Principality of Albania
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Principality of Albania Principata e Shqipërisë (Albanian) | |||||||||
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1914–1925 1916–1918: Government-in-exile | |||||||||
Flag[1]
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Motto: Atdheu mbi të gjitha "Homeland above all" | |||||||||
Anthem: Himni i Flamurit "Hymn to the Flag" | |||||||||
Capital | Durrës (1914–1920)
Lushnje (1920)
Wilhelm I[a] | ||||||||
Ahmet Zogu | |||||||||
Legislature | Interwar Period | ||||||||
• Established | 21 February 1914 | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 31 January 1925 | ||||||||
Area | |||||||||
1916 | 30,145 km2 (11,639 sq mi) | ||||||||
Population | |||||||||
• 1916 | Approx 979,000[2] | ||||||||
Currency | None until 1925 ( Albanian Lek)[3] | ||||||||
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a. ^ Wilhelm left in exile after 6 months, but his reign officially came to an end only on 31 January 1925, when Albania was declared a republic. He never formally abdicated. |
History of Albania |
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Timeline |
The Principality of Albania (Albanian: Principata e Shqipërisë) was a short-lived monarchy in Albania, headed by Wilhelm, Prince of Albania, that lasted from the Treaty of London of 1913 which ended the First Balkan War, through the invasions of Albania during World War I and the subsequent disputes over Albanian independence during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, until 1925, when the monarchy was abolished and the Albanian Republic declared.
History
Albania had been under
Prince Wilhelm arrived in Albania at his provisional capital of
World War I
World War I interrupted all government activities in Albania, and the country was split into a number of regional governments. 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 the Ottoman Empire as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed, hence many beys and clan chiefs recognized no superior authority. In late October 1914, Greek forces entered Albania in the Protocol of Corfu's recognized Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus. 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. Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.[citation needed]
Under the secret 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 was to leave a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers, thus meaning it would have no foreign policy. In September 1918, the 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, remained part of Serbia.
Re-emergence
Albania's political confusion continued in the wake of World War I. The country lacked a single recognized government, and Albanians feared, with justification, that Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece would succeed in extinguishing Albania's independence and carve up the country. Italian forces controlled Albanian political activity in the areas they occupied. The Serbs, who largely dictated Yugoslavia's foreign policy, strove to take over northern Albania, and the Greeks sought to control southern Albania.
A delegation sent by a postwar
In January 1920, at the
Members of a second
One month later, in March 1920, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson intervened to block the Paris agreement. The United States underscored its support for Albania's independence by recognizing an official Albanian representative to Washington, and on December 17, 1920, the League of Nations recognized Albania's sovereignty by admitting it as a full member. The country's borders, however, remained unsettled.
Albania's new government campaigned to end Italy's occupation of the country and encouraged peasants to harass Italian forces. In September 1920, after the
Mirdita Republic
Yugoslavia continued to pursue a predatory policy toward Albania, and after Albanian tribesmen clashed with Yugoslav forces occupying the northern part of the country, Yugoslav troops escalated their campaign in the area. Belgrade then backed a disgruntled
Finally, in November 1921, Yugoslav troops
Political situation
Interwar Albanian governments appeared and disappeared in rapid succession. Between July and December 1921 alone, the premiership changed hands five times.
Congress of Lushnjë
The Congress of Lushnjë (Albanian: Kongresi i Lushnjës) was held in five sessions on January 27-January 31, 1920, in
The High Council was made up of Luigj Bumçi, Aqif Pashë Elbasani, Abdi Toptani, and Dr. Mihal Turtulli who would perform the function of the leaders of the new Albanian state, whereas the National Council would function as the Parliament.
The new government that was created was:
Sulejman Delvina - Prime minister
Ali Riza Kolonja - Minister of War
Eshref Frashëri - General Director of World Affairs
Idhomen Kosturi
Political parties
Albania's first political parties emerged only after World War I. Even more than in other parts of the
The country's biggest landowner,
The Popular Party's head, Xhafer Ypi, formed a government in December 1921 with Noli as foreign minister and Zogu as internal affairs minister, but Noli resigned soon after Zogu resorted to repression in an attempt to disarm the lowland Albanians despite the fact that bearing arms was a traditional custom.
Zogu government
When the government's enemies attacked Tirana in early 1922, Zogu stayed in the capital and, with the support of the British ambassador, repulsed the assault. He took over the premiership later in the year and turned his back on the Popular Party by announcing his engagement to the daughter of the Progressive Party leader, Shefqet Verlaci.
Zogu's protégés organized themselves into the Government Party. Noli and other Western-oriented leaders formed the Opposition Party of Democrats, which attracted all of Zogu's many personal enemies, ideological opponents, and people left unrewarded by his political machine. Ideologically, the Democrats included a broad sweep of people who advocated everything from conservative Islam to Noli's dreams of rapid modernization.
Opposition to Zogu was formidable[citation needed]. Orthodox peasants in Albania's southern lowlands loathed Zogu[citation needed] because he supported the Muslim landowners' efforts to block land reform; Shkodër's citizens felt shortchanged because their city did not become Albania's capital, and nationalists were dissatisfied because Zogu's government did not press Albania's claims to Kosovo or speak up more energetically for the rights of the ethnic Albanian minorities in former Yugoslavia (Kosovo, southern Serbia and Vardar Macedonia) and Greece.
