Albania - Cutting Out the New Kingdom

[Veshtrusja]

Albania-The Foundling State of Europe

Cutting Out the New Kingdom

Peacock, Wadham

New York: D. Appleton & Co.,

1914.

Pg 204-223.

Vepra eshte shkruajtur ne vitin 1913!

Lexim te kendshem!

[Veshtrusja]

Out of the crucible which has been seething in the flames of the Balkan war the kingdoms of the peninsula have emerged aggrandized at the expense of Turkey, and have been quarrelling over the distribution of the spoil ever since. They were not allowed to cut up Albania altogether, and from the body which was left after the limbs had been lopped off to satisfy the Allies, Europe has begun the creation of a new state, the last of those which have been built out of the fragments of the Byzantine and Turkish Empires by modern diplomatists. Albania is being made into an autonomous state with all the blessings of parliamentary and bureaucratic government, with its own prince and system of elections all complete. This is the last state which can be manufactured out of the ancient material of Europe, unless, as some Slavs hold, Austria is to be partitioned in the future, but the nationality which is to compose it is so distinct and separate from the rest of Europe, and so unlike that of the Slav races by which it is hemmed in, that its creation as an autonomous state is but the natural outcome of the logic of events. The future of Albania, this new-comer into the circle of European governments, will depend on the skill with which its boundaries are drawn. Expediency, and not strict justice, has always ruled the decisions of the Great Powers, who are the final Court of Appeal in such matters, but if a mistaken idea of what seems to be the easiest way is allowed to prevail, and if the land greed of the neighbouring states is permitted to supplant the natural and ethnical frontiers by boundaries inspired by earth-hunger, then the Near Eastern Question, so far from being settled, will only be shifted to another phase, and Slav will stand out as the oppressor of nationalities in the Balkans in place of the Turk. The Albanian comes of the oldest race in Europe, he is the descendent of the original owners of the soil, and to him the Slav, just as much as the Turk, is an intruder and a supplanter. The Slav was only overrun by the Turk; the Albanian was overrun by the Slav in addition to the Turk, and the future of Europe’s latest experiment in state building depends upon the recognition of this fact.

It is said that an ingenious man of science has succeeded in manufacturing an egg without the aid of the usual hen, but with the correct chemical constituents and the familiar appearance. In every respect it is so exactly like an egg, and is so scientifically accurate in composition, that only the man who eats it doubts of its perfect success, and recognizes that there is something more, something indefinable, in an egg which is beyond outward appearance and chemical components. This triumph of art over nature is known as the Synthetic Egg, and there is the gravest danger lest the egg which Europe is now endeavouring to produce should be of the Synthetic variety; a state in everything but that which makes a living state, the inclusion within its boundaries of all those of the nationality. Since for the sentimental satisfaction of memories of their evanescent empires of medieval times, the Bulgar and the Serb have been allowed to lop off the fairest portions of the too meager heritage of the Albanians, the new state runs the gravest risk of being addled from its inception. The unrest will smoulder in the Balkans ready to burst into a flame at any moment, for the Turk was the spasmodic but usually easy-going tyrant of the old school, whereas the Slav will be the tyrant of the new bureaucracy which cloaks its oppression under the pretence of legality. The Albanian which is left outside the border will be always struggling to join his brothers in the new state, and the story of the Macedonian risings will be repeated over again, and with greater justification. The future of a “synthetic” and artificial Albania can be told in one word: bloodshed.

[Veshtrusja]

After the victorious march of the Bulgarians, Servians and Greeks through Thrace and Macedonia, the pretence that war was declared to free the brothers in Macedonia was abandoned for the frank confession of a desire for an extension of territory. There was no need to free Macedonia from the Turks – time was doing that – but each one of the three Allies hastened to save as much of it as he could from his two partners in the enterprise, for it was obvious to all of them that the Young Turks had given the final blow to the empire of Turkey in Europe. We heard nothing more of the absurd proposal to erect an autonomous Macedonia with a Prince and parliament of its own. The Allies at once partitioned it on paper, and the fury of the second Balkan War between the four Allies showed the lengths to which their land hunger carried them. Europe definitely decided that there shall be a principality of Albania, and the Allies did not dare to give a point-blank refusal. But they drew an Albania on the map which would shut the Albanians in to the narrow mountains and the poorest strip of seaboard, and they advanced many plausible reasons, ethnological, geographical and historical, why the ancient race should yield its towns and lowlands to the Slav and the Greek, and go starve on a ridge of sterile crags until a cheap process of extermination by hunger has made the time ripe for a final partition of the stony ground of an abortive principality. In any case, by the division of Macedonia, Albania will be shut in on the north and east by Slavs and on the south by Greece, and the scheme of the allies was to draw the boundaries so close that she would be strangled from the start.

There were three Albanias in the market for Europe to choose from, and it is well to note what they were. First there was the scheme of the Provisional Government of Albania under Ismail Kemal Bey of Avlona [Vlora], which demanded all the lands in the west of the Balkan peninsula that are inhabited by a majority of Albanians and were till recently under the rule of the Sultan. The boundary was easily followed on any map. From the Boiana it kept to the present Montenegrin frontier on the north till it reached the Sandjak of Novibazar, south of Berane, whence it followed the course of the river Ibar to Mitrovitza, the terminus of the railway running north from Salonica. It took in the famous plain of Kossovopolje, to which the Serbs have a sentimental claim as it was there that the Serbian kingdom was finally defeated and the Czar Lazar slain by the Sultan Murad on June 15, 1389. But the Albanians have also a sentimental claim to the field, for not only did a contingent of them fight against the Turks as allies of the Serbs, but Kara Mahmoud Pasha of Scodra [Shkodra], the semi-independent ruler of North Albania, defeated the Sultan’s army there in 1786. The boundary included the railway line as far south as Koprulu, taking in Ferizovich [Ferizaj], where the Albanian tribes proclaimed their independence on July 15, 1908, and Uskub [Shkup], whose inhabitants are in the great majority Moslem Albanians, with about twenty-five per cent of Bulgarians and seven per cent of Servians. The town was taken over in April of 1912, by the Albanians from the Turkish government, and captured by the Servian army on October 26, in the same year. From Koprulu the Albanian Provisional Government’s boundary ran south to the angle of the Monastir railway near Florina, between Lakes Presba and Ostrovo, and then struck east, leaving out Kastoria, to a point nearly south of Lake Presba, whence it ran due south to the Greek frontier.

[Veshtrusja]

This attempt at the delimitation of the boundaries would no doubt have been accepted by Europe if the Albanians were strong enough or popular enough to command a propaganda such as has been worked by the friends of the Greeks, the Bulgarians and the Servians, for it included the country in which the Albanians are undoubtedly in the majority, and in which the other nationalities have only maintained themselves by the most unscrupulous religious and political intrigues. Religion is not the Albanians’ strong point. They are Moslem, Orthodox, and Latin, and usually opportunists, with little or no organization. But the Greeks have a magnificent organization which dates from the Byzantine Empire, and ever since the Turkish occupation has wielded powers second only to those of the Sultan and the Porte. With the Greeks religion almost took the lace of nationality, and Greek means, and has meant for centuries, not so much those of Hellenic birth, as those of the Greek or Orthodox faith. This was the strength of the Phanariots, and the lazy tolerance of the Turks allowed the Orthodox Church to become an empire within an empire. Until comparatively recent times Servians, Bulgarians and South Albanians were all massed together in the European mind as Greeks, because they were under the Greek Patriarch, and it was not until modern Servia began to emerge under Kara George, who was by no means a religious leader, that the West awoke to the fact that there were other nationalities than the Greek under Turkish rule. As for the Bulgars, they were even more completely forgotten than the Serbs, though nowadays with the armies of the Czar Ferdinand at bay against the Balkan world, it seems almost incredible that for centuries the Bulgarian nationality was nothing but a vague memory in Europe.

But even before the Bulgarian atrocity agitation the leading men among the Bulgarians had recognized the correct line of policy, and had realized that the Greed Church and the Patriarch at Constantinople were more powerful levers than any mere political organization could be. Therefore, they worked for the establishment of a Bulgarian Church free from the control of the Patriarch, and in 1870 the Bulgarian Exarchate was founded by the permission of the Sultan. From that date the advance of Bulgaria was rapid, owing to the establishment of churches and schools. Greece and Servia took alarm, but Servia was too late to stand in line with her two rivals. These hostile Churches were the cause of the recent disturbance in Macedonia. Greeks and Bulgarians especially “converted” the villages with fire and sword, and in Macedonia and all along the Albanian frontier it must never be forgotten, in dealing with the boundary question, that Greek, Bulgarian and Servian mean the adherents of the Orthodox Church in those countries, and not necessarily men of those nationalities. This is where the Albanians have the disadvantage, and in addition they have the further misfortune that Moslem Albanians are always known as Turks, which most emphatically they are not. Thus, in Southern Albania statistics show that so many thousand inhabitants are Turks, and so many thousand are Greeks, whereas really the men so classified are almost all Albanians of the Moslem or Orthodox belief. This is so convenient a method of gulling Europe that it is never likely to be abandoned by those who profit by it. Occasionally race and religion tally, but in the majority of cases what is indicated is the form of religion and not the race, and the Albanians, who have no Patriarch, no Exarch, no schools and no propaganda, suffer from their lack of organization and of the first principles of scientific advertising.

