History

Albanians are descendants of ancient Illyrians, who appear as inhabitants of Eastern regions of the Balkan peninsula since the dawn of European history. About the middle of the first millenium BC the Illyrians entered the path of urban civilization and established their separate states. But the road to their subsequent independent political, economic, social and cultural development was interrupted by foreign conquests, which, with some short-termed exceptions, overwhelm the two millennia AD. European.

The series of foreign rules was opened by Rome in 168 BC to be continued five centuries later, in 395 AD, by the Byzantine Empire. The long Byzantine rule was attended, sometimes even interrupted, by barbarian onslaughts, Slav colonization, Bulgarian rule, Norman invasion, Angevin reign and Serb occupation. During these many-centuried conquests, only once had the Albanians the opportunity to emancipate themselves politically, which occurred by the late 12th century, with the formation of the Principality of Arbλria that also had a short life (1191-1216).

With Stephan Dushani's death (1355), the second period of the political emancipation of Albanians began. Within a short time, a series of Albanian independent polities were restored, which sped up to make up for lost time to form a united Albanian state. To their bad luck, Ottoman Turks invaded and interrupted the historical process that was leading the country towards the National State. Albanian lands fell under the Ottoman rule, though the national liberation process was not demolished. It acted like hot coals under ashes until half a century later, in 1443, when the volcano of the general uprising broke out, led by an excellent captain, George Kastrioti - Scanderbeg, who gave his own people two greatest historical values, the freedom of the country and the Albanian national state.

Albanians waged wars under his leadership for a quarter of a century, becoming at the same time a shield for the European civilization too. But eventually, deserted by Europe, against the Ottoman military superiority, Albanians were defeated. Albanians were subjected to Ottoman's yoke for nearly five centuries, until 1912, when they won their national independence. In 1913, however, by the decision of the Great Powers, only half of their ethnic territory was included within the borders of the new Albanian State. From the partitioned Ottoman yoke the other half passed under the Serb, Greek, Montenegrin and finally Macedonian yoke.

This is in brief the tragic history of the Albanian people, a history full of foreign occupations and rules, five of which were empires, such as the Roman, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian and Ottoman Empires. Each of them tried hard to force Albanians to lose their ethnic identity, their language, culture, customs and mores, religious unity, national solidarity and historical descent. In brief, each of them tried hard to assimilate the Albanians.

In the 19th century, there were diplomats and publicists who thought that no more Albanian nation was existing in the Balkan Peninsula. But soon thereafter they were disillusioned. The Albanians were not like the Phoenix who rose from the ashes. They were just there, where they had been living in all past millennia.

The same happened at the end of the 20th century with Kosovo Albanians. Serb diplomats and publicists cried that there were no Albanians worthy of freedom and state there, but they were wrong. The earthquake the Kosovo Albanians generated in 1998 was similar to the seismic tremors that the same Kosovars brought about to the Balkans in 1912, but with an essential difference, for in 1913 the Europe of dynasties and colonies exhibited itself to be deaf and double-dealing. Instead, in 1999, both Europe and America of freedoms and democracies started the engines and intervened to put an end to oppression, atrocities, holocaust, the first occasion to the benefit of the millenarian Albanians.

Not a few historians, Albanian and foreign ones, have written on the Albania's history. Each one of them has met with a question, which most of them have not given it a convincing answer. What is the character of this people that has resisted a host of hurricanes, such hurricanes that have wiped out from history not a few nations? What has caused this people to survive after that host of tumults through which it has passed since the dawn of history up to our present days? Or, to put it briefly, what are the ethnic features of this people whether in a broad sense, or in a close look, which, even though it has been partitioned among several states, it cherishes in its subconsciousness its desire, and also conviction, that one day its members, amputated by the atrocious scissors of diplomacy, will come together, not through fight, as it formerly used to think, but after the light the new Europe is shedding, through peaceful means.

                                                                   Prof. Kristo Frasheri
                                         By:     “Albania a Patrimony of European Values”
                                                        Project financed by EU and UNDP
 

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