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Principality of Albania Principata e Shqipërisë (Albanian) | |||||||||||||||
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| [a] 1914–1925 1916–1918:Government-in-exile | |||||||||||||||
.svg) Flag[1] | |||||||||||||||
| Motto: Atdheu mbi të gjitha "Homeland above all" | |||||||||||||||
| Anthem: Himni i Flamurit "Hymn to the Flag" | |||||||||||||||
 The Principality of Albania in 1916 | |||||||||||||||
| Capital | Durrës (1914–20) Lushnjë (1920) Tirana (1920–24) | ||||||||||||||
| Common languages | Albanian | ||||||||||||||
| Religion | Islam,Christianity | ||||||||||||||
| Demonym(s) | Albanian | ||||||||||||||
| Government | Constitutional monarchy | ||||||||||||||
| Prince | |||||||||||||||
• 1914-1925 | Wilhelm I | ||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | |||||||||||||||
• 1914(first) | Turhan Pasha Përmeti | ||||||||||||||
• 1925(last) | Ahmet Zogu | ||||||||||||||
| Legislature | Parliament | ||||||||||||||
| Historical era | |||||||||||||||
• Established | 21 February 1914 | ||||||||||||||
• Disestablished | 31 January 1925 | ||||||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||||||
| 1916 | 30,145 km2 (11,639 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||||||
• 1916 | Approx 979,000[2] | ||||||||||||||
| Currency | No official currency Greek drachma,gold franc,Italian lira used[3] | ||||||||||||||
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a.^ The principality effectively ceased to exist on 7 September 1914, when the Ehli Kijam stormed Durrës, the government's last stronghold, 4 days after the departure of Prince Wilhelm on the 3rd. Albania went through a string of provisory governments before Ahmet Zogu formally abolished the monarchy in 1925. | |||||||||||||||
ThePrincipality of Albania (Albanian:Principata e Shqipërisë) was amonarchy from 1914 to 1925. It was headed byWilhelm, Prince of Albania, and located in modernAlbania in theBalkan region of Europe. TheOttoman Empire owned the land until theFirst Balkan War (1912—1913), which ended in theTreaty of London that formed the principality. The Principality of Albania survived invasions duringWorld War I (1914—1918) and subsequent disputes over Albanian independence during theParis Peace Conference (1919—1920). In 1925, the monarchy was abolished and theAlbanian Republic (1925—1928), aparliamentary republic anddictatorship, was declared.
After thefall of Constantinople, the land area covered by modern Albania had been underOttoman rule from around 1478. TheGreat Powers recognized the independence of Albania in theTreaty of London in May 1913 and thePrincipality was established on February 21, 1914. The Great Powers selectedPrince Wilhelm of Wied, a nephew ofQueen Elisabeth of Romania, to become the sovereign of the newlyindependent Albania.[4] A formal offer was made by 18 Albanian delegates representing the 18 districts of Albania on February 21, 1914, an offer which he accepted. Outside of AlbaniaWilhelm was styled prince, but in Albania he was referred to as king so as not to seem inferior to theking of Montenegro. The first government under the rule of the House of Wied was a kind of "princes privy council" because of its members, who were representatives of the Albanian nobility: PrinceTurhan Pasha Përmeti (former Governor ofCrete andambassador of theOttoman Empire atSaint Petersburg),Aziz Pasha Vrioni, PrinceBib Doda Pasha of Gjomarkaj-Mirdita, PrinceEssad Pasha Toptani, PrinceGeorge Adamidi bey Frashëri,Mihal Turtulli bey Koritza, and others.
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Prince Wilhelm arrived in Albania at his provisional capital ofDurrës on March 7, 1914, along with the royal family. The security of Albania was to be provided by anInternational Gendarmerie commanded by Dutch officers. Wilhelm left Albania on September 3, 1914, following thePeasant Revolt initiated by Essad Pasha and later headed byHaxhi Qamili, the latter the military commander of the "Muslim State of Central Albania" centered inTirana. Wilhelm never renounced his claim to the throne.
