Albanian National Awakening
The Albanian National Awakening, commonly known as the Albanian Renaissance or Albanian Revival, is a period throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, concerning a cultural, political, and social movement in Albanian history where the Albanian people gathered strength to establish an independent cultural and political life, as well as the country of Albania.
Prior to the rise of nationalism, Albania remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries and the Ottoman authorities suppressed any expression of national unity or institutional national conscience by the Albanian people. There is some debate among experts regarding when the Albanian nationalist movement should be considered to have started. Some sources attribute its origins to the revolts against centralisation in the 1830s, others to the publication of the first attempt by Naum Veqilharxhi at a standardized alphabet for Albanian in 1844, or to the collapse of the League of Prizren during the Eastern Crisis in 1881. Various compromise positions between these three theses have also emerged, such as one view positing that Albanian nationalism had foundations that dated earlier but "consolidated" as a movement during the Great Eastern Crisis.
Another view is that Albanian nationalism's roots "sprouted" in the reforms of the first decades of the 19th century, and that Albanian nationalism emerged properly in the 1830s and 1840s, when it was a romantic movement for societal reform that was initially mainly driven by Albanians publishing from abroad; it transformed into an overt political national movement in the 1870s. On 20 December 1912, the Conference of Ambassadors in London recognized an independent Albania within its present-day borders.
Background
Albanian Pashaliks
When the central authority of the Ottoman Empire and the timar system weakened, anarchy emerged in the Albanian-populated region of the empire, and in the late 18th century, two Albanian centers of power arose: the Pashalik of Shkodra under the Bushati family; and the Pashalik of Yanina under Ali Pasha of Tepelenë. Both cooperated with and defied the Sublime Porte as their interests required. The Albanian people had a great influence in the politics and events of the late 18th century and early 19th century Ottoman Empire, and in particular they played a key role in the Greek War of Independence, on both sides of the war. Pursuing their own interests, they acted after their own agenda, regardless of the Porte's demands.File:Ali Vizier of Albanien, also called Pacha of Jannina - Friedel Adam De - 1832.jpg|thumb|upright|Ali, Vizier of Albania, also called Pacha of Jannina by Adam Friedel, drawn from life and published in 1828.
The rulers of the increasingly independent Albanian Pashaliks were Albanian military leaders who were at first awarded for their loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, and who however exploited the weakness of the Sublime Porte to exercise in northern and southern Albania their gathered military and political power. While they are clearly not described as champions of national fight aiming at an independent and united Albania, but regarded as political opportunists within the context of the Ottomam Empire, nevertheless these Albanian rulers established separate states by challenging the authority of the Sublime Porte, and Ali Pasha of Yanina, in particular, also established foreign diplomatic relations with Napoleonic France and with Britain. British travellers who had met Ali Pasha noted that Ali described himself and the Albanians as friends of the British nation. Furthermore, Albanians were seen as living independently and without oppression by the Porte, meanwhile Ali Pasha was aiming to form some kind of alliance with the British government. Ali's separatist initiative, by conceiving his territory in increasingly independent terms referring to it as "Albania", eventually aiming at creating an independent Albanian–Greek state, revealed the vulnerability of Ottoman power. The Albanian rule of the Pashalik of Yanina as well as that of the Pashalik of Scutari caused the emergence of a sense of ethnic belonging among the Albanian people, which consequently led to an enduring hostility of Albanians against the Sublime Porte, also by seeking autonomy from its central power.
1831–1878
After the fall of the Yanina Pashalik, the power and influence of the Albanian beys had faded. The remaining beys thus attempted to restore their rule. An assembly was held in Berat in 1828. In this Convention, the leaders were Zylyftar Poda and Shahin bej Delvina. The Ottoman Empire tried to prevent the rise of local beys, which presented a menace to centralised power. In 1830, the Sublime Porte sent an expeditionary force under the command of Reşid Mehmed Pasha to suppress the local Albanian beys. On hearing the news of the Ottoman forces' arrival, the three most powerful local chiefs, Zylyftar Poda, accompanied by the remains of Ali Pasha's faction, Veli Bey, and Arslan Bey, along with other less powerful beys, began to prepare their forces to resist a probable Ottoman attack. Realising the seriousness of the situation and the danger of a general uprising, Reşid Mehmed Pasha invited the Albanian beys to a meeting on the pretext that they would be rewarded for their loyalty to the Porte. The beys however, were all killed along with their guards.The last Albanian pashalik to fall was the Scutari Pashalik. The Bushati dynasty rule ended when an Ottoman army under Mehmed Reshid Pasha besieged the Rozafa Castle and forced Mustafa Reshiti to surrender. The Albanian defeat ended a planned alliance between the Albanian beys and the Bosnian nobility, who were similarly seeking autonomy. Instead of the pashalik, the vilayets of Scutari and that of Kosovo were created.
