- Government and society
- Cultural life
By the mid-19th century Turkey was in the throes of the “Eastern Question,” as the peoples of the Balkans, including Albanians, sought to realize their national aspirations. To defend and promote their national interests, Albanians met in Prizren, a town in Kosovo, in 1878 and founded the Albanian League. The league had two main goals, one political and the other cultural. First, it strove (unsuccessfully) to unify all Albanian territories—at the time divided among the four vilayets, or provinces, of Kosovo, Shkodër, Monastir, and Janina—into one autonomous state within the framework of the Ottoman Empire. Second, it spearheaded a movement to develop Albanian language, literature, education, and culture. In 1908, in line with the second program, Albanian leaders met in the town of Monastir (now Bitola, Maced.) and adopted a national alphabet. Based mostly on the Latin script, this supplanted several other alphabets, including Arabic and Greek, that were in use until then.
The Albanian League was suppressed by the Turks in 1881, in part because they were alarmed by its strong nationalistic orientation. By then, however, the league had become a powerful symbol of Albania’s national awakening, and its ideas and objectives fueled the drive that culminated later in national independence.
When the Young Turks, who seized power in Istanbul in 1908, ignored their commitments to Albanians to institute democratic reforms and to grant autonomy, Albanians embarked on an armed struggle, which at the end of three years (1910–12) forced the Turks to agree, in effect, to grant their demands. Alarmed at the prospect of Albanian autonomy, Albania’s Balkan neighbours, who had already made plans to partition the region, declared war on Turkey in October 1912, and Greek, Serbian, and Montenegrin armies advanced into Albanian territories. To prevent the annihilation of the country, Albanian national delegates met at a congress in Vlorë. They were led by Ismail Qemal, an Albanian who had held several high positions in the Ottoman government. On November 28, 1912, the congress issued the Vlorë proclamation, which declared Albania’s independence.
Creating the new state
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, under strong pressure from Albania’s neighbours, the great powers largely ignored demographic realities and ceded the vast region of Kosovo to Serbia, while in the south Greece was given the greater part of Çamëria, a part of the old region of Epirus centred on the Thíamis 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, Kosovo and the Greek minority 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. Pres. 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.
|Official name||Republika e Shqipërisë (Republic of Albania)|
|Form of government||unitary multiparty republic with one legislative house (Assembly )|
|Head of state||President: Bujar Nishani|
|Head of government||Prime Minister: Edi Rama|
|Monetary unit||lek (L)|
|Population||(2013 est.) 2,774,000|
|Total area (sq mi)||11,082|
|Total area (sq km)||28,703|
|Urban-rural population||Urban: (2011) 53.7%|
Rural: (2011) 46.3%
|Life expectancy at birth||Male: (2012) 75 years|
Female: (2012) 80.5 years
|Literacy: percentage of population age 15 and over literate||Male: (2006) 99.2%|
Female: (2006) 98.3%
|GNI per capita (U.S.$)||(2012) 4,090|