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The
earliest settlers of Albania
The question of the origin of the Albanians is still
a matter of controversy among the ethnologists. A great
many theories have been propounded in solution of the
problem relative to the place from which the original
settlers of Albania proceeded to their present home.
The existence of another Albania in the Caucasus, the
mystery in which the derivation of the name "Albania"
is enshrouded, and which name, on the other hand, is
unknown to her people, and the fact that history and
legend afford no record of the arrival of the Albanians
in the Balkan Peninsula, have rendered the question
of their origin a particularly difficult one.
But, however that may be, it is generally recognized
today that the Albanians are the most ancient race in
southesatern Europe. All indications point to the fact
that they are descendants of the earliest Aryan immigrants
who were represented in historical times by the kindred
Illyrians, Macedonians and Epirots. According to the
opinion of most ethnologists and linguists, the Illyrians
formed the core of pre-Hellenic, Tyrrhenopelasgian population,
which inhabited the southern portion of the Peninsula
and extended its limits to Thrace and Italy. The Illyrians
were also Pelasgians, but in a wider sense. Moreover
it is believed that of these cognate races, which are
described by the ancient Greek writers as "barbarous"
and "non-Hellenic," the Illyrians were the progenitors
of the Ghegs, or Northern Albanians, and the Epirots
the progenitors of the Tosks, or Southern Albanians.
This general opinion is borne out the statement of Strabo
that the Via Egnatia or ®gitana, which he describes
as forming the boundary between the Illyrians and the
Epirots, practically corresponds with the course of
river Shkumbini, which now seperates the Ghegs from
the Tosks. The same geographer states that Epirots were
also called Pelasgians. The Pelasgian Zeus, whose memory
survives even today in the appellation of God as "Zot"
by the modern Albanians, was worshiped at Dodona, where
the most famous oracle of ancient times was situated.
According to Herodotus the neighborhood of the sanctuary
was called Pelasgia.
These findings of the ethnologists are, moreover, strenghthened
by the unbroken traditions of the natives, who regard
themselves, and with pride as the descendants of the
aboriginal settlers of the Balkan Peninsula. They, therefore,
they think have the best claims on it. It is also on
the strength of these traditions that the Albanian looks
upon the other Balkan nationalities as mere intruders
who have expropriated him of much that was properly
his own. Hence the constsant border warfare which has
gone on for centuries between the Albanian and his neighbors.
The Albanian Language
There is, however, a very striking feature in this whole
matter: that the Albanian language affords the only
available means for a rational explanation of the meaning
of the names of the ancient Greek gods as well as the
rest of the mythological creations, so as exactly to
correspond with the characteristics attributed to these
deitis by the men of those times. The explanations are
so convincing as to confirm the opinion that the ancient
Greek mythology had been borrowed, in its entirety,
from the Illyrian-Pelasgians. As it was mentioned before,
Zeus survives as "Zot" in the Albanian language. The
invocation of his name is the common form of oath among
the modern Albanians. Athena ( the Latin Minerva), the
goddess of wisdom as expressed in speech, would evidently
owe its derivation to the Albanian "E Thena," which
simply means "speech." Thetis, the goddess of waters
and seas, would seem to be but Albanian "Det" which
means "sea." It would be interesting to note that the
word "Ulysses,"whether in its Latin or Greek form "Odysseus,"
means "traveler" in the Albanian language, according
as the word "udhe," which stands for "route" and "travel,"
is written with "d" or "l," both forms being in use
in Albania. Such examples may be supplied ad libitum.
No such facility is, however, afforded by the ancient
Greek language, unless the explanation be a forced one
and distorted one; but in many instances even such forced
and distorted one is not available at all.
In addition, we should not forget the fact that Zeus
was a Pelasgian god, par excellence , his original place
of worship being Dodona. It is estimated that of the
actual stock of the Albanian language, more than one
third is of undisputed Ilyrian origin, and the rest
are Illyrian-Pelasgian, ancient Greek and Latin, with
a small admixture of Slavic, Italian (dating from the
Venetian occupation of the seaboard), Turkish and some
Celtic words, too.
