The following article originally appeared in the Albanian daily Gazeta Tema. It is penned by Pëllumb Xhufi, head of the Sector for Societal and Albanological Studies at the Albanian Academy of Sciences. Xhufi is recognized as one of the country’s foremost historians, though his career has included some controversy.
The following article provides a rare account of Albanian political life at the beginning of the twentieth century, as the nation inched painfully towards independence. Though it risks perpetuating the region's long tradition of compartmentalizing complex history into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, the piece nonetheless draws a key distinction that must be understood by anyone interested in modern Albanian history.
Originally published this time last year, we bring you this translation in honor of the 112th anniversary of Albania's independence.
The events that culminated with the declaration of Independence on November 28th, 1912 developed as Albanian society saw significant displacements. In the place of the old feudal and Turkophile elite, heavily compromised with the Ottoman regime, emrged a new strata, represented by intellectuals of liberal and social-democratic ideals. They appeared on the stage of history with the ambition of leading the Albanian people through its wars for freedom and its own nation-state.
Inspired by the ideas of the French Enlightenment and the Italian Risorgimento, the ideologues and champions of the Albanian national movement saw a separation from the old regime as a historical necessity, which, through a national and social revolution, would eliminate, along with Ottoman rule, the power of the Albanian “hearths”: the classes of the old Beys, the pashas, the tribal leaders and high clerics, collaborators and co-rulers with the foreign occupiers.
An analysis of the different social groups and their attitudes toward the national movement in directly pre-Independence Albania is executed masterfully in a report dated February 5th, 1912 by the Austro-Hungarian consul in Ioannina, Biliński.
On one side Biliński lists the representatives of the beylers’ aristocracy, of the pashas and the chieftains, who, according to him, had become one with the Ottoman ruling class. Here Biliński includes the likes of Ferid Pasha Vlora, Myfid Bey Libohova and Essad Pasha Toptani among others. On the other end were the true Albanian patriots, who, according to Biliński, belonged to the middle classes, such as the teachers of the Albanian-speaking schools, newspaper publishers, club secretaries, functionaries and officers.
It was them who had led the National Renaissance, who had educated the populace in the Albanian language, who had strengthened the national consciousness, who had raised awareness among European circles regarding the existence of the Albanians and their national cause, and who had prepared and commanded the armed patriotic groups in their battles for freedom and independence. In his analysis of Albanian society on the eve of Independence, he does not forget to identify a grouping within the feudal elite which predicted that it would lose its old influence, prestige and privilege with the fall of the Empire. That is why, at the last moment, they joined the national movement.
They did not see a way of playing a leading role in the country’s political life going forward without involving themselves in the movement for independence. “Regardless of their involvement,” the consul Biliński concludes in his analysis, “the activities of the Tosk armed bands last year was organized entirely by the patriotic intellectuals of the middle classes. The beys were not involved whatsoever in such actions..."
Every now and then some of these beys, such as Mehmet Ali Pasha, the deputy Mufid Bey Libohova or some other, were obliged to give the bands some small monetary help, but this was done under pressure from the radical elements of the armed movement, who threatened undertaking terrorist acts if they did not cooperate. As the facts show, the old feudal ruling class remained loyal to the Ottoman Empire until the very end, and what is more, began flirting with neighboring monarchies – precisely those which most threatened Albania’s territorial integrity.
Audrey Herbert, a British MP and great friend of the Albanian people, recounts that Mehmet Konica and Filip Noga had told him in 1913 in London that “the people can no longer tolerate the beys and pashas, and that a great democratic movement is expected to erupt.” Convinced of the traitorous role of the Turkophile Albanian beys was, along with many other activists of the national movement, Dervish Hima. On September 12th 1901, from the pages of the “Albania” magazine, he accused them of betraying the Albanian cause “for the tin medals the Sultan hangs on their chests.”
He would also remind them menacingly that “in Europe kings, princes and nobles have passed through the people’s sword of justice” and that “those you have mistreated and humiliated, will one day be honored.”
The most emblematic representative of the old elite in the period of the leap from the disintegration of the Empire to the creation of an independent Albanian state was, without a doubt, Essad Pasha Toptani. Many evaluations have been written by those who have known him, and they have all been extremely negative. Essad was the man who “did not know a single foreign language, yet knew the value of every European currency,” wrote the historian Margaret McMillan. He was “prepared to sell the entire country, just to rule a single village of his own,” declared Audrey Herbert.
He returned from the defense of Shkodra in disgrace, and though invited to play a part in Ismail Qemali’s cabinet, did everything in his power to sabotage the union of the Albanian territories around the government of Vlora. The pasha attempted to create a state of his own in Central Albania, first in 1913 with the help of the Turkophile feudal lords and France, and again in 1915 with Serbian help.
His secret deals with Eleftherios Venizelos of Greece, the “prime-minister” of the government of “autonomous Epirus” Georgios Christakis-Zografos and Nikola Pašić of Serbia in August-September of 1914, make him the prototype of the Albanian politician, who, to protect his own power, does not hesitate to put his nation’s interests and territories up for sale.
On the other hand, the loftiest representative of the group of patriotic champions was Ismail Qemali, a personality who brought together to the highest degree all of the features of a visionary and wise leader. He separated himself from the beys – his own class – early on. In 1900, the Austro-Hungarian consul Petrović described him as a learned and intelligent man, but one who had no wealth of which to speak. Just as the Frashëri brothers, Faik Konica, Said Toptani, Fehmi Zavallani and Shahin Kollonja, he lived through the strength of his mind and not through feudal ranks, as did the other progeny of the Vlora family.
Unlike even Faik, he never signed himself as “Bey,” although others addressed him by the title out of respect. He dedicated himself to education and work. He was formed in the spirit of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” of the French Revolution, which explains why he did not hesitate to criticize the actions of France itself, the land of liberty, which brutally suppressed the freedoms of its colonies. As an intellectual who harbored liberal ideas, he included himself in the reformatory process of the Ottoman Empire, convinced that in such a commonwealth of peoples the Albanians would find the space to affirm their denied nationhood.
When he saw that the despotic power did not leave a chance for decentralizing reforms, he cut all ties with the Sublime Porte, escaped and decided to focus all of his efforts on the Albanian cause. In his call to Albanians on October 15th, 1900, he stated: “I understood that there was no point in continuing to try saving the Turkish Empire … I felt that, in the grand upheavals that were to take up the Empire, Albania would be the first to be carved up.”
Meanwhile, he had experienced every emotion of the National Renaissance. He had been involved in the debates over the alphabet of Istanbul and had tirelessly defended the use of Latin letters; he had forcefully intervened to allow the publication of Konstandin Kristoforidhi’s dictionary; he had attempted to decipher, using the Albanian language, the inscriptions discovered in Crete by the archaeologist Arthur Evans and had himself discovered the Oracle of Dodona, the temple of the Pelasgians, whom he, like many of his National Renaissance peers, considered the ancestors of the Albanians. Convinced of the forthcoming collapse of the Empire and the imminent danger of Pan-Slavism, he worked to establish strong alliances with neighboring countries.
From this perspective, he worked to build a sustainable alliance with the Greeks, a people just as ancient and with similar interests to the Albanians. In the role of a simple citizen and not as one brandishing high rank and authority, he met the Hellenic prime minister, Georgios Theotokis in 1907. After his death, Greek propaganda, supported by voices within Albania itself, claimed that in this meeting Ismail Qemali signed a declaration accepting the cession of southern Albania to Greece.
This is in the year 1907, where even in the administration of the Greek state not only Çamëria, but the entirety of Epirus was referred to as “Lower Albania” (Kato Alvania).
Despite his wish to build an alliance with Greece against Ottomanism and Pan-Slavism, he did not make any compromises harmful to national interests. In 1911, he refused Athens’ request to cease the organization of uprisings in southern Albania. When Greece openly declared its pretensions to Albanian territories, invading, burning and expelling throughout the South, he went to work establishing an alliance with Turkey, and, after the onset of the Second Balkan War, with Bulgaria.
These were two countries which, with the sharpness of an experienced politician, Ismail Qemali evaluated as natural allies of the Albanians at the moment when, for their own interests, they turned their arms against the Greeks.
The elder of Vlora and the patriots around him did not trust the powerful Albanian feudal “hearths,” which remained loyal to the Ottoman Empire until its last day. The beys did not answer his call to involve themselves in the uprising of 1911. Neither did they answer on January 10th, 1913, when he called upon the Southern “elite” to mobilize forces in aid of Ioannina, then encircled by Greek arms.
Even now the pashas and beys of the South took care to protect their own properties and privileges, even by cutting deals with Greek circles. He had hoped, in this dramatic moment when his government found itself without resources, without an army and with its territory divided on all four sides, that the beys and pashas would put their battalions in service of the fatherland, which they had up until then placed in the disposition of the Padishah.
For this objective, he brought into his cabinet, which was composed by distinguished intellectuals, Mufit Bey Libohova and Mehmet Pasha Derralla as Minister of the Interior and Minister of Defense respectively. The two did not vindicate his hopes. The former tried to corrode the government from the inside, acting as a spokesperson and informant for the French and Italians on the International Commission, the latter by not leaving any real mark on the defense of the besieged territories.
In this utterly chaotic situation, Ismail Qemali considered the unification of Shkodra with the national government of vital importance, and for this objective called upon the elite of that city multiple times, and even sent Luigj Gurakuqi, a native of the city, to convince it to execute such a patriotic act. But the elite of Shkodra responded that they were satisfied under the governance of the International Commission. Even in Vlora, Ismail Qemali was surrounded by opponents, intrigants and skeptics, who could conceptualize independence and the Albanian state only as a creation of unscrupulous deals with foreign powers.
Such were those close to him, namely Ferit Pasha, Syrja Bey and the latter's son, Eqerrem Bey Vlora. These were the first to Qemali as an “ungrateful traitor” when he escaped from Beirut, declaring that from then on he would dedicate his life to the Albanian cause. When, on the 16th of April, 1911, he declared that the people of Vlora were prepared to take up arms and join the uprising in the North, Syrja Bey Vlora, Xhemil Bey Vlora, the mufti and other representatives of Vlora’s elite hastened to assure the Porte that “peace and quiet reigned” in the city and all of the South, even actively working to sabotage the popular movement.
