Albanians

“ Certain it is that Albania was already an ancient nation when Greek history began. Unlike the other primitive populations of the Balkan peninsula, which became in time either Hellenized, Latinized or Slavonicized, the Albanians have remained almost unaffected by foreign influences. It strikes me as a strange thing that the courage and determination with which this remarkable race has maintained itself in its mountain stronghold all down the ages, and the grim and unyielding front which it has shown to innumerable invaders, have evoked so little appreciation and admiration in the outside world. ”

“ The Austrians had money, and there were many Austrians in Albania. This rifle came into the mountains on an Austrian officer. I gave his clothes to a naked man of Dibra who was fighting the Serbs there. I got four Italian capes and trousers in one day, on the road north of Scutari, and there was money on their bodies, too. As to Albanians—there was a rich Albanian once, whom I met riding out from Ipek. Why should a man of Albanian blood ride in the eyes of the Serbs with gold in his pocket, while true Albanians are dying of cold and hunger? ”

“ To whatever state of culture the Albanians may climb, I think it will be generally agreed that some régime other than unaided independence must, in the meantime, be established there. One hears of those who argue that Albania should forthwith be for the Albanians, because they are a gifted and a very ancient people. They are not more gifted than the Basques, and their antiquity is not more wonderful. Nor do they stand on a higher level of culture with respect to their neighbours than do the Basques as compared with theirs. ”

“ The Albanians are thus being carried along by a general movement of progress, and if once they enter into the common life of Europe, we may expect them to play a prominent part, for they possess a penetrating mind and much strength of character. The Albanians enjoy the advantage of having ready access to the sea, but hitherto they have derived only small benefit from it, not only owing to the disturbed state of the country and the absence of roads, but also because of the alluvial deposits formed by the rivers and the malaria of the marshes. ”

“ There are good reasons for these misconceptions of Albania. For six centuries the Albanians were one of the buried Christian minorities of the Turkish Empire in Europe. Their great men who rose to places of power in the Near East were not known to the outside world as Albanians. Ismail Kemal Bey, Grand Vizier of Turkey, who raised the flag of Albanian independence in 1912; Mehmet Ali, who led the struggle for Egyptian independence in 1811 and founded the dynasty of the Khedives of Egypt ”

“ Let the Albanians show by their European culture that there are among them the elements of a compact race which has the full consciousness of its individuality; and, what is more important, let them abstain from declaring to-day against Hellenism, by becoming the instruments of treacherous movements whose sole aim is their absorption. ”

“ The inhabitants form a peculiar people, the Albanians, called by the Turks Arnauts, and by themselves Skipetar. The Albanians are half-civilized mountaineers, frank to a friend, vindictive to an enemy. They are constantly under arms, and live in perpetual anarchy. At one time the Albanians were all Christians; but after the death of their last chief, the hero Skanderbeg, in 1467, and their subjugation by the Turks, a large part became Mohammedans. Albania became an independent state in 1912. ”

“ These mountaineers, these intrepid combatants in a holy cause, remained, during all that revolutionary epoch of Greece, in the rear of the Hellenic idea, which was doubtless their national idea. This idea impresses its peculiar stamp on the life of the nation, in its material, moral, and intellectual existence; but such has never existed in the Albanian race. Unity of history, of language, of religion, all that constitutes the essence of nationality, is altogether wanting in the Albanians. ”

“ The boundaries of Albania in 1970 were essentially the same as those delineated by representatives of the Great Powers after Albania had declared its independence. Ethnic problems raised by the drawing of the boundaries have never been solved to the satisfaction of the countries involved. The Albanians hold that in 1913 about 40 percent of their territory, with a population at that time of about 600,000 ethnic Albanians, was unjustly assigned to Serbia. The area has been a continuing source of friction between Albania and Yugoslavia. ”

“ The appeal to nationalism always strikes a responsive chord among the Albanians not only because their history is replete with humiliations and injustices heaped upon them by long domination of foreign powers but also, and especially, because of the territorial aspirations and claims of its neighbors—Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece. The political scene in Albania since it formally won an independent existence from Turkey in 1912 has indeed been dominated by attempts of one, or a combination, of its neighbors to dismember it. ”

“ The ethnology of the Albanians is entirely uncertain. Their present location, considerably to the south of their supposed pristine seat in Illyricum, indicates some southern migration of the race. This migration occurred at an entirely unknown time, though it is generally believed to have been contemporary with the great southward movement of the Slavic races in the seventh century. The Albanian migrations of the time penetrated Attica, Aetolia and the entire Peloponnesus; with the Slavs and Vlachs they formed indeed a great part of the population of Greece during the Middle Ages. ”

“ The aboriginal Albanians, who with their back to the Adriatic had kept the Slavs at bay, asserted their vitality and sent out migratory swarms to the south, which entered the service of the warring princelets and by their prowess won broad lands in every part of continental Greece, where Albanian place-names are to this day only less common than Slavonic. South-eastern Europe was again in the throes of social dissolution, and the convulsions continued till they were stilled impartially by the numbing hand of their ultimate author the Turk. ”

“ Little is known of Albania’s past history, though individual Albanians have helped to make history for other nations; the descendant of an Albanian soldier of the Ottoman Empire rules over Egypt. But history has been in the making for the last month or so, and possibly, nay, probably, Albania is about to enter the comity of nations, even as Servia, Bulgaria, and other former provinces of the Osmanli have done.{274}
There is no reason to suppose that Albania will fail where others have succeeded. ”

