Rilindja and the League of Prizren

The Albanian independence movement did not begin in 1912. It grew from seeds planted decades earlier during what Albanians call the Rilindja Kombëtare—the National Awakening.

Unlike their Greek and Serbian neighbors, Albanians faced a unique obstacle in forging a national identity: they were divided not just by geography but by religion. The majority were Muslim, with significant Orthodox Christian and Catholic minorities. There was no Albanian church to rally around, no Albanian-language schools, no common written standard. Albanians in Ottoman schools learned Turkish; Orthodox Albanians learned Greek.

The poet Pashko Vasa captured this challenge in his 1878 poem O moj Shqypni (Oh Albania): “Albanians, you are killing kinfolk, you’re split in a hundred factions… The Albanian’s faith is Albanianism!” The idea that national identity could transcend religious division was revolutionary for its time.

The political awakening came urgently that same year. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 had devastated Ottoman power in the Balkans, and the resulting Treaty of San Stefano threatened to carve Albanian-inhabited lands among Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece. On June 10, 1878, Albanian leaders from across the four vilayets gathered in Prizren and formed the League of Prizren—the first organized Albanian political movement.

The League demanded that all Albanian-inhabited lands be united in a single autonomous Ottoman province. They raised armed resistance against territorial concessions to Montenegro and Serbia, with fighting along the borders so fierce that one contemporary described the frontier as “floating on blood.” The Congress of Berlin ignored their memorandum. But the League had accomplished something lasting: it had demonstrated that Albanians could organize across religious and regional lines when their survival demanded it.

The Ottoman authorities eventually crushed the League in 1881, but the movement it represented could not be extinguished. Albanian intellectuals continued their work in exile—in Bucharest, Sofia, Istanbul, and Boston. They standardized the alphabet (the Monastir Congress of 1908 adopted the Latin script), opened Albanian-language schools wherever Ottoman authorities could not reach, and published newspapers that circulated clandestinely.

The Albanian Revolts and the Race to Independence

Between 1910 and 1912, Albanian rebellions erupted across the highlands. These were not yet fights for independence but for autonomy—resistance to the Young Turk government’s centralizing reforms, which threatened traditional privileges in taxation, military service, and administration. The revolts succeeded. By September 1912, the Ottoman authorities conceded Albanian administrative privileges, just as the Balkan League prepared to attack.

The timing was not coincidental. Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria had been watching Albania’s uprisings with predatory interest. On October 8, 1912, Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, followed within days by the other Balkan states. Their stated goal was to liberate Christian populations from Ottoman rule. Their actual goal, as far as Albania was concerned, was partition.

By November 1912, Serbian troops had reached the Adriatic coast at Durrës. Greek forces occupied the south. Montenegrin armies besieged Shkodra. The four vilayets of Albanian-inhabited territory were being carved apart.

November 28, 1912

Enter Ismail Qemali—a 68-year-old statesman who had spent decades navigating Ottoman imperial politics. Born to a noble family in Vlorë, Qemali had served as a provincial governor, sat in the Ottoman parliament, and eventually fell out with the regime. By 1912, he was in Vienna, negotiating with Austro-Hungarian officials who saw an independent Albania as a buffer against Serbian expansion to the Adriatic.

With Austro-Hungarian support (and an Austrian ship at his disposal), Qemali sailed to Durrës in mid-November, found it too dangerous with Serbian forces approaching, and continued south to Vlorë. His son Ethem had summoned delegates from across Albania. On November 26, Qemali arrived. Two days later, on November 28, 1912, forty delegates gathered at the house of Xhemil Bey Vlora.

Qemali addressed the assembly bluntly: the only way to prevent Albania’s partition was to declare it an independent state, immediately. The delegates voted unanimously. At 5:30 that afternoon, Qemali and Luigj Gurakuqi raised the double-headed eagle flag from the balcony. Qemali reportedly told the crowd: “With tears of joy in my eyes, I have come here to share with you the happy tidings: that today, effective this very moment, our Congress has declared our independence.”

It was more hope than reality. Vlorë was the only town under the delegates’ control. But in the vacuum of collapsing Ottoman authority, the declaration proved effective. The Great Powers—particularly Austria-Hungary and Italy, who feared Serbian access to the Adriatic—threw their diplomatic weight behind Albanian independence.