Early revolts
By removing the Timar system, the Sublime Porte intended to strengthen its central government and reclaim the power of the Empire which had been severely weakened due to economic and social backwardness, from the exploitative system and from the ongoing uprisings of peoples. Reforms began to be implemented in Albania since the 1830s. They gave a blow to the ranks of the old military feudal class which had been weakened from Ottoman expeditions from 1822 to 1831. Parts of the feudal heads that had launched revolts were eliminated, others were exiled and those who could, had escaped from the country. All their properties were declared state-owned. This gave rise to new landowners who had connections to the Sublime Porte. Due to the Ottoman occupation, the ideology of Nationalism developed with difficulty and was limited in Albanian-inhabited territories in the Balkan. They found more favorable development conditions outside, in the capital of the Empire, Istanbul, Italy, other Balkan countries etc. The national ideas became apparent via popular uprisings against the Tanzimat reforms, but they still did not reach a period to be formulated in full policy of the National Movement. They were more expressed with literary works and studies of the Albanian people, history, language and culture. In their writings, the Rilindas fought to invoke feelings of love for the country by exalting patriotic traditions and episodes of history, especially that of the Skanderbeg era and folk culture; They devoted a lot of attention to native language and Albanian schools as a means to affirm individuality and national vindication.The centralising reforms of the Ottoman government were implemented immediately with the deployment of civil and military personnel in Albania. This was met with resistance by the local population which first began with the refusal to execute orders and quickly transformed into armed rebellion. After two local uprisings that burst in the beginning of 1833 in Kolonjë and in Dibër were repressed, uprisings occurred in Berat-Vlorë-Delvinë-Çamëria area in larger scales than before. The actions of the Ottoman army were driven by terror and increased unhappiness in the local population, who were aptly anticipated to revolt again. Fugitive agitators circulated across the provinces to organise further rebellions, calling on the people to prepare for war. Others were sent to neighbouring provinces to secure their presence by pointing out they are "brothers." To get ahead of the danger Of the new outbreak of popular hate, at the beginning of 1844, the Ottoman authorities urged urgent action. They concentrated large military forces at various points, especially in Bitola where the state was worse. By the end of March 1844, the new uprising erupted but was suppressed.
In the ensuing years there were bursts of armed insurrections throughout Albania against the Ottoman centralising reforms, and especially against the burden of the new taxes imposed and against the obligatory military service. But, at the same time and within the bosom of these insurrections, preliminary national claims started to spread. These claims came forth especially in the revolt of 1847, which assumed great proportions in two zones of Southern Albania: in the Gjirokastra region led by Zenel Gjoleka and in that of Berat led by Rapo Hekali.
