|
Albania
NATIONAL AWAKENING AND THE BIRTH OF ALBANIA, 1876-1918
By the 1870s, the Sublime Porte's reforms aimed at checking the
Ottoman Empire's disintegration had clearly failed. The image
of the "Turkish yoke" had become fixed in the nationalist mythologies
and psyches of the empire's Balkan peoples, and their march toward
independence quickened. The Albanians, because of the preponderance
of Muslims link with Islam and their internal social divisions,
were the last of the Balkan peoples to develop a national consciousness,
which was triggered by fears that the Ottoman Empire would lose
its Albanian-populated lands to the emerging Balkan states--Serbia,
Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece. Albanian leaders formed the
Prizren League in 1878, which pressed for territorial autonomy,
and after decades of unrest a major uprising exploded in the Albanian-populated
Ottoman territories in 1912, on the eve of the First Balkan War.
When Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece laid claim to Albanian lands
during the war, the Albanians declared independence, and the European
Great Powers endorsed an independent Albania in 1913, after the
Second Balkan War. The young state, however, collapsed within
weeks of the outbreak of World War I.
Data as of April 1992
|