The Great Powers Draw the Borders

International recognition came slowly and came with a brutal price. The London Conference of Ambassadors spent months negotiating Albania’s future. Their initial preference was Ottoman suzerainty with Albanian autonomy. When it became clear the Ottoman Empire would lose all territorial connection to Albania, they pivoted to independence—but refused to grant Albania the territory its delegates claimed.

The Treaty of London, signed on May 30, 1913, created an Albanian state comprising only its central regions. Kosovo went to Serbia. Parts of the north went to Montenegro. Much of the south—including the region Greeks called Northern Epirus—was contested with Greece. An estimated half of all ethnic Albanians were left outside the new state’s borders.

The Great Powers then selected a ruler. Their choice was Prince Wilhelm of Wied, a 37-year-old German Protestant with no political experience and no knowledge of Albania. He was a compromise candidate—the only one Austria-Hungary and Italy could both accept.

The Six-Month Prince

Wilhelm arrived in Durrës on March 7, 1914, aboard an Austro-Hungarian naval vessel. He was styled Mbret (King) by Albanians but merely “Sovereign Prince” in diplomatic correspondence. The French press mockingly called him “le Prince de Vide”—the Prince of Emptiness, a pun on his homeland of Wied.

His brief reign proved disastrous. Wilhelm had only military training, no diplomatic experience, and no understanding of Albanian politics. He stepped into a minefield.

In the south, ethnic Greeks proclaimed the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus and Greek troops occupied territory Albania claimed. In central Albania, a rebellion led by Essad Pasha Toptani—his own minister of war—threatened the capital. Essad, backed by Italian money, was playing his own game for power. Wilhelm eventually had him arrested and expelled, but the damage was done.

When World War I erupted in August 1914, Wilhelm’s European backers turned their attention elsewhere. Without foreign financial or military support, his government collapsed. On September 3, 1914, just six months after arriving, Wilhelm boarded a ship for Italy, insisting he remained head of state. He never returned. The reign of Albania’s first foreign prince had been, in the words of one historian, “short, confused, and inglorious.”

World War I

What followed was chaos. With no functioning central government, Albania fractured into competing zones of control. Italy, which had occupied Vlorë since 1914, expanded its presence across the south. Serbia and Montenegro occupied the north. French troops held Korçë. Greece pushed into the south again.

By January 1920, at the Paris Peace Conference, negotiators from France, Britain, and Greece agreed—behind Albania’s back—to partition the country. Yugoslavia would take the north. Greece would take the south. Italy would keep Vlorë and a central buffer zone. Albania would effectively cease to exist as an independent state.

The Congress of Lushnjë and the Vlora War

The partition agreement galvanized Albanian resistance. On January 28–31, 1920, Albanian leaders gathered at the Congress of Lushnjë and declared the partition plan illegitimate. They established a new government, formed a four-man High Council to serve as collective head of state, moved the capital to Tirana, and—crucially—declared that Albanians would take up arms to defend their territorial integrity.

The first target was Italy. Albanian irregular forces began harassing Italian positions around Vlorë. On June 4, 1920, a full-scale assault began. Albanian fighters—peasants armed with old rifles, swords, and sometimes just sticks—attacked Italian garrisons across the region. The fighting was fierce. An Italian general was killed at Kota. Tepelena surrendered. Italian morale collapsed.

By August, despite vastly superior Italian firepower, Rome recognized the situation was untenable. Facing anti-war sentiment at home and an insurgency in Albania they could not suppress, the Italians negotiated a withdrawal. By September 1920, they had evacuated all of Albania except the small island of Sazan at the mouth of Vlorë Bay.

The Vlora War was Albania’s foundational military victory—proof that Albanians could defend their independence through force. Yugoslavia’s claims in the north were eventually resolved through diplomacy, and Albania’s borders were internationally recognized by 1921. The country had survived.

The Rise of Ahmet Zogu

The 1920s were a period of intense political instability as various factions competed for power. The central figure who emerged was Ahmet Zogu, a chieftain from the northern Mat region who would dominate Albanian politics for nearly two decades.