“ The Albanians are quick, ingenious, and industrious, and are the best workmen in the finer industrial arts of the Balkans, gold and silver workers of remarkable skill, dividing the blacksmithing with the gypsy, but the best and indeed the only armorers of that world. We had a number of them in the camp at Niksich, refugees from the tribes on our frontier, and I found them most interesting companions, generally speaking Italian and Serb as well as their own dialects. Their conservatism is something almost inexplicable. ”

“ The Albanian and Rumanian populations of its western section, although distinct in speech, nevertheless lack the cultural and historical background required in the formation of nationality.
The Albanians inhabit the rugged lands which were known as Illyricum and Epirus in classical times. Secluded within the narrow, trough-shaped relics of ancient mountain folding, the natives had no immediate contact with their Greek neighbors on the south, or with Serbians on the north. Hence Albanian has survived in the most inaccessible portions of the Dinaric rocky country. ”

“ The Albanians, like most of the races of minor importance inhabiting European Turkey, are little known to the civilized world. Albania, with its impassable mountains, broken by deep and precipitous ravines, the footways of torrents, has been visited only by those few travellers who have had enough courage and adventurous spirit to penetrate into its fastnesses. This country, occupying the place of the ancient Illyria and Epirus, was in the middle ages called Arvanasi, and later on Arnaoutlik by the Turks and Arvanitia by the Greeks ”

“ But the task of Albania is bound to be difficult. For though the Great Powers have provided it with a ruler—the German Prince William of Wied—there is no organized state. The Albanians are one of the oldest races in Europe, if not the oldest. But they have never created a state. And to-day they are hopelessly divided. It is a land of universal opposition—north against south, tribe against tribe, bey against bey. The majority of the population are Mohammedan but there are many Roman Catholics in the north and in the south the Greek Orthodox Church is predominant. ”

“ History and legend afford little or no record of the arrival of the Albanian race in the Balkan Peninsula. It may, however, be safely asserted that the Albanians are the direct descendants of the earliest Aryan immigrants, who were represented in historical times by the kindred Illyrians, Macedonians, and Epirots. The majority live in Albania, the rest in Montenegro, Greece, Southern Italy, Sicily, Bessarabia, and Asia Minor. As regards religion they are either Christians or Mohammedans. They are divided into several tribes, among whom the Suliotes are partly of Greek origin. ”

“ This news is that the Albanians have risen against their masters the Turks, and joined with the Greeks.
Albania was at one time a part of Greece, but that was in the early history of the Empire. It at last secured its freedom and became an independent country.
In 1478 the Turks conquered Albania, and it has been under Turkish rule ever since. The Albanians have no love for the Turks, and though they are supposed to be obedient to the Sultan's wishes, he does not dare to appoint any but native Albanians to govern them. The people have always contrived to give him all the trouble possible. ”

“ The more I saw of the Albanians and of the Slav intrigues for their destruction, the more I thought Albania worthy of help. The enterprising and industrious Albanian was worth a dozen of the conceited idle Montenegrins. Except Prince Nikola and the hotelier Vuke Vuletitch, it was hard to find a Montenegrin in Cetinje who used his brains—if he had any. An educated Albanian is often a highly cultivated man, whereas even Lobatcheff was forced to admit that Paris and Petersburg could not make more of a Montenegrin than a Petar Plamenatz or a Marusitch. ”

“ Despite religious differences, tribal feuds, and backward social conditions, the Albanians are fully conscious that they are not Slavs, Turks, or Greeks, but a distinct nationality. The sentiment is not less there because it has not overcome the obstacles to effectiveness. ”

“ Albania's most notable tradition from ancient times has been one of foreign domination. Brief periods of independence have been overshadowed by long centuries of subjection to alien rule. Foreign rulers never seemed able or willing to subject the Albanian peasants to the complete authority of a central government. Throughout their history Albanians, protected by the remoteness of their mountain villages, often enjoyed a measure of autonomy even though they lacked national independence. ”

“ None of these creeds, however, have affected national unity—Albania is the only Balkan country in which religion and nationality are not synonymous—and all of them are rooted shallowly above the old religion of Albanians, which is the formless belief in a Great Unknown from which sprang the gods and mythology of ancient Greece. ”

“ Even the ingrained feudalism of the Albanians will vanish under the modernizing influence of roads and railways, and their picturesqueness fade under the glamour of successful commercial enterprise. No doubt those days are yet some distance off when peace and prosperity will reign over the Balkan Peninsula, but even the Albanians, individually very capable of perceiving where advantage lies, will be brought into the ordered state of affairs so dear to those kind neighbours, the Great Powers. ”

“ Six Albanian settlements lie on these northern slopes of the Sila—San Giorgio, Vaccarizza, San Cosimo, Macchia, San Demetrio Corone, and Santa Sofia d’ Epiro. San Demetrio is the largest of them, and thither, after an undisturbed night’s rest at the house of my kind host—the last, I fear, for many days to come—I drove in the sunlit hours of next morning. Along the road one can see how thoroughly the Albanians have done their work; the land is all under cultivation, save for a dark belt of trees overhead, to remind one of what once it was. ”

“ The Albanians in general (I do not mean the cultivators of the earth in the provinces, who have also that appellation, but the mountaineers) have a fine cast of countenance; and the most beautiful women I have ever beheld, in stature and in features, we saw levelling the road broken down by the torrents between Delvinaki and Libokavo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical, but this strut is probably the effect of the capote or cloak depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. ”

“ Kinship, customs, and attitudes related to family life, and strong attachments to community and language were strong influences in the preservation of ethnic identity through the many centuries of foreign domination. The Albanians are divided into two major subgroups—the Gegs, who occupy the area north of the Shkumbin River, and the Tosks, who inhabit the territory to the south. Differences in physical appearance persist, but the breakup of clans and moves toward collectivization of society after World War II diminished the most distinguishing feature, their social system. ”