-Caveat Lector-
"Under soon-to-be-dictator Julius Caesar, Albania served as
the battlegound for Rome's contest for world supremacy."
"The collapse of the old communist order has allowed a
religious revival of sorts in Albania. But most new converts are
Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the like ...".
ALBANIA: A Country Surrounded By Itself
by Van Christo
(Talk before the Orchard Cove Association, Canton, Massachusetts,
February 22, 1996)
Albania, as we know it today, is a small country located on
the Adriatic Sea surrounded, beginning in the northwest in a
clockwise direction, by Montenegro, the Kosova province of
Serbia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and, finally,
Greece in the south. In physical size, Albania is about 230 miles
long by about 90 miles at its widest point. It has a population
of approximately 3 million, 200 thousand people.
The Albanian language is not derived from any other
language, that is, it does not have a Slavic or Greek base as is
commonly believed, but is, in point of fact, one of the nine
original Indo-European languages, the other eight Indo-European
languages being Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Hellenic,
Indian, Iranian, Italic, and Keltic. As such, Albanian is one
of Europe's oldest languages!
The Albanians are essentially a homogenous people but have
been divided traditionally into two basic ethnic groups, the
Ghegs in the North, and the Tosks in the South, the dividing line
being the Shkumbini River. Both Ghegs and Tosks speak the same
language but pronounce it with some difference. A simple example
is the Albanian word for the English verb "is." A Tosk would say
"eshte" (EH-shtah) whereas a Gheg would pronounce it as "asht"
(AH-sht). The former communist government of Albania made the
Tosk dialect the official dialect of the entire country.
The Albanians are the direct descendents of the ancient
Illyrians whose territories in 1225 BC included all of former
Yugoslavia, that is, Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia, Herzogovina,
Serbia, Montenegro, and portions of Macedonia and northern
Greece. It was from one of the Illyrian tribes called the
"Albanoi" located in central Albania, that Albania
derives its name. Shkodra, the 3rd largest city in Albania and
located in the northern part of the country, was also the
capital of Illyria so it has deep historic roots.
The Romans conquered Illyria in 227 BC for which they had to
pay dearly by making frequent expeditions across the Adriatic Sea
to quell the insurrections that had become chronic. An
interesting footnote may be the fact that during the civil war
between Caesar and Pompey, Albania served as the battlegound for
the contest of the supremacy of Rome. The decisive battle
between Octavious and Antony for the imperial throne of Rome was
also fought on the Albanian seacoast, and in commemoration of his
naval victory at Actium, the future Emperor Augustus built the
new city of Nicopolos on the southernmost part of the Albanian
seaboard whose ruins may be seen to this very day in the modern
day city of Preveza which was taken away from Albania and
assigned to Greece by the Conference of London in 1912.
When the capital of the Roman Empire was transferred from
Rome to Byzantium in 325 AD, Albania, then known as the Thema of
Illyricum, became a province of the eastern section and remained
part of the Byzantime Empire up until the early Middle Ages when
certain feudal families managed to form independent
principalities which eventually evolved into a Greater Albania -
that is, territories where the population was almost exclusively
Albanian-speaking and Albanian in terms of history, laws,
tradition, and culture. One of those independent principalities
was governed by the Kastrioti clan which later produced Albania's
greatest folkhero, Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, who fought the
Ottoman Turks for some 25 years until his death in 1468 thereby
preventing them from overunning all of of Europe and postponing
the inevitable conquest by the Turks of the entire Balkan
peninsula.
The Ottoman Conquest of Europe began in 1354 when the Turks
captured the Byzantine fortress at Gallipoli located on a narrow
peninsula where the Dardanelles opens into the Sea of Marmara.
This military victory established their first stronghold on
European soil. The defeat of the Bulgarians at Maritsa in 1371
and the defeat of the Serbs at Kosova in 1389 marked the
collapse of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania which all then came
under Turkish rule.