Zogu was pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness. He had fought both for and against various powers during World War I, switching sides like a coward as circumstances demanded. By 1922, at just 27 years old, he was prime minister. A remorseless narcissist, he built his power base on northern tribal alliances and conservative landowning interests, ruling with an increasingly authoritarian hand.

Opposition came from liberals and reformers, many rallied around Fan Noli—a remarkable figure who was simultaneously an Albanian Orthodox bishop, a Harvard-educated scholar, a translator of Shakespeare and Cervantes, and a fiery political orator. Noli represented the progressive wing of Albanian politics: land reform, modernization, democracy.

In April 1924, the assassination of Avni Rustemi—a popular liberal politician—ignited a revolt. Noli’s funeral oration for Rustemi was so powerful that it sparked an uprising. Armed supporters marched on Tirana. In June, Zogu fled to Yugoslavia. The June Revolution had succeeded.

Fan Noli became prime minister and proclaimed an ambitious “Twenty Point Program” of radical reforms: abolishing feudalism, resisting Italian domination, establishing democratic government. It was idealistic, perhaps naively so. Noli refused to hold new elections, claiming Albania needed “paternal” government first. He failed to secure foreign recognition or financial support. The Western powers distrusted his Soviet contacts. Within six months, his coalition was fracturing.

On December 13, 1924, Zogu crossed back into Albania with an army of a thousand loyalist tribesmen and White Russian mercenaries, financed by Belgrade. By Christmas Eve, he had retaken Tirana. Noli fled to Italy, then permanently to the United States. His revolutionary government had lasted just six months.

King Zog

Zogu consolidated power with characteristic efficiency. His opponents were imprisoned or assassinated. By early 1925, leading figures of Noli’s revolution—including the legendary highland chieftain Bajram Curri and the intellectual Luigj Gurakuqi—were dead.

In January 1925, the National Assembly declared Albania a republic and elected Zogu president with sweeping executive powers. Three years later, in September 1928, Albania was proclaimed a kingdom. Zogu crowned himself Zog I, King of the Albanians, styling himself also as “Skanderbeg III” in homage to the medieval hero.

Zog’s reign brought Albania its first extended period of stability since independence. He built roads, opened schools, modernized the legal system, and suppressed the blood feuds that had claimed so many Albanian lives. By 1938, 36 percent of children were receiving some education, up from almost none at independence. The country’s infrastructure, primitive as it remained, was better than it had ever been.

But this stability came at a price. Albania under Zog was a police state where civil liberties were nonexistent and the press was censored. More dangerously, it was economically dependent on Fascist Italy.

Beginning in 1925, Italy provided loans, military advisors, and economic investment that Albania could not refuse. Italian companies controlled Albanian resources. Italian officers trained the Albanian army. Italian money built Albanian infrastructure—and Italian influence grew proportionally.

Zog tried to resist. In 1931, he refused to renew the Treaty of Tirana, stood up to Italian pressure, slashed the national budget, dismissed Italian military advisors, and nationalized Italian-run Catholic schools. He signed trade agreements with Yugoslavia and Greece to reduce dependence on Rome. Mussolini responded by suspending payments to Tirana and sending a fleet of warships to intimidate the Albanians.

It didn’t work—the Albanians refused to let Italian forces land armed. But the fundamental imbalance remained. Albania was too poor and too isolated to survive without a great power patron. And by the late 1930s, Italy was the only option.

The End of the Kingdom

On March 25, 1939, Italy delivered an ultimatum to King Zog: accept an Italian occupation or face invasion. Zog refused.

On April 7, 1939—Good Friday—Italian forces landed at four Albanian coastal cities. The invasion force was enormous: 22,000 soldiers, 400 aircraft, 300 tanks, numerous warships. Albanian defense forces numbered perhaps 4,000 soldiers and 3,000 gendarmes.

Some Albanians resisted, particularly at Durrës, where fighting was fierce enough that the Italians immediately removed the bodies and washed the harbor to conceal their losses. But organized resistance was impossible. Within days, the country was overrun.

King Zog, his wife Queen Geraldine (whom he had married just a year earlier), and their infant son Leka—born just two days before the invasion—fled to Greece and eventually to London. “Oh God, it was so short,” Zog reportedly said as he left Albanian soil.

