Establishing the Albanian border

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Current borders and a hypothetical Greater Albania

The demarcation or definition of the Albanian border took place after Albania declared its independence on November 28, 1912 and this was recognized by the great powers at the ambassadors' conference in London in December of the same year . In the London Treaty of May 30, 1913, the exact definition of the border of the new state was assigned to an international commission made up of representatives from Germany , Austria-Hungary , Great Britain , France , Russia and Italy . As a result of the border definition, the settlement area of ​​the Albanians was divided into several states, so that around half of the Albanian population and the greater part of the land area remained outside the new Albanian state - in the Kingdom of Serbia , Kingdom of Montenegro and in the Kingdom of Greece - which is why Albanians too speak of the partition of Albania ( Albanian Copëtimi i Shqipërisë ), but this affects a longer period of time.  

initial situation

The Albanian settlement area had been completely part of the Ottoman Empire since the early 16th century , but was divided between the four vilayets Shkodra , Ioannina , Manastır and Kosovo . In the Berlin Congress as a result of the Russo-Ottoman War (1877–1878) , the Ottomans had to cede Albanian-settled areas to neighboring states for the first time. Despite resistance from the Albanians - for example through the establishment of the League of Prizren and Armed Violence - their demands were not very successful and found no international recognition: "Albania is only a geographical term on the map." ( Otto von Bismarck )

In Albania a kind of independence movement, the so-called Rilindja , arose . Most of the mostly Sunni Albanians remained loyal to the Sultan in Constantinople .

During the First Balkan War , Montenegrin and later Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek troops occupied Ottoman territories on October 8, 1912 . The Turkish military was unable to defend them adequately. In order to prevent the Albanian people from being divided among their neighboring states, representatives from all Albanian-settled areas proclaimed independence in Vlora on November 28, 1912 .

Recognition and setting limits

Proposals for the borders of Albania from France and Russia (brown) and the provisional Albanian government (beige) as well as the current territory of the Republic of Albania (orange)

At the conference in London Austria-Hungary in particular advocated the creation of an Albanian state in order to prevent Serbia from becoming too big and powerful or even gaining access to the Adriatic Sea . Italy also campaigned for an Albanian state, which they later wanted to use as a bridgehead for further expansion of power in the Adriatic region. The territorial claims of the provisional government of Albania went far beyond today's state borders and encompassed large areas in which, in addition to Albanians, other peoples were also represented to a significant extent. France and Russia, allies of Serbia, only wanted to concede a rump state in central Albania from Vlora to Mirdita without the metropolises of Shkodra and Korça . The demands of the neighboring states went even further.

Signing of the London Treaty on May 30, 1913

Despite the decisions in the London Treaty of May 30, 1913 on the independence and form of government of Albania, the borders were not yet fixed. Austria-Hungary and Russia continued to argue, bargaining for practically every village. With regard to Ioannina and the predominantly Albanian cities of Gjakova and Debar, as well as the western part of Kosovo , the Austrians could not prevail. They had more success with Shkodra and Gjirokastra and on August 1, 1913 with Korça, which was the longest controversial. The exact demarcation in the area was left to an international commission, which made slow progress in its work.

"They took the cities from us and left us the mountains, they took Dibra from us and left the mountains, they took Gjakova from us and left the mountains, so we are like a body without a head."

- Luigj Gurakuqi

The boundary drawing commissions should, following the text of the London Treaty, determine the boundary according to ethnographic criteria. The commission was supposed to use the language spoken at home to determine which villages were populated by Greek and which by Albanian. In the south in particular, large areas of the northern Epirus  remained occupied by Greek troops and irregulars for a long time. There have been considerable attempts to influence the commissioners in their work. In addition to nationalistic, religious and political interests across ethnic boundaries were also identified. The work of the Commission in the South proved difficult, so in the end it stuck to the line proposed at the London Conference. To appease the Greek nationalists, a certain autonomy was negotiated in the Corfu Protocol . A representative of the commission reports:

“During the night the border commission reached a village where a Greek-speaking man was waiting for them and where they heard the bells of a church that appeared to be Orthodox. No doubt they would hold such uncontested evidence to be true. Unfortunately, however, a kavasis (armed guard) came into the village and assured the commission that there is neither a Greek foot nor a church in the village. It was discovered that the Greeks had hurriedly set a bell on the top of a tree and struck it hard to crush the European representatives. "

- Captain Leveson Gower

After the First World War, the division of Albania was again up for discussion. As a result of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 , the Boundary Drawing Commission was revived to complete and review the work. Basically, the 1913 borders were confirmed at another ambassadorial conference on November 9, 1921. However, there were certain minor corrections southeast of Podgorica , regarding Gora , the valley of the Black Drin  between Struga  and Debar and regarding Lin .

In 1922 the border drawing commission completed its field work. On December 6, 1922, a decision was made regarding the Sveti Naum monastery  on Lake Ohrid , which had not been clearly allocated. It was not until January 27, 1925, that the boundaries were recorded by all parties involved in Florence  .

Later changes

Assignment of territory

The Sveti Naum monastery in a photo from the first half of the 1930s

On July 28, 1925, Albania and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia agreed  on border adjustments, with the two disputed areas, the monastery of Sveti Naum and a mountain range near Vermosh , in particular being ceded to Yugoslavia . The new Prime Minister Ahmet Zogu had put himself to power six months earlier with Yugoslav support and wanted to finally settle the border quarrels, although the Yugoslav army had never withdrawn from Sveti Naum. In return, Albania received a village called Pëshkopia and other small areas.