It was his cousins who reported him to the International Commission for his purported involvement in the pro-Ottoman Beqir Gebrene case, which brought about the downfall of the national government in Vlora.
Despite these betrayals, despite the constant disappointments from his friends and allies, who, upon hearing of the upcoming arrival of Prince Weid, betrayed his national government and hastened to Durrës to claim some position in the feudal government of the German prince, he did not lose his hope and faith in the future of the fatherland.
“It is necessary that we gain, by any means: Kosova, Monastir, Ioannina, and the entirety of Çamëria,” he wrote from his forced exile, “but for this, I do not place my hope in the beys and rulers who seek to gain titles and become princes … My hope is in the small property owners and artisans, to whom Albania truly belongs.”
The figure of Ismail Qemali has retained a perception as a “wise old man,” “a master of political and diplomatic games,” or a “salon negotiator.” Certainly, he was this, too. But he was just as much an organizer of the anti-Ottoman uprisings of the 1900-1912 period, as recounted by foreign consuls or Young Turk agents. Upon meeting him for the first time in Italy in 1903, Dervish Hima was shocked to find that Ismail Qemali was a believer of the revolution. “Ismail Qemali,” he writes, “believes that the revolution is a sort of sweeping vortex which will make it possible to reclaim the time lost. In the conditions of severe underdevelopment, the Albanian people need to be brought into the proper path by force.” Hima did not expect such a “revolutionary” concept regarding the acceleration of historical processes from a long-serving functionary of the Ottoman Empire. During the armed uprisings, Ismail Qemali undertook the responsibility of supplying arms. On the 5th of May, 1909, the wali of Ioannina reported that Qemali was in Corfu, from where he was trying to import 50,000 rifles into Albania. During the uprising of 1911, he went himself to Malësia (the Great Highlands of the North), where he formulated the so-called Memorandum of Greça, which was needed to secure Albania’s autonomy.
The 1910-1914 period is among the most dramatic in Albania’s history, in which foreign elements were heavily involved in deciding its fate. Confronting them, Ismail Qemali protected national interests with a rare dignity and from a sovereign standpoint. He knew neither servility nor inferiority complex, which remain to this day the endemic vice of the Albanian political class. He valued the irreplaceable role which Austria-Hungary played in the advancement of Albanian national interests but stood against their status-quo policies.
He never forgave the Austro-Hungarian intervention in quelling the uprising in Malësia, for which they even utilized the Catholic clergy. His pointed statement in the Viennese newspaper Die Zeit dated July 31, 1911 reads: “Political mistakes are unforgivable, but a political stance which costs the life of an entire people runs against every political moral.” With an unmatched intuition and foresight, he opposed the Austro-Hungarian project of the Sanjak railroad, which Vienna decided to construct after annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. This railroad would stretch into Mitrovica in Kosova and from there on to the port city of Durrës.
According to the consul Kraus, who met with him to discuss this matter, the Albanian leader opposed this project on the basis that, in the future, the railroad could become a means of Slavic expansion into Albanian territories. Not without reason, he branded it the “Slavic railroad.” The man who had long predicted the collapse of the Ottoman Empire knew very well that the Austro-Hungarian Empire would soon disintegrate, too. As if to confirm his suspicions, on September 14, 1914, representatives of the Serbian government signed an agreement with an Albanian pasha in Niš, point 11 of which outlines the construction of an “Adriatic Railroad” ending in Durrës.
This agreement was revived at the end of 1915, sanctioning not only the construction of the railroad, but a substantial union between Serbia and Albania, unifying their armies, customs, diplomacy, finances and trade.
On the Albanian side, the signatory of both agreements was the same man: Esad Pasha Toptani.
In January of 1914, on the basis of artful denunciations by a few discredited figures, namely Myfit Bey Vlora and Syrja Bey Vlora, in collaboration with the Russian and French members of the International Commission, Qemali was forced to resign from his post as the Head of the Provisional Government and flee the country.
Through all the treacheries of his political opponents and all the disappointments he suffered, even from his close allies, Ismail Qemali did not lose his bearing as a statesman and a patriot. Only about a month after, in August of 1914, he was notified that the religiously-inspired rebel peasant forces of Haxhi Qamili had arrived in Vlora. From there, the rebels had sent a list of requests in the form of ultimatums to the municipality: they insisted that the latter turn over the city, disband the administration and the gendarmerie, allow a thousand rebel troops to enter the city, and, above all, to take down the national flag and raise the Ottoman one in its place.
Ismail Qemali’s advice regarding his compatriots’ requests was characterized by his usual composure and resoluteness. In the precarious conditions the country, and Vlora especially, found itself, there was no other option but to communicate with the rebels regarding their requests. All except one: the request for the removal of the Albanian flag.
“We,” he wrote his fellow citizens, “must at all costs maintain the flag with the national colors, without which the country would lose its only symbol of independence and would become, ipso facto, into one of its neighbors.”
A fitting response for the man who, now and forever, will be identified with that flag.