On April 12, the Albanian parliament voted to unite the country with Italy. Victor Emmanuel III of Italy took the Albanian crown. Albania had lost its independence.

World War II

Italian occupation lasted until September 1943, when Italy surrendered to the Allies and Nazi Germany took over. For Albanians, this meant four years under Italian fascism followed by more than a year under Nazi occupation.

Resistance movements emerged, but they were deeply divided. The communist National Liberation Movement (known by its Albanian acronym LANÇ) was led by Enver Hoxha, a 34-year-old French-educated schoolteacher with no military experience but considerable political ambition. The nationalists organized as Balli Kombëtar (National Front), a movement that supported Albanian territorial claims to Kosovo but was anti-communist and increasingly willing to collaborate with the occupiers against their domestic rivals. A third group, Legaliteti, sought the restoration of King Zog.

Initially, the communist and nationalist resistance cooperated against the Italians. In August 1943, they signed the Mukje Agreement, pledging to work together and support a postwar plebiscite on Kosovo. But the agreement collapsed almost immediately.

Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito pressured the Albanian communists to repudiate the Kosovo provisions—he had no intention of ceding Yugoslav territory. The Balli Kombëtar denounced the communists as traitors. Civil war erupted.

The Germans proved more adept at exploiting Albanian nationalism than the Italians had been, promising a “Greater Albania” that would include Kosovo after the war. Many Balli Kombëtar units collaborated with the German occupation against the communists. The collaborators formed an Albanian SS division called Skanderbeg, which participated in persecuting Jews and Serbs in Kosovo.

But the communists were better organized, better disciplined, and backed by the Yugoslav partisans. By mid-1944, the National Liberation Army had 70,000 fighters in the field. They defeated the last Balli Kombëtar forces in the south that summer and met only scattered resistance as they pushed into central and northern Albania.

On November 17, 1944, after a 20-day battle, communist partisans liberated Tirana. By November 29—one day after the 32nd anniversary of Ismail Qemali’s declaration—Albania was fully liberated from German occupation.

The Communists Take Power

From the start, the new government was an undisguised communist regime. The 36-year-old Enver Hoxha became prime minister. Tribunals were established to try “war criminals” and “enemies of the people”—categories that conveniently included anyone who might oppose the new order.

King Zog was barred from returning. The monarchy was formally abolished. Opposition figures were executed, imprisoned, or driven into exile. Albania had fought for its independence in 1912, nearly lost it through partition and occupation, and now found itself entering four decades of the most isolated, repressive communist dictatorship in Europe.

The country that Ismail Qemali had declared into existence on a balcony in Vlorë—fragile, contested, perpetually threatened by its neighbors—had survived. But the democratic, Western-oriented Albania that Fan Noli had briefly envisioned, or the modernizing monarchy that Zog had attempted, would not be seen for another half-century.

Albania (1912–1944) Timeline

1878 – League of Prizren forms to resist partition of Albanian lands

November 28, 1912 – Ismail Qemali declares Albanian independence in Vlorë

May 1913 – Treaty of London creates Albanian state; borders exclude half of ethnic Albanian population

March 1914 – Prince Wilhelm of Wied arrives as Albania’s first ruler

September 1914 – Wilhelm flees; Albania descends into wartime chaos

January 1920 – Congress of Lushnjë rejects Great Power partition plan

June–August 1920 – Vlora War forces Italian withdrawal

1922 – Ahmet Zogu becomes prime minister at age 27

June 1924 – Fan Noli’s June Revolution briefly overthrows Zogu

December 1924 – Zogu returns with Yugoslav backing; begins 14-year rule

September 1928 – Zogu crowns himself King Zog I

April 7, 1939 – Italy invades; Zog flees with family

September 1943 – Germany occupies Albania after Italy’s surrender

November 29, 1944 – Communist partisans liberate Albania; Enver Hoxha takes power

About the author

Enri Zhulati is the Albanian voice behind AlbaniaVisit.com, where he writes to spotlight the country’s natural and cultural beauty. He grew up in Tirana during the final years of communist Albania. His father, Ilia Zhulati, played a key role in secretly restoring diplomatic relations between Albania and the United States.

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