Second World War

From October 28, 1940, Italy attacked Greece from Albania. In the Greco-Italian War  , the less successful Italians soon had to retreat behind the Albanian-Greek border.

In the further course of the Second World War, after the German Wehrmacht  had occupied Yugoslavia and Greece  in the Balkan campaign (1941) , most of Kosovo as well as areas in western Macedonia and Montenegro with Albanian majority were united with Albania as the Italian occupation zone. Albania, occupied by Italy since 1939 , was expanded from 28,748 to 42,469 square kilometers and the population rose from 1,122,000 to 1,756,000 people. Albania regained its independence under German rule (1943–1944). The victorious communist partisans under Enver Hoxha , who had worked closely with and allied with Yugoslav communists, made no claims to areas outside the old borders when they proclaimed the People's Socialist Republic of Albania in 1944 . Corresponding agreements had already been made in the Mukja Agreement in the summer of 1943  . Months later, the Albanians in Yugoslavia were assured a certain amount of self-determination for the post-war period, but this was not implemented. The reintegration of Kosovo into Yugoslavia took place at gunpoint.

consequences

The 1913 definition of the border meant that the Albanians were distributed among several national states and about half of the Albanians lived outside the Albanian state. “More than half of their settlement area remained outside their state.” ( Christine von Kohl ) The Albanian population suffered from the political interests of the great powers. The population in the Albanian mountains and malaria-infested coastal plains, for example, was cut off from supplies from fertile Kosovo. After the First World War, around 12,000 Albanians were killed in Kosovo; around 100,000 to 150,000 Albanians and 40,000 Turks had to leave the province as a result.

The Çamen in northern Greece, who had to emigrate after the Second World War, had a similar experience . Until the 1990s, mutual minorities on both sides of the border led to ongoing tensions between Albania and Greece. The state of war between Greece and Albania was not formally ended until 1987.

Oliver Jens Schmitt  sees the diplomatic and historical origins of the Kosovo conflict in the demarcation of that time . On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that in the formerly Ottoman region, which was characterized by ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, it was impossible to find a solution that was acceptable to all sides when creating large, culturally homogeneous states.

See also

Remarks

  1. ↑ Other sources mention July 30, 1025, for example Chronology of the Serbian - Albanian relationssjips from the Berlin Congress to the March Pogrom 2004. In: Serbia world news. February 19, 2015, accessed May 10, 2017 .
  2. ↑ It was not the city of Peshkopia , but a village about four kilometers southeast of the monastery.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christine von Kohl: Albania (=  Beck's series (countries) . No. 872 ). CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-39872-3 , p. 58 .
  2. ↑ a b Peter Bartl: Albania. From the Middle Ages to the present (=  Eastern and Southeastern Europe ). Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 1995, ISBN 3-7917-1451-1 , The regulation of the Albanian border, p. 137 ff .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Oliver Jens Schmitt : The Albanians. A story between East and West (=  Beck'sche series . No. 6031 ). CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63031-6 , p. 149 ff .
  4. ↑ Thomas Kacza: Between Feudalism and Stalinism. Albanian history of the 19th and 20th centuries . Trafo, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89626-611-8 , p. 62 .
  5. ↑ a b Stark Draper: The conceptualization of an Albanian nation . In: Ethnic and Racial Studies . Volume 20, No. January 1 , 1997 ( wisc.edu [PDF; accessed May 10, 2017]).
  6. ↑ a b Miranda Vickers: The Albanians. A Modern History . IB Tauris, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-78076-695-9 .
  7. ↑ Peter Bartl: Albania. From the Middle Ages to the present (=  Eastern and Southeastern Europe ). Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 1995, ISBN 3-7917-1451-1 , The Albanian Question at the Paris Peace Conference (1919), p. 190 .
  8. ^ A b Owen Pearson: Albania and King Zog: Independence, Republic And Monarchy 1908-1939 . In: Albania in the Twentieth Century, a History . tape I . IBTauris, London 2004, ISBN 1-84511-013-7 .
  9. ^ Geoffrey Malcolm Gathorne-Hardy: A Short History of International Affairs: 1920 to 1939 . Ed .: Royal Institute of International Affairs. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1950, pp. 166 f .
  10. ↑ Peter Bartl: Albania. From the Middle Ages to the present (=  Eastern and Southeastern Europe ). Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 1995, ISBN 3-7917-1451-1 , Reorganization in the Balkans (1941), p. 228 f .
  11. ↑ Oliver Jens Schmitt: The Albanians. A story between East and West (=  Beck'sche series . No. 6031 ). CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63031-6 , The short union: The Axis Powers and "Greater Albania" in World War II, p. 159 ff .
  12. ↑ a b c Robert Pichler: Serbs and Albanians in the 20th century . In: Bernhard Chiari , Agilolf Keßelring (Ed.): Kosovo (=  guide to history ). 3. Edition. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-75665-7 , p. 61-63 .
  13. ↑ Christine von Kohl: Albania (=  Beck's series (countries) . No. 872 ). CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-39872-3 , A people is divided, p. 72 ff .
  14. ^ Klaus-Detlev Grothusen : Foreign Policy . In: Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Hrsg.): Albanien (=  Südosteuropa-Handbuch ). tape VII . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-525-36207-2 , pp. 142 .
  15. ↑ Jens Reuter, Konrad Clewing: The Kosovo conflict: causes, course, perspectives . Wieser, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-85129-329-0 .