Albanian National Awakening - Balkan Wars and Creation of Independent Albania

Balkan Wars and Creation of Independent Albania

The First Balkan War, however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. The Balkan allies—Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece—quickly drove the Ottomans to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded Scutari.

An assembly of Muslim and Christian leaders meeting in Vlorë in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding Treaty of London of May 1913. The Albanian delegation in London was assisted by Aubrey Herbert, MP, a passionate advocate of their cause.

One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.

In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 Treaty of Bucharest established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro had to surrender Scutari after having lost 10,000 men in the process of taking the town. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.

Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and Serbs since the Middle Ages, but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider Kosovo their Holy Land. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the 7th century, that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, Stefan Dušan, established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the Serbian Orthodox Church, are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national history, the battle against the Ottoman Turks, took place at Kosovo Polje in 1389. The Albanians, on their part, point to the Illyrian theory of Albanian origins discussed above, as well as to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the League of Prizren, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on their claim that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century.

When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Commission of Control, which endeavored to expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of Essad Pasha Toptani, who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons.