Miranda Vickers, The Albanians Chapter 9. "Albania Isolates itself" page 196 ,From time to time official lists were published with pagan, so-called Illyrian or freshly minted names considered appropriate for the new breed of revolutionary Albanians.(see also Also Logoreci "the Albanians" page 157.</ref> Illyrian names to the populace to establish this notion.

Also the [[national myth]] that Albanians are ancestors of the [[Pelasgians]] is also popular and had reached the level of a contemporary<ref>N. Malcolm, ''Myth of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements'', in: Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'' (2002), 76ff.</ref> [[urban legend]] more powerful then that of the Illyrians. This belief is used in supporting [[irredentism]] and [[revanchism]].

==References==
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
*''[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html Library of Congress Country Study] of Albania''
* {{cite book |last=Mazower |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Mazower |title=The Balkans: A Short History |series=Modern Library Chronicles |year=2000 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-679-64087-8 }}
* Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', Indiana University Press (2002), ISBN 0253215706.

==See also==

* [[League of Prizren]]

{{History of Albania}}
{{National Awakening in the Balkans}}
{{Albania topics}}

[[Category:History of Albania]]
[[Category:History of Kosovo]]
[[Category:Nationalism|Albania]]

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==The rise of Albanian nationalism==
{{see|Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire}}
The [[1877]]-[[1878]] [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78|Russo-Turkish War]] dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the [[Balkan Peninsula]], leaving the [[Ottoman empire|empire]] with only a precarious hold on [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among [[Montenegro]], [[Serbia]], [[Bulgaria]], and [[Greece]] fueled the rise of Albanian [[nationalism]]. The first postwar treaty, the abortive [[Treaty of San Stefano]] signed on [[March 3]], 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] blocked the arrangement because it awarded [[Russia]] a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in [[Berlin]].

The [[Treaty of San Stefano]] triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in [[Constantinople]]--including [[Abdyl Frashëri]], the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On [[June 10]], 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly [[Muslim]] religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman [[vilayet]]s, met in the [[Kosovo]] city of [[Prizren]]. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the [[Congress of Berlin]], which was called to settle the unresolved problems of [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878|Turkish War]], demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.

The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and [[Germany]]'s [[Otto von Bismarck]] even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and [[Podgorica]] and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible "loss" of [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] to Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in [[Gusinje]], [[Plav]], [[Shkodër]], [[Prizren]], [[Prevesa]], and [[Janina]]. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."

In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The [[Sublime Porte]], in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of [[Ulcinj]]. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only [[Thessaly]] and the district of [[Arta]].

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under [[Dervish Turgut Pasha]] to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.

Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the [[Latin]], [[Cyrillic]], and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- [[Gjirokastër]], [[Berat]], and [[Vlorë]]--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek.

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, [[Sami Frashëri]] founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, [[Catholic]], and Orthodox Albanians. [[Naim Frashëri]], the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in [[Bulgaria]], [[Egypt]], Italy, Romania, and the [[United States]] supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.

The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented [[Abdul Hamid II|Sultan Abdül Hamid II]] from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the League of Prizren in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian terrorists assassinated [[Korçë]]'s [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] metropolitan.

In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the ''bastinado'', or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.

The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.

==1911 Highlanders Uprising==
The rise of Albanian nationalism first sparked with the Battle of Deçiq on April 6, [[1911]], which was located in the town of [[Tuzi]], [[Malësi e Madhe]]. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians led by [[Ded Gjo Luli]], against the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Turgut Pasha. The long and bloody battle was victorious toward the Albanians. During the battle, the Albanian Flag was raised for the first time since [[Gjergj Kastrioti]] in 1443. As a result to the victory of this battle, the Albanians found a sense of confidence and nationalism that led to other events toward Independence, which eventually came about on November 28, [[1912]]. Today, many songs and stories of the Albanians are passed in honor of the important battle that led to the Independence of Albania.

==The Balkan Wars and creation of independent Albania==
The [[First Balkan War]], however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded [[Shkodër]] with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the [[Ottoman Turks]].

An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and [[Christian]] leaders meeting in [[Vlorë]] in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding [[Treaty of London, 1913|Treaty of London]] of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by [[Aubrey Herbert]], [[Member of Parliament|MP]], a passionate advocate of their cause.

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir [[Edward Grey]], the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1913|Treaty of Bucharest]] established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Shkodër (or as they called it Skadar) after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and [[Serbs]] since the [[Middle Ages]], but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider [[Kosovo]] their [[Holy Land]]. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the [[7th century]], that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, [[Stefan Dusan]], established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]], are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the [[Battle of Kosovo|battle]] against the Ottoman Turks, took place at [[Kosovo Polje]] in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the [[ancient Illyria]]ns, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century. See also [[Kosovo population data-points]].

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of [[Essad Pasha|Essad Pasha Toptani]], who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.

The Albanians offered the throne to [[Aubrey Herbert]], but he was dissuaded from accepting by the British [[prime minister]], [[Herbert Asquith]]. The Great Powers chose instead [[William of Albania|Prince Wilhelm]] of Wied, a thirty-five-year-old German army captain, to head the new [[Principality of Albania]]. In March 1914, he moved into a Durrës building hastily converted into a palace.

After independence local power struggles, foreign provocations, miserable economic conditions, and modest attempts at social and religious reform fueled Albanian uprisings aimed at the prince and the control commission. Ottoman propaganda, which appealed to uneducated peasants loyal to [[Islam]] and Islamic spiritual leaders, attacked the Albanian regime as a puppet of the large landowners and Europe's Christian powers. Greece, dissatisfied that the Great Powers did not award it southern Albania, also encouraged uprisings against the Albanian government, and armed Greek bands carried out atrocities against Albanian villagers. Italy plotted with Esad Pasha to overthrow the new prince. Montenegro and Serbia plotted with the northern tribesmen. For their part, the Great Powers gave Prince Wilhelm, who was unversed in Albanian affairs, intrigue, or diplomacy, little moral or material backing. A general insurrection in the summer of 1914 stripped the prince of control except in Durrës and Vlorë.

==World War I and its effects on Albania==
Political chaos engulfed Albania after the outbreak of World War I. Surrounded by insurgents in Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September [[1914]], just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to Turkey as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Other Albanians became little more than agents of Italy and Serbia. Still others, including many beys and clan chiefs, recognized no superior authority. In late 1914, Greece occupied southern Albania, including [[Korçë]] and [[Gjirokastër]]. Italy occupied [[Vlorë]], and Serbia and Montenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until a [[Central Powers]] offensive scattered the Serbian army, which was evacuated by the French to [[Thessaloniki]]. [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.

Under the secret [[Treaty of London, 1915|Treaty of London]] signed in April [[1915]], [[Triple Entente]] powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia and Montenegro were promised much of northern Albania, and Greece was promised much of the country's southern half. The treaty left a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers. In September 1918, Entente forces broke through the Central Powers' lines north of Thessaloniki, and within days Austro-Hungarian forces began to withdraw from Albania. When the war ended on [[November 11]], [[1918]], Italy's army had occupied most of Albania; Serbia held much of the country's northern mountains; Greece occupied a sliver of land within Albania's 1913 borders; and French forces occupied Korçë and Shkodër as well as other regions with sizable Albanian populations such as [[Kosovo]], which were later handed over to [[Serbia]].

== After WWII ==
{{Refimprove|date=June 2008}}
The [[Albanian communists]] state supported<ref>The Illyrians John Wilkes,ISBN-10: 0631198075,1996,Page 10,"... Since the Second World War archaeological exploration has been impelled by a national policy to establish the link between modern Albanians and ancient Illyrians.</ref> the notion that Albanians were the ancestors of [[Illyrians]] even when the evidence are so scanty and nothing has been proven (See [[Origin of the Albanians]]) . The state also imposed with lists of supposed<ref>ISBN 960-210-279-9 Miranda Vickers, The Albanians Chapter 9. "Albania Isolates itself" page 196 ,From time to time official lists were published with pagan, so-called Illyrian or freshly minted names considered appropriate for the new breed of revolutionary Albanians.(see also Also Logoreci "the Albanians" page 157.</ref> Illyrian names to the populace to establish this notion.

Also the [[national myth]] that Albanians are ancestors of the [[Pelasgians]] is also popular and had reached the level of a contemporary<ref>N. Malcolm, ''Myth of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements'', in: Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'' (2002), 76ff.</ref> [[urban legend]] more powerful then that of the Illyrians. This belief is used in supporting [[irredentism]] and [[revanchism]].

==References==
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
*''[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html Library of Congress Country Study] of Albania''
* {{cite book |last=Mazower |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Mazower |title=The Balkans: A Short History |series=Modern Library Chronicles |year=2000 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-679-64087-8 }}
* Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', Indiana University Press (2002), ISBN 0253215706.