[Veshtrusja]

It is therefore most improbable that the final boundaries of the new state will be drawn so as to include all the lands inhabited by the Albanians. Four modern kingdoms surrounded the territory of the descendents of the ancient Thrako-Illyrian tribes, each one hungering for a bite out of the all too poverty-stricken plains owned by the people of the hills. All four have in varying degree got the ear of Europe; all have clever spokesmen and advocates of their own and foreign countries though the Bulgarians, owing to their greed, have been driven away from the front by their former friends. The Albanians, who since the coming of the Turks have given some of their most brilliant statesmen to Turkey, Italy and Greece, have to fight their own battle with the tongue and pen, weapons to which at home they are ill-accustomed. Even the powerful advocacy of Austria does not stand them in good stead as the rest of Europe suspects that it is actuated, not so much by the principles of abstract justice, as by the desire to prevent the Near East from becoming entirely Slavised. However, since Europe decided upon the creation of an autonomous Albania the Allies, who are admirable diplomatists, adopted the less heroic policy of attempting to strangle the infant state at birth, by doing their utmost to confine it to the barren rocks and swampy sea coast which, with the possible exception of Durazzo, no one on earth covets, so wild and stern are they.

Confident in the ignorance and heedlessness of Western Europe, the Allies proposed to deprive Albania of all that is most distinctly Albanian. Even the birthplace of George Castriot, Scanderbeg, was not to be left to the people at whose head he defeated Pashas and Sultans for years, unaided and unsupported by Christian Europe; even the ruined Castle of Lek Duka[g]jini, the prince who codified the ancient laws and customs of the mountains; even the homes of Ali Pasha of Y[J]anina and of Kara Mahmoud Pasha of Scodra [Shkodra], were not to be included in the official Albania if the allies could have their way. All were to be handed over to Slav or Greek, and Albania was to be made into a state in name only, shorn of everything which could enable it to live as an independent and self-governing principality. The frontier which the united intellect or cunning of the four kingdoms devised will not take long to delimit. Hitherto the Black Drin has been considered by the most Slavophil boundary-monger to be the meanest limit of Albania to the north, and the river Kalamas to the south by the Phil-hellenes. But even those poor boundaries were now considered too generous by the ambitious Allies. On the north the frontier proposed by the Montenegrins started from the Adriatic sea coast at the mouth of the river Mati, about half-way between Alessio and Cape Rodoni, and then went north and north-east nearly to the Drin, depriving Albania of Scodra [Shkoder] its northern capital, which is inhabited solely by Shkypetars [Shqipetar], and of all the plain surrounding it, of the Malissori mountains which are inhabited by Albanian Roman Catholic tribes and certain tribes half Roman Catholic and half Moslem, of the Moslem tribes of the Duka[g]jin and Liuma, and of Ipek, Jacovo and Prisrend, in all of which the Moslem Albanians are in an immense majority. Albania was thus to be deprived of the Drin which is its principle river, and of lands in which there are but few Slavs of any sort. Montenegro did not even pretend that she went to war to liberate brother Serbs under Turkish rule, but openly declared that she would disappear as a political factor in the Balkans rather than renounce the annexation of territory inhabited by men of utterly different race and religion, who have always hated the Slav even more than the Turk.

[Veshtrusja]

The Servians and Bulgarians were equally preposterous in their demands. They claimed the entire upper and middle course of the Drin, including the watershed on the east of the mountains of Central Albania down to the mountains west of Lake Ochrida. Their suggested boundary thus cut Albania in two, annexed districts purely Albanian or in which Shkypetars[Albanians] are in a majority, and deprived the new state of any outlet to the hinterland on the east. The three Slav kingdoms were agreed in lopping off the most valuable part of Albania, but when the spoil came to be divided two of the momentary Allies quarreled bitterly. They all claimed the right to annex Ipek, Jacovo and Prisrend, but Servia had special claims on the latter city as it was once the capital of the empire of Dushan. Moreover, Bulgaria and Servia disputed not only both banks of the Drin, but also Dibra, which is about three quarters Albanian and the rest Bulgarian; Ochrida and Presba; and Monastir where the population is Albanian, Greek and Bulgarian, but not Servian. The events of last summer, however, disposed of the claims of Bulgaria, and left meny thousands of Bulgarians in Greek and Servian hands. The Greeks were no less exacting than their allies. They claimed Avlona [Vlora], but as Italy too has an eye on the Albanian coast they drew their provisional line from Gramala, a point on the shore half-way between Dukali and Khimara [Himara], and thence east to the fork of the river Vioussa near Klissura, leaving Tepelen to Albania. Thence the line went north-east by north to the proposed Servian line south-west of lake Ochrida, cutting off from the new state country that is purely Albanian as well as some districts in which the population is mixed. Even if the Greek line were drawn much further to the south-east it would still amputate territories in which the majority of the inhabitants are Albanian but are called Greek because they belong to the Greek or Orthodox Church. A glance at the map will show that the frontier which was suggested by the allies confined the Albanians to the west of the mountains which form the central backbone of the country, and to the narrow strip between those mountains and the sea. This piece of waste land contains no river of any importance, only three towns which are better than villages, and the decayed ports of Durazzo [Durres] and Avlona [Vlore] which might be made much of, but which, in default of any possible trade from the swamps and mountains immediately behind them, would have existed as dying harbours watching the trade of the Balkans going north and south of them, and rigorously prohibited by Slav and Greek from any participation in the business and traffic of the hinterland.

There remained the frontier proposed by Austria, which, if not generous to Albania, was at least more just than that of the allies. Imputing motives to Austria is an inconsequent sort of argument for the friends of the Slav to use against the Albanian. It is an axiom among us that all foreign nations are swayed entirely by self-interest, but charity would admit that Austria and Italy, who in a less degree supports the Albanian nationality, are not actuated by selfishness to a greater extent than any one else, and that if they show more interest in the Shkypetar it may be because they are only two European nations who have a real and intimate knowledge of the ancient people. The Austrian line deserved to be studied with care and without prejudice, for Austrian officers have surveyed the country as far as it has been mapped out, and Austria has been the protector of Roman Catholic tribes in the days when they needed e protector from the Turk and not from the Orthodox Christian. It is the provisional frontier traced by more or less disinterested experts, and was a compromise between the line drawn by Ismail Kemal Bey on the one hand, and the draughtsman of the allies on the other. It followed the existing frontier on the Montenegrin border as far as a point north of Gussigne-Plava, where it made a sudden loop to the south to include those two places in Montenegro.

[Veshtrusja]

But the irony of the situation in this part of the world is that while Austria very justly opposed the cession of purely Albanian districts to Montenegro, she at the same time could suggest no compensation to King Nicolas, for she even more vigorously opposed his more legitimate expansion to the north in the Herzegovina, which by all the principles of nationalism belongs to Montenegro. There is no difference whatever from the racial and geographical point of view between Montenegro and the Herzegovina, and Cattaro is the natural port of the little kingdom by which it was formerly owned. The King only asked for the Malissori mountains of North Albania because he knows that as long as Austria exists he can never get Cattaro and the Herzegovina, the district from which his family and that of many of the Montenegrins originally came. Thus blocked to the north and the south, the saying which cam into vogue in Cettigne after the Russo-Turkish war – Austria is the enemy, not Turkey – has now acquired an added significance. From Gussigne-Plava the Austrian line ran to the north to keep Ipek, Jacovo, and Prisrend in Albania, but it left to the Slav the district known as Old Serbia which is inhabited almost entirely by Albanians, and took from the new state Kossovopolje, Ferizovich, Uskub, and all the adjacent lands. From the summit of the Shah Dagh just east of Prisrend, the proposed frontier ran almost due south between Lakes Ochrida and Presba, giving Dibra and the whole valley of the Black Drin to Albania, but omitting the districts to the east, where the Albanians are either in the majority or in a very strong minority. South of Lake Presba the line trends a little to the east, following the Albanian claim very closely, and reached the Greek frontier slightly to the east of Mecovon at the frontier of the late Pashaliks of Y[J]anina and Monastir.