Zogu's party handily won elections for a National Assembly in early 1924[citation needed]. Zogu soon stepped aside, however, handing over the premiership to Verlaci in the wake of a financial scandal[citation needed] and an assassination attempt by a young radical that left Zogu wounded. The opposition withdrew from the assembly after the leader of a radical youth organization, Avni Rustemi, was murdered in the street outside the parliament building.
Noli's government
Noli's supporters blamed the murder on Zogu's Mati clansmen, who continued to practice blood vengeance. After the walkout, discontent mounted, and in June 1924 a peasant-backed insurgency had won control of Tirana. Noli became prime minister, and Zogu fled to Yugoslavia.
Fan Noli, an idealist, rejected demands for new elections on the grounds that Albania needed a "paternal" government. In a manifesto describing his government's program, Noli called for abolishing feudalism, resisting Italian domination, and establishing a Western-style constitutional government. Scaling back the bureaucracy, strengthening local government, assisting peasants, throwing Albania open to foreign investment, and improving the country's bleak transportation, public health, and education facilities filled out the Noli government's overly ambitious agenda. Noli encountered resistance to his program from people who had helped him oust Zogu, and he never attracted the foreign aid necessary to carry out his reform plans. Noli criticized the League of Nations for failing to settle the threat facing Albania on its land borders.
Under Fan Noli, the government set up a special tribunal that passed death sentences, in absentia, on Zogu, Verlaci, and others and confiscated their property. In Yugoslavia Zogu recruited a mercenary army, and Belgrade furnished the Albanian leader with weapons, about 1,000 Yugoslav army regulars, and Russian White émigrés to mount an invasion that the Serbs hoped would bring them disputed areas along the border. After Noli's regime decided to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, a bitter enemy of the Serbian ruling family, Belgrade began making wild allegations that the Albanian regime was about to embrace Bolshevism. On December 13, 1924, Zogu's Yugoslav-backed army crossed into Albanian territory. By Christmas Eve, Zogu had reclaimed the capital, and Noli and his government had fled to Italy. But his government lasted just six months, and
Economy
Upon termination of Albania from Turkey in 1912, as in all other fields, the customs administration continued its operation under legislation approved specifically for the procedure. With the new laws were issued for the operation of customs duty was 11% of the value of goods imported and 1% on the value of those exported. At the time of the interim government of
Social conditions
Extraordinarily undeveloped, the Albania that emerged after World War I was home to something fewer than a million people divided into three major religious groups and two distinct classes: those people who owned land and claimed semifeudal privileges and those who did not. The landowners had always held the principal ruling posts in the country's central and southern regions, but many of them were steeped in the same conservatism that brought decay to the Ottoman Empire. The landowning elite expected that they would continue to enjoy precedence, but the country's peasants were beginning to dispute the landed aristocracy's control.
In northern Albania, the government directly controlled only Shkodër and its environs. The highland clans were suspicious of a constitutional government claiming to legislate in the interests of the country as a whole, and the Roman Catholic Church became the principal link between Tirana and the tribesmen despite the Muslim religious affiliation of most of the population. In many instances, administrative communications were addressed to priests for circulation among their parishioners.
Religion
During this period Albanian religions got independence. The
See also
- Kingdom of Albania (1928–39)
- List of Albanian monarchs
References
Bibliography
- Albania: Principality, 1914
- Brahaj, Jaho (2007). Flamuri i Kombit Shqiptar: origjina, lashtësia. Enti Botues "Gjergj Fishta". ISBN 9789994338849.
Footnotes
- ^ Brahaj 2007, p. 129
- ^ "Population of Albania from 1800 to 2020". Statista. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
- ^ "Albania is a country without a currency, adhering to a gold standard for the fixation of commercial values. Before the war the Turkish piaster was in full circulation, but following the military occupation of the country by various continental powers the gold franc was adopted as the monetary unit. At the present time Italian paper circulates at Scutari, Durazzo, Valona, and Argyro-Castro, and the Greek drachma at Kortcha, the values of which vary according to locality and the prevailing rates of exchange as compared with gold." — Trade Information Bulletin, Numbers 79 to 118, 1923
- ISBN 978-1-136-26046-9.
The Albanian throne was, on February 21, 1914, formally offered by Essad Pasha and an Albanian deputation to Prince Wilhelm of Wied, a German officer and nephew of the Queen of Roumania, and by him accepted.
- ISBN 978-1-84511-013-0
- ^ Qafoku 2017 :66
- ISBN 0-674-37512-2 page 26 [1]
- ISBN 1-884964-36-2page 37
Further reading
- Austin, Robert Clegg (2012). Founding a Balkan State: Albania's Experiment With Democracy, 1920–1925. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1442644359.
- Tallon, James N (2014). "Albania's Long War (1912–1925)". Studia Historyczne. 57 (4): 437–455, 541. ProQuest 1724503382.