In the spring of 1914, theAutonomous Republic of Northern Epirus was proclaimed by ethnic Greeks in the territory and recognized by the Albanian government, though it proved short-lived asAlbania collapsed with the onset ofWorld War I.[5]
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 ofWorld War I. Surrounded by insurgents inDurrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September 1914, just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined theGerman army and served on theEastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to theOttoman Empire as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Many beys and clan chiefs recognized no superior authority. In late October 1914, Greek forces entered Albania in theProtocol of Corfu's recognizedAutonomous Republic of Northern Epirus.Italy occupiedVlorë, andSerbia andMontenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until aCentral Powers offensive scattered theSerbian army, which was evacuated by the French toThessaloniki.Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.[citation needed]
Under the secretTreaty of London signed in April 1915,Triple Entente powers promised Italy that it would gainVlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war againstAustria-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 ofThessaloniki, 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 occupiedKorçë andShkodër as well as other regions with sizable Albanian populations such asKosovo, remained part ofSerbia.
Albania's political confusion continued in the wake of World War I. The country lacked a single recognized government, and Albanians feared, with justification, thatItaly,Yugoslavia, andGreece would succeed in extinguishing Albania's independence and carve up the country. Italian forces controlled Albanian political activity in the areas they occupied. TheSerbs, 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 postwarAlbanian National Assembly that met atDurrës in December 1918 defended Albanian interests at theParis Peace Conference, but the conference denied Albania official representation. The National Assembly, anxious to keep Albania intact, expressed willingness to accept Italian protection and even an Italian prince as a ruler so long as it would mean Albania did not lose territory. Serbian troops conducted actions in Albanian-populated border areas, while Albanian guerrillas operated in both Serbia andMontenegro.
In January 1920, at theParis Peace Conference, negotiators from France, Britain, and Greece agreed to divide Albania among Yugoslavia, Italy, and Greece as a diplomatic expedient aimed at finding a compromise solution to the territorial conflict between Italy and Yugoslavia. The deal was done behind the Albanians' backs and in the absence of a United States negotiator.
Members of a secondAlbanian National Assembly held at Lushnjë in January 1920 rejected the partition plan and warned that Albanians would take up arms to defend their country's independence and territorial integrity. The Lushnjë National Assembly appointed a four-manregency to rule the country. Abicameral parliament was also created, in which an elected lower chamber, theChamber of Deputies (with one deputy for every 12,000 people in Albania and one for the Albanian community in the United States), appointed members of its own ranks to an upper chamber, the Senate. In February 1920, the government moved toTirana, which became Albania's capital.
One month later, in March 1920, U.S. PresidentWoodrow 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, theLeague 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 theBattle of Vlora, where Italian-occupiedVlorë was besieged by Albanian forces, Rome abandoned its claims on Albania under theTreaty of London and withdrew its forces from all of Albania exceptSazan Island at the mouth ofVlorë Bay.[6]
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 disgruntledGheg clan chief,Gjon Markagjoni, who led his Roman CatholicMirditë tribesmen in a rebellion against the regency and parliament. Markagjoni proclaimed the founding of an independent "Republic of Mirdita". As a result of this, in October 1921, theSacred Union Government was created to pressure Yugoslavia to recognize Albania's territorial sovereignty.[7]
Finally, in November 1921, Yugoslav troopsinvaded Albanian territory beyond the areas they were already occupying. The League of Nations dispatched a commission composed of representatives of Britain, France, Italy, and Japan that reaffirmed Albania's 1913 borders. Yugoslavia complained bitterly but had no choice but to withdraw its troops. TheRepublic of Mirdita was dissolved.
Interwar Albanian governments appeared and disappeared in rapid succession. Between July and December 1921 alone, the premiership changed hands five times.
TheCongress of Lushnjë (Albanian:Kongresi i Lushnjës) was held in five sessions on January 27-January 31, 1920, inLushnjë by Albanian nationalists and had as its goal the study of the Albanian situation and the measures to be adopted in order to save Albania from being partitioned among other countries after World War I. The Congress was held in the house ofKaso Fuga and it comprised delegates from all of Albania.Aqif Pashë Elbasani was elected as speaker of the Congress as he was held in high regard as a great patriot. It established the High Council (Këshilli i Lartë), the National Council (Këshillin Kombëtar), and moved the capital fromLushnjë toTirana.
The High Council was made up ofLuigj 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
Ahmet Zogu was elected Minister of Internal Affairs
Mehmed Konica - Minister of Foreign Affairs
Hoxha Kadri - Minister of Justice
Ndoc Çoba - Minister of Finance,Sotir Peçi - Minister of Education
Ali Riza Kolonja - Minister of War
Eshref Frashëri - General Director of World Affairs
Idhomen Kosturi - General Director of the Post-Telegraph Agency.