As in other occupied Balkan territories, the Turks
established a system of adminstration of Albania by dividing it
into 4 provinces or "vilayets" - the vilayets of Shkodra, Kosova,
Manastir, and Janina. Until the 16th century, almost all of
Albania was Christian, the Orthodox Catholic religion being
dominant in the south and the Roman Catholic in the north. In the
17th century, however, the Turks began a policy of Islaminization
by using, among other methods, economic incentives to convert the
population. A simple example is that some Albanians who adopted
Islam received land and had their taxes lowered. By the 19th
century, however, Islam became predominant in Albania with about
70% of the population while some 20% remained Orthodox and 10%
Roman Catholic. These groupings remained in effect until the
communist government outlawed religion in1967 making it the
world's only atheist state. Freedom of religion in Albania was
restored only in1991 but it must be noted that the overwhelming
majority of Albania's population was born under a communist
regime which pursued an aggresively atheistic policy. Altho
reliable statistics are lacking, observations and anecdotes
demonstrate that the historical 70-20-10 percentages are no
longer valid.
Altho the collapse of the old communist order has seen a
religious revival of sorts, when I was in Albania in September,
the USIA officer in Tirana told me that he believed the religion
with the most new adherents in Albania were the Christian
evangalists such as the Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's
Witnesses, and others.
The Ottoman Conquest of Europe lasted for more than 400
hundred years before it went into decline, in large measure
because of persistent unrest and nationalism in the conquered
territories and the corruptive self-rot of its own body politic.
After the defeat of the Turks by the Russians in the war of 1877,
the Great Powers evoked the Treaty of San Stefano the
following year signifying the break-up of the Ottoman Empire.
Greater Albania, still comprised of the 4 vilayets, was
penalized by the Great Powers because it was considered part of
the Ottoman Empire for almost 5 centuries. As a result, the
Albania of 1878 was divided by ceding the major portions of the
vilayet of Shkodra to Montenegro, the vilayet of Kosova to
Serbia, the vilayet of Manastir to Macedonia, and the vilayet of
Janina to Greece. Thus, what remained after the partitioning is
the nation of Albania as it is known today.
It should also be noted that Albania's neighbors wanted the
total partitioning of Albania so that it would no longer exist as
a separate entity and nationality. The one person who prevented
that from happening at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 which
eventually confirmed Albania's official boundaries was President
Woodrow Wilson of the United States of America who declared, "I
shall have but one voice at the Peace Conference, and I will use
that voice in behalf of Albania."
So, today, northwest of Albania beginning clockwise, there
are approximately 40,000 Albanians living in Montenegro along its
border with Albania, about 2 million in Kosova, 100,000 in South
Serbia, 600,000 in Macedonia, and 250,000 in northern Greece.
Albania, indeed, is a country compeletely surrounded by itself!
Right now, Albania is in the process of waking up from almost
50 years of a repressive communist regime. Today, Albania has a
democratic government that, notwithstanding some of the same
problems as other former communist countries, is possibly one of
the most stable in the Balkans. It has the advantages of high
literacy, less rape of land and resources than its neighbors such
as Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland.
It is the world's second largest producer of chromium and
has signifcant natural resources such as petroleum, copper,
nickel, and coal waiting only further development by foreign
investors.
Up until 1991, Albania, because of its mountaineous terrain
that resulted in the construction of a network of hi-rise dams,
shipped hydroelectric power all over the Balkans and as far west
as Austria. Albania also has an incredibly beautiful Adriatic
seacoast that runs the entire length of the country with gorgeous
white sandy beaches plus breathtakingly impressive mountainous
areas with tremendous ski resort and winter sport potential.
Albania has a diaspora scattered all over the globe with
significant concentrations of Albanians in the USA, Italy,
Germany, Canada, and as far away as Australia.
The USA is a strong supporter of Albania and is playing a
continuing role in encouraging and supporting democratic
institutions and the democratization of the governing
infrastructure. Albania has a long way to go, but I am confident
that it will continue to improve. I believe it will take at least
a dozen years to undo most of the damage caused by the former
communist government and for Albania to find its place in the
European Community. I have been to Albania a number of times
during the past few years working alongside my lovely wife, Jane,
with the US State Department to help in the democratization
process, and I am proud of the progress this small country of my
birth has made in such a short period of time.
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be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
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