==See also==
[http://www.media.srbija.sr.gov.yu/medeng/documents/albanian_terrorism_crime1.pdf| Albanian terorisme ]
*[[League of Prizren]]

{{History of Albania}}
{{National Awakening in the Balkans}}
{{Albania topics}}

[[Category:History of Albania]]
[[Category:History of Kosovo]]
[[Category:Nationalism|Albania]]

Rilindja

2008-07-25T13:11:48Z

ABXDataLogic: typos + corrected certain names

{{POV-check|date=May 2008}}
{{Unreferenced|date=June 2008}}
{{histalbania}}
{{History of Albania}}

==The rise of Albanian nationalism==
{{see|Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire}}
The [[1877]]-[[1878]] [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78|Russo-Turkish War]] dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the [[Balkan Peninsula]], leaving the [[Ottoman empire|empire]] with only a precarious hold on [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among [[Montenegro]], [[Serbia]], [[Bulgaria]], and [[Greece]] fueled the rise of Albanian [[nationalism]]. The first postwar treaty, the abortive [[Treaty of San Stefano]] signed on [[March 3]], 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. [[Austria-Hungary]] and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] blocked the arrangement because it awarded [[Russia]] a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in [[Berlin]].

The [[Treaty of San Stefano]] triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in [[Constantinople]]--including [[Abdyl Frashëri]], the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On [[June 10]], 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly [[Muslim]] religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman [[vilayet]]s, met in the [[Kosovo]] city of [[Prizren]]. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the [[Congress of Berlin]], which was called to settle the unresolved problems of [[Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878|Turkish War]], demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.

The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and [[Germany]]'s [[Otto von Bismarck]] even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and [[Podgorica]] and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible "loss" of [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] to Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in [[Gusinje]], [[Plav]], [[Shkodër]], [[Prizren]], [[Prevesa]], and [[Janina]]. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."

In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The [[Sublime Porte]], in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of [[Ulcinj]]. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only [[Thessaly]] and the district of [[Arta]].

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under [[Dervish Turgut Pasha]] to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.

Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the [[Latin]], [[Cyrillic]], and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- [[Gjirokastër]], [[Berat]], and [[Vlorë]]--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek.

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, [[Sami Frashëri]] founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, [[Catholic]], and Orthodox Albanians. [[Naim Frashëri]], the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in [[Bulgaria]], [[Egypt]], Italy, Romania, and the [[United States]] supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.

The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented [[Abdul Hamid II|Sultan Abdül Hamid II]] from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the League of Prizren in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian terrorists assassinated [[Korçë]]'s [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] metropolitan.

In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and [[Macedonia (region)|Macedonia]] escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of [[Abdul Hamid II|Abdül Hamid II]] in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the ''bastinado'', or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.

The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.

==1911 Highlanders Uprising==
The rise of Albanian nationalism first sparked with the Battle of Deçiq on April 6, [[1911]], which was located in the town of [[Tuzi]], [[Malësi e Madhe]]. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians led by [[Ded Gjo Luli]], against the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Turgut Pasha. The long and bloody battle was victorious toward the Albanians. During the battle, the Albanian Flag was raised for the first time since [[Gjergj Kastrioti]] in 1443. As a result to the victory of this battle, the Albanians found a sense of confidence and nationalism that led to other events toward Independence, which eventually came about on November 28, [[1912]]. Today, many songs and stories of the Albanians are passed in honor of the important battle that led to the Independence of Albania.

==The Balkan Wars and creation of independent Albania==
The [[First Balkan War]], however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded [[Shkodër]] with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the [[Ottoman Turks]].

An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and [[Christian]] leaders meeting in [[Vlorë]] in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding [[Treaty of London, 1913|Treaty of London]] of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by [[Aubrey Herbert]], [[Member of Parliament|MP]], a passionate advocate of their cause.

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir [[Edward Grey]], the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1913|Treaty of Bucharest]] established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Shkodër (or as they called it Skadar) after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and [[Serbs]] since the [[Middle Ages]], but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider [[Kosovo]] their [[Holy Land]]. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the [[7th century]], that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, [[Stefan Dusan]], established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the [[Serbian Orthodox Church]], are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the [[Battle of Kosovo|battle]] against the Ottoman Turks, took place at [[Kosovo Polje]] in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the [[ancient Illyria]]ns, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century. See also [[Kosovo population data-points]].

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of [[Essad Pasha|Essad Pasha Toptani]], who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.

The Albanians offered the throne to [[Aubrey Herbert]], but he was dissuaded from accepting by the British [[prime minister]], [[Herbert Asquith]]. The Great Powers chose instead [[William of Albania|Prince Wilhelm]] of Wied, a thirty-five-year-old German army captain, to head the new [[Principality of Albania]]. In March 1914, he moved into a Durrës building hastily converted into a palace.

After independence local power struggles, foreign provocations, miserable economic conditions, and modest attempts at social and religious reform fueled Albanian uprisings aimed at the prince and the control commission. Ottoman propaganda, which appealed to uneducated peasants loyal to [[Islam]] and Islamic spiritual leaders, attacked the Albanian regime as a puppet of the large landowners and Europe's Christian powers. Greece, dissatisfied that the Great Powers did not award it southern Albania, also encouraged uprisings against the Albanian government, and armed Greek bands carried out atrocities against Albanian villagers. Italy plotted with Esad Pasha to overthrow the new prince. Montenegro and Serbia plotted with the northern tribesmen. For their part, the Great Powers gave Prince Wilhelm, who was unversed in Albanian affairs, intrigue, or diplomacy, little moral or material backing. A general insurrection in the summer of 1914 stripped the prince of control except in Durrës and Vlorë.

==World War I and its effects on Albania==
Political chaos engulfed Albania after the outbreak of World War I. Surrounded by insurgents in Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September [[1914]], just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to Turkey as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Other Albanians became little more than agents of Italy and Serbia. Still others, including many beys and clan chiefs, recognized no superior authority. In late 1914, Greece occupied southern Albania, including [[Korçë]] and [[Gjirokastër]]. Italy occupied [[Vlorë]], and Serbia and Montenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until a [[Central Powers]] offensive scattered the Serbian army, which was evacuated by the French to [[Thessaloniki]]. [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.

Under the secret [[Treaty of London, 1915|Treaty of London]] signed in April [[1915]], [[Triple Entente]] powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia and Montenegro were promised much of northern Albania, and Greece was promised much of the country's southern half. The treaty left a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers. In September 1918, Entente forces broke through the Central Powers' lines north of Thessaloniki, and within days Austro-Hungarian forces began to withdraw from Albania. When the war ended on [[November 11]], [[1918]], Italy's army had occupied most of Albania; Serbia held much of the country's northern mountains; Greece occupied a sliver of land within Albania's 1913 borders; and French forces occupied Korçë and Shkodër as well as other regions with sizable Albanian populations such as [[Kosovo]], which were later handed over to [[Serbia]].

== After WWII ==
{{Refimprove|date=June 2008}}
The [[Albanian communists]] state supported<ref>The Illyrians John Wilkes,ISBN-10: 0631198075,1996,Page 10,"... Since the Second World War archaeological exploration has been impelled by a national policy to establish the link between modern Albanians and ancient Illyrians.</ref> the notion that Albanians were the ancestors of [[Illyrians]] even when the evidence are so scanty and nothing has been proven (See [[Origin of the Albanians]]) . The state also imposed with lists of supposed<ref>ISBN 960-210-279-9 Miranda Vickers, The Albanians Chapter 9. "Albania Isolates itself" page 196 ,From time to time official lists were published with pagan, so-called Illyrian or freshly minted names considered appropriate for the new breed of revolutionary Albanians.(see also Also Logoreci "the Albanians" page 157.</ref> Illyrian names to the populace to establish this notion.

Also the [[national myth]] that Albanians are ancestors of the [[Pelasgians]] is also popular and had reached the level of a contemporary<ref>N. Malcolm, ''Myth of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements'', in: Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'' (2002), 76ff.</ref> [[urban legend]] more powerful then that of the Illyrians. This belief is used in supporting [[irredentism]] and [[revanchism]].

==References==
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
*''[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html Library of Congress Country Study] of Albania''
* {{cite book |last=Mazower |first=Mark |authorlink=Mark Mazower |title=The Balkans: A Short History |series=Modern Library Chronicles |year=2000 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-679-64087-8 }}
* Schwandner-Sievers and Fischer (eds.), ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', Indiana University Press (2002), ISBN 0253215706.

==See also==
[http://www.media.srbija.sr.gov.yu/medeng/documents/albanian_terrorism_crime1.pdf| Albanian terorisme ]
*[[League of Prizren]]

{{National Awakening in the Balkans}}
{{Albania topics}}

[[Category:History of Albania]]
[[Category:History of Kosovo]]
[[Category:Nationalism|Albania]]

Qazim Koculi

2008-07-22T07:01:23Z

ABXDataLogic:

'''Qazim Koculi''' ([[1887]] - [[January 2]], [[1943]]) was an [[Albanians|Albanian]] politician of the early 20th century and one-day acting [[Prime Minister of Albania|Prime Minister]] of [[Albania]]. He was also a prominent veteran of the [[Vlora War]].

Koculi received his primary education in Vlora and later moved to [[Janina]], [[Greece]] to attent the Zosimea Gymnasium. He accomplished his higher education at the Military Higher Academy in [[Istanbul]], graduating as a Second Lieutenant. He was appointed to the Ottoman Navy as a First Lieutenant.

==See also==
*[[History of Albania]]
[[Category:Albanian politicians|Koculi, Qazim]]
[[Category:Prime Ministers of Albania|Koculi, Qazim]]

{{start box}}
{{succession box | before = [[Pandeli Evangjeli]]| title = [[Prime Minister of Albania]] (acting) |years=[[December 6]], [[1921]]–[[December 7]], [[1921]]| after = [[Hasan Prishtina]]}}
{{end box}}
{{AlbanianPMs}}
{{Albania-bio-stub}}