The movement
Formation
There is some debate among experts regarding when the Albanian nationalist movement should be considered to have started. Some sources attribute its origins to the revolts against centralization in the 1830s, others to the publication of the first attempt by Naum Veqilharxhi at a standardized alphabet for Albanian in 1844, or to the collapse of the League of Prizren during the Eastern Crisis in 1881. Various compromise positions between these three theses have also emerged, such as one view positing that Albanian nationalism had foundations that dated earlier but "consolidated" as a movement during the Eastern Crisis. Another view is that Albanian nationalism's roots "sprouted" in the reforms of the first decades of the 19th century but Albanian nationalism emerged properly in the 1830s and 1840s as a romantic movement for societal reform that was initially mainly driven by Albanians publishing from a broad, and it transformed into an overt political national movement in the 1870s. According to the view that the Rilindja evolved in the 1870s, because of religious ties of the Albanian majority of the population with the ruling Ottomans and the lack of an Albanian state in past, nationalism was less developed and the national movement was greatly delayed among Albanians in the 19th century compared to neighbouring southeast European nations, such as the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians. The Rilindja was a continuation of the Albanian revolts and cultural activities for independence that took place during the entire Ottoman period. The centralist Tanzimat reforms, which were aimed at replacing local Albanian functionaries and suppression of Albanian culture sowed the seeds of the Rilindja. In that period an intellectual and merchant class with the new ideas that were emerging in Europe was shaped, empowering the existing struggle against the Ottoman rule. Political nationalism and economic liberalism were two modern platforms that inspired many Albanian intellectuals.The French Revolution left a socio-economic impact on the Albanian society, with many Albanian intellectuals highlighting ideals of the Revolution and important figures such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. During that time, the destruction of the Pashalik of Yanina and the growing Greek nationalist ambitions fueled reaction among the Albanian intellectual elite. The son of one merchant family, Naum Veqilharxhi, started his work to write an alphabet intended to help Albanians overcome religious and political issues in 1824 or 1825. Veqilharxhi thought that the continuous occupations had caused many problems to Albanian education. His work facilitated the diffusion of national awareness based on the unity of kin, identity of language and traditions. Some Albanian patriots, among them many from the Arbëreshë communities in Italy, built contacts with Italian democratic and revolutionary forces. This helped the Rilindja movement to expand beyond the frame of Albanian-Ottoman relations, and become an international issue. The Risorgimento actually served as an inspiration for the movement. The 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the Balkan Peninsula. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece fueled the rise of the Albanian national movement.
The first postwar treaty, the abortive Treaty of San Stefano signed on March 3, 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary and the United Kingdom blocked the arrangement because it awarded Russia a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in Berlin.
The Treaty of San Stefano triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in Constantinople—including Abdyl Frashëri, one of the first political ideologues of the National Revival-organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On June 10, 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly Muslim religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman vilayets, met in Prizren. The delegates declared the formation of the League of Prizren which consisted of two branches: the Prizren branch and the southern branch. The Prizren branch was led by Iljas Dibra and it had representatives from the areas of Kirçova, Kalkandelen, Pristine, Mitroviça, Viçitirin, Üsküp, Gilan, Manastir, Debar and Gostivar. The southern branch, led by Abdyl Frashëri consisted of sixteen representatives from the areas of Kolonjë, Korçë, Arta, Berat, Parga, Gjirokastër, Përmet, Paramythia, Filiates, Margariti, Vlorë, Tepelenë and Delvinë. The League of Prizren was set under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The League of Prizren worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania. The participants wanted to return to the status quo before the start of Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The main aim was to defend from immediate dangers. Among other things the League requested an official status for the Albanian language in the Albanian-inhabited territories and the foundation of Albanian schools.
At first the Ottoman authorities supported the League of Prizren, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. Other representatives, under Frashëri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the League of Prizren supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.
In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin, which was called to settle the unresolved problems of Turkish War, demanding that all Albanians be united in a single autonomous Ottoman province. The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and Podgorica and areas around the mountain towns of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also gained some Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible occupation of Epirus by Greece. The League of Prizren organized armed resistance efforts in Gusinje, Plav, Scutari, Prizren, Preveza, and Ioannina. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."
In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The Sublime Porte, in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the Albanian-populated coastal town of Ulcinj. There the Albanians refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only Thessaly and the district of Arta.
Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under Dervish Turgut Pasha to suppress the League of Prizren and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The League of Prizren's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frashëri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the League of Prizren effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.
Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve centre. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas and the choice for education was between Orthodox Church schools, where education was in Greek and Ottoman government schools where education was in Turkish.
The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin and Sultan Abdül Hamid II resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the League of Prizren and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian-populated lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities disbanded a successor organisation Besa-Besë founded in 1897, executed its president Haxhi Zeka in 1902, and banned Albanian-language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed guerrillas were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola during 1905 established the Secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. In 1905, priest Kristo Negovani who had attained Albanian national sentiments abroad returned to his native village of Negovan and introduced the Albanian language for the first time in Orthodox liturgy. For his efforts Negovani was killed by a Greek guerilla band on orders from Bishop Karavangelis of Kastoria that aroused a nationalist response with the Albanian guerilla band of Bajo Topulli killing the Metropolitan of Korçë, Photios.
In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and Macedonia escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan Abdül Hamid II agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of Abdül Hamid II in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountain men. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the bastinado, or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.
The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanise" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro held ambitions of future expansion into neighbouring Albanian-populated lands and supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.