This scheme was doubtless the most workable of the three put forward. If it excluded many thousand Albanians from the state, it at least gave the new principality room to breathe and a chance of living, which the proposal of the Allies most certainly did not, and on the other hand it lessened the chances of everlasting quarrels and feuds which would probably have occurred if the Albanian line had been adopted in its entirety, with its inclusion of places which have historic memories for the Serbs, but for the Albanians little besides the prosaic interest of actual possession. Roughly speaking, the adoption of the Austrian proposal would have meant a state about midway between the existing kingdoms of Servia and Montenegro in size and population, with an area of about fourteen thousand square miles and a population of a million and a half. This would have given it a fair chance of existence, and it would have had the great advantage over its rivals and neighbours of possessing an extensive seaboard and at least two harbours, which, though almost derelict, are capable of being turned into serviceable ports. Some four hundred thousand Albanians would have been left in Slav or Greek hands, and that would have been poorly compensated by the inclusion of about a hundred thousand men of alien blood.

[Veshtrusja]

The Austrian scheme was doubtless the most workable of those put forward for Europe’s consideration, but the Powers in tracing their provisional frontier did not think fit to adopt it. Evidently they thought it more dignified to draw a line of their own, and as far as they had decided on the boundary they have leaned towards the Slav and against the Albanian. The Austrian line was drawn half-way between those of the Allies and of the Albanian Provisional Government, and the Great Powers appear to have compromised with a delimitation half-way between the proposal of the Austrians and that of the Allies. On no other theory can the provisional frontier have been drawn, as within it no Slavs are included, whereas thousands of Albanians are left outside it to the tender mercies of their worst enemies. The boundary accepted in principle by the Powers goes a little further up the Boiana than the present frontier, and strikes inland at a stream just below Corica, where it divides the district of Anamalit, which is entirely Mahometan Albanian, and reaches the lake just west of Zogai. The line then crosses the lake to the inlets of Kastrati and Hoti, and runs north-east to the present frontier, leaving the Hoti and Gruda tribes in Montenegro, and Kastrati, Shkreli, and Klementi in Albania. Hoti is a Roman Catholic tribe of purely Albanian origin. It has always been considered the chief of the Malissori tribes, and in war-time marches at the head of the confederation. King Nicolas has of late years taken great pains to win this important tribe over from the Turks and with considerable success, but whether it will be content to become absorbed in Montenegro and see the Klementi and Kastrioti forming part of an independent Albania is another matter.

As in the Austrian scheme the boundary then makes a trend to the south, and includes Gussigne and Plava in Montenegro. These places are inhabited by fanatical Mahometans not of pure Shkypetar extraction, and Albania can well do without them. But then the boundary bends south-east, leaving out Ipek, Jacovo, and Prisrend, all of which are inhabited by a great majority of Albanians, and from a point a few miles west of Prisrend runs dues south, leaving Dibra, with its mixed population of Albanians and Bulgarians, to Servia; and then following the Drin to the stream Pishkupstina, whence it keeps to the hill-tops on the west until it strikes Lake Ochrida at Lin, near the monastery of San Nicolo. In South Albania the line will leave Yanina to Greece, and drive out of the new state thousands of Albanians who are called Greeks because they belong to the Orthodox Church. From the cynical way in which large populations of Albanians are ignored and handed over to their hereditary enemies, it is obvious that the Great Powers are not over-anxious to found an Albanian principality which could have a reasonable chance of success. The nascent Albania is cut down to a minimum, and if Europe had wished to make the new state dependent on Austria or Italy, she could hardly have set about it more effectually. The only thing to be said for the scheme is that it includes Scodra and the Drin in the principality, but the thousands of Albanians who are left outside cannot be expected to acquiesce in their exclusion. There is not much future for Albania of this sort, but the Shkypetars are a dogged race who have survived many tyrants, though so far they have only had to face death by the sword, and not strangulation by the red tape of a bureaucracy. Unfortunately, the Slav is not as the Turk, and the Powers are unlikely to follow the precedent of Eastern Rumelia, and permit at some future time the incorporation of Albania Irredenta in the foundling state of Europe.

[Veshtrusja]

Fund i pjeses Cutting Out the Kingdom

PS: ju kerkoj falje para kohe per gabime ortografike qe mund te gjeni per fajin tim.

[PrInCiPiEl]

Albania - Cutting Out the New Kingdom



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[Dito]

Fund i pjeses Cutting Out the Kingdom

PS: ju kerkoj falje para kohe per gabime ortografike qe mund te gjeni per fajin tim.

Firma jote eshte shume e bukur per ta lexuar te gjithe, kam frike se do ta vjedhin lol.