Albania 1912–1939: From Independence to King Zog's Fall

The first 27 years of independence were a fight for survival. Albania 1912–1939 saw the Great Powers appoint the country's rulers and draw its borders. Foreign armies occupied it during the First World War, and the Congress of Lushnjë in 1920 put the state back together. A struggle for power followed, then the republic of 1925 and King Zog's kingdom, which ended with the Italian invasion of 7 April 1939.

This is the fifth chapter of our guide to Albanian history. It covers the years from the Vlorë government to 1939.

Albania 1912–1939 begins: the Vlorë government and the London Conference

After independence was proclaimed, a Provisional Government was formed in Vlorë on 4 December 1912, headed by Ismail Qemali, with Dom Nikollë Kaçorri as his deputy. The country's fate, however, was decided in London, at the Conference of Ambassadors of the Great Powers.

The Vlorë government managed to lay the foundations of the state. It adopted the "Provisional Kanun of Civil Administration" and the "Kanun on Trial by Jury". It also introduced a new administrative division and set up state courts independent of religious institutions. Esad Pasha Toptani opposed it and formed his own "Council of Elders of Central Albania" in Durrës, a sign of the separatism of those years.

Decisions of the Conference of Ambassadors

The London conference was chaired by the British Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey. Austria-Hungary and Italy supported the creation of an Albanian state, Russia and France backed the Balkan neighbours, and Great Britain stayed neutral.

On 29 July 1913 the conference decided that Albania would be an autonomous, sovereign and hereditary principality, independent of Turkey and neutral under the guarantee of the Great Powers. It was to be headed by a prince chosen by the Powers, and an International Control Commission was given control of the civil administration and finances for 10 years. The Commission was set up on 15 October 1913 and based in Vlorë.

Recognition came at a high price:

• Kosovo went to Serbia and Montenegro.

• The Albanian towns of Tetovo, Dibër e Madhe (Debar), Gostivar, Kičevo and Struga were left outside the border.

• Most of southern Chameria remained with Greece.

• In the south, the border took in Korçë and ran to Cape Stylos, and the island of Sazan stayed with Albania. The southern border was finally fixed by the Protocol of Florence in December 1913.

In January 1914 Ismail Qemali and his government resigned (the government was dissolved on 22 January), and power passed to the International Control Commission.

Prince Wied: six months on the throne

The Powers chose the German prince Wilhelm of Wied, of the House of Wied-Neuwied, as Prince of Albania. He arrived in Durrës on 7 March 1914, made it his capital, and left the country on 3 September 1914, about six months later.

The International Control Commission drew up the Organic Statute for him, a constitution of 216 articles. It had serious flaws: it kept the Ottoman capitulations, left the state under the Commission's tutelage, and paired wide powers for the prince with a weak legislature. Dutch officers organised the gendarmerie.

Wied was under pressure from several sides at once. Esad Pasha Toptani, Minister of the Interior and Minister of War, was accused of conspiracy in May 1914 and exiled to Italy. In the south the "Sacred Battalions" were active: units of the Greek-backed "Northern Epirus" movement. On 17 May 1914 the Protocol of Corfu granted the districts of Korçë and Gjirokastër autonomy under Albanian sovereignty. In Central Albania, Haxhi Qamili's peasant uprising broke out in 1914–1915 and tried to pull the country back towards Ottoman rule.

Albania in the First World War

During the First World War, Albania was occupied by armies from both sides: the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria) and the Entente (Italy, France, Greece). The country no longer had a single government, and secret treaties discussed carving it up.

At the end of October 1914 Italy occupied the island of Sazan, and then Vlorë. In April 1915 the Entente signed the secret Treaty of London with Italy to bring it into the war. Italy was to receive Vlorë and Sazan, and parts of Albania were promised to Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. What remained would be a small rump state in Central Albania under an Italian protectorate.

From 1916 Austria-Hungary occupied most of the north and centre of the country. On 10 December 1916 the Autonomous Albanian Republic of Korçë was set up under French administration. In January 1917 Austria-Hungary promised the Albanians in Shkodër autonomy after the war. On 3 June 1917, in Gjirokastër, Italy proclaimed "the independence of all Albania" under Italian protection. By November 1918 Italy controlled most of the country, while the French held Korçë and Shkodër.

The diaspora played its part in preserving independence, notably the Vatra federation in the USA and Albanian communities in Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Switzerland and Egypt.

The Paris Conference and the Congress of Lushnjë

After the war Albania again faced partition, and in January 1920 the Albanians rebuilt the state themselves. The Congress of Lushnjë (Lushnje) rejected the partition plans, formed a new government and moved the capital to Tirana. In December that year Albania joined the League of Nations.

In December 1918 the Congress of Durrës formed the government of Turhan Pasha Përmeti. It represented Albania at the Paris Peace Conference, demanding that independence be restored and the 1913 borders revised. Father Gjergj Fishta served as the delegation's secretary general. But in July 1919 Italy and Greece concluded the Tittoni–Venizelos agreement on dividing Albania, and in January 1920 the prime ministers of Great Britain, France and Italy agreed on a plan to split the country among its neighbours.

The Congress of Lushnjë

The Congress met in January 1920 in the house of Kaso Fuga and elected Aqif Pasha Elbasani as its chairman. Its decisions:

Delvina's government also had to fight at home, against Esad Pasha's supporters. On 28 May 1920 the Protocol of Kapshtica was signed on the southern border near Korçë. On 17 December 1920 Albania was admitted to the League of Nations.

The Vlorë War of 1920

In the summer of 1920 the Albanians drove the Italians out of Vlorë by force. The war began in June and ended on 2 August with the Protocol of Tirana: Italy withdrew from Vlorë but kept the island of Sazan.

Qazim Koculi was one of the main military leaders, Ahmet Lepenica commanded the main forces, and Selam Musai was among the commanders killed in the fighting. That same month, on 13 June, Avni Rustemi killed Esad Pasha Toptani in Paris