Albania's first political parties emerged only after World War I. Even more than in other parts of theBalkans, political parties were evanescent gatherings centered on prominent persons who created temporary alliances to achieve their personal aims. The major conservative party, the Progressive Party, attracted some northern clan chiefs and prominent Muslim landholders of southern Albania whose main platform was firm opposition to any agricultural reform program that would transfer their lands to thepeasantry.
The country's biggest landowner,Shefqet Bej Vërlaci, led the Progressive Party. The Popular Party's ranks included the reform-minded Orthodox bishop ofDurrës,Fan Noli, who was imbued with Western ideas at his alma mater,Harvard University,[8] and had even translatedShakespeare andIbsen into Albanian.[9] The Popular Party also includedAhmed Zogu, the twenty-four-year-old son of the chief of theMati, a Northern Albanian clan. The future King Zog drew his support from some northern clans and kept an armed gang in his service[citation needed], but many Geg clan leaders refused to support either main party.
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.
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 hispolitical 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 toKosovo or speak up more energetically for the rights of the ethnic Albanian minorities in formerYugoslavia (Kosovo, southernSerbia andVardar Macedonia) andGreece.
Zogu's party handily wonelections 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 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 RussianWhite 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, andAhmet Zogu returned with anothercoup d'état and regained the control, changing the political situation and abolishing the principality.
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 ofVlora, in 1912–1913 there has been no other change on this duty, except the import tax on tobacco, which at the time was added up to 30%, which became an order of the Ministry of Finance at the time, but that does not say that on which the law rested. For the period 1913–1914, when the government was in powerDurrës, although lacking formal notices to all customs fees, it is known that there was nothing changed from that of 1912–1913. So, until 1914 there was no change in customs regulations. Similarly, from 1914 until 1918 that the First World War continued and Albania was occupied sections by foreign powers, customs regulations functioned under laws that implement the relevant commands to foreign armies that were present in Albania ( Italians, French, Austro-Hungarians, etc..), which occasionally modified. Commands Austro-Hungarian armies and French (with the exception of any modification), made no change in the applicable customs legislation inherited from the government of Durrës 1914, while the Austro-Hungarian command center in Shkodra, in 1916 brought a decision on the curb, which consisted of eight articles. In the first article stated: "The word contraband, we learn that the sale of cntrabanded things, causes damage on the Treasury or the people. Damtime trigger ". Likewise, the French command of Korca took a decision to increase the fee (trails) customs. This decision, which was printed in Albanian and French, consisting of 11 articles and was signed by French General H. Salle, commander of troops in who were installed onMaliq. According to the state archives found inKorca, after two years (15 March 1920), this command issued another regulation, known as "Regulation Oktrovës" and was signed by the commander of the Albanian borders, Cretin. To regulate the customs service, after 1920, began functioning as separate offices in Vlora (Director customs), Korçë (Director of Oktrovës) in Shkodra and Lezha with customs Kryedrejtori. The latter, in 1920, moved to Durrës and Tirana later. It kryedrejtori customs headed by Ahmed Boriçi and operated independent from the Ministry of Finance, was abolished in 1923. Since 1920, when the government came to power out of Lushnjes Congress until 1934 (at which time the study was done Hajj Shkoza author), Albanian national administration, along with the development of all its activities in different branches economy, was also involved in the organization of the customs system. As originally drafted specific provisions on exports of grain and other products to local products, something which once made the decisions of the Council of Ministers and times of special laws decree issued by the government (in cases when the country needed bread due to the lack of grain). But when the products were successful and met all the needs of the country, farmers and grain traders were selling these exported out of them. From 1912 to 1939, the Albanian customs legislation was constantly being improved, reaching the most advanced countries of the West. It did at the time of our trade with foreign countries take the unprecedented growth. This continued well into the war years 1939–1944, after Italy, for propaganda purposes, liberalized trade with Albania, enabling you to our country pouring wholesale goods. As a result, even to this day remember the phrase: "as long Abundance of Italy".
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 theOttoman 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 onlyShkodër 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.
During this period Albanian religions got independence.Theecumenical patriarch of Constantinople recognized theautocephaly of theAlbanian Orthodox Church after a meeting of the country's Albanian Orthodox congregations inBerat in August 1922. The most energetic reformers in Albania came from the Orthodox population who wanted to see Albania move quickly away from its Turkish-ruled past, during which Christians made up the underclass. Albania's conservativeSunni Muslim community broke its last ties withConstantinople in 1923, formally declaring that there had been nocaliph sinceMuhammad himself and that Muslim Albanians pledged primary allegiance to their native country. The Muslims also bannedpolygamy and allowed women to choose whether or not towear a veil.
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.
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