Shortly after the defeat of Turkey by the Balkan allies,
a conference of ambassadors of the Great Powers (Britain,
Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Italy)
convened in London in December 1912 to settle the
outstanding issues raised by the conflict. With support
given to the Albanians by Austria-Hungary and Italy,
the conference agreed to create an independent state
of Albania. But, in drawing the borders of the new
state, owing to strong pressure from Albania's neighbours,
the Great Powers largely ignored demographic realities
and ceded the vast region of Kosova to Serbia, while,
in the south, Greece was given the greater part of
,ameria, a part of the old region of Epirus centred
on the Thamis River. Many observers doubted whether
the new state would be viable with about one-half
of Albanian lands and population left outside its
borders, especially since these lands were the most
productive in food grains and livestock. On the other
hand, a small community of about 35,000 ethnic Greeks
was included within Albania's borders. (However, Greece,
which counted all Albanians of the Orthodox faith--20
percent of the population--as Greeks, claimed that
the number of ethnic Greeks was considerably larger.)
Thereafter, Kosova and the ,ameria remained troublesome
issues in Albanian-Greek and Albanian-Yugoslav relations.
The Great Powers also appointed a German prince, Wilhelm
zu Wied, as ruler of Albania. Wilhelm arrived in Albania
in March 1914, but his unfamiliarity with Albania
and its problems, compounded by complications arising
from the outbreak of World War I, led him to depart
from Albania six months later. The war plunged the
country into a new crisis, as the armies of Austria-Hungary,
France, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia invaded
and occupied it. Left without any political leadership
or authority, the country was in chaos, and its very
fate hung in the balance. At the Paris Peace Conference
after the war, the extinction of Albania was averted
largely through the efforts of U.S. President Woodrow
Wilson, who vetoed a plan by Britain, France, and
Italy to partition Albania among its neighbours. A
national congress, held in Lushnje in January 1920,
laid the foundations of a new government. In December
of that year Albania, this time with the help of Britain,
gained admission to the League of Nations, thereby
winning for the first time international recognition
as a sovereign nation and state.
Bishop Noli and King Zog
At the start of the 1920s, Albanian society was divided
by two apparently irreconcilable forces. One, made
up mainly of deeply conservative landowning beys and
tribal bajraktars who were tied to the Ottoman and
feudal past, was led by Ahmed Bey Zogu, a chieftain
from the Mat region of north-central Albania. The
other, made up of liberal intellectuals, democratic
politicians, and progressive merchants who looked
to the West and wanted to modernize and Westernize
Albania, was led by Fan S. Noli, an American-educated
bishop of the Orthodox church. In the event, this
East-West polarization of Albanian society was of
such magnitude and complexity that neither leader
could master and overcome it. In the unusually open
and free political, social, and cultural climate that
prevailed in Albania between 1920 and 1924, the liberal
forces gathered strength, and, by mid-1924, a popular
revolt forced Zogu to flee to Yugoslavia. Installed
as prime minister of the new government in June 1924,
Noli set out to build a Western-style democracy in
Albania, and toward that end he announced a radical
program of land reform and modernization. But his
vacillation in carrying out the program, coupled with
a depleted state treasury and a failure to obtain
international recognition for his revolutionary, left-of-centre
government, quickly alienated most of Noli's supporters,
and six months later he was overthrown by an armed
assault led by Zogu and aided by Yugoslavia. Zogu
began his 14-year reign in Albania--first as president
(1925-28), then as King Zog I (1928-39)--in a country
rife with political and social instability. Greatly
in need of foreign aid and credit in order to stabilize
the country, Zog signed a number of accords with Italy.
These provided transitory financial relief to Albania,
but they effected no basic change in its economy,
especially under the conditions of the Great Depression
of the 1930s. Italy, on the other hand, viewed Albania
primarily as a bridgehead for military expansion into
the Balkans. On April 7, 1939, Italy invaded and shortly
after occupied the country. King Zog fled to Greece.
The social base of Zog's power was a coalition of
southern beys and northern bajraktars. With the support
of this coalition--plus a vast Oriental bureaucracy,
an efficient police force, and Italian money--King
Zog brought a large measure of stability to Albania.
He extended the authority of the government to the
highlands, reduced the brigandage that had formerly
plagued the country, laid the foundations of a modern
educational system, and took a few steps to Westernize
Albanian social life. On balance, however, his achievements
were outweighed by his failures. Although formally
a constitutional monarch, in reality Zog was a dictator,
and Albania under him experienced the fragile stability
of a dictatorship. Zog failed to resolve Albania's
fundamental problem, that of land reform, leaving
the peasantry as impoverished as before. In order
to stave off famine, the government had to import
food grains annually, but, even so, thousands of people
migrated abroad in search of a better life. Moreover,
Zog denied democratic freedoms to Albanians and created
conditions that spawned periodic revolts against his
regime, alienated most of the educated class, fomented
labour unrest, and led to the formation of the first
communist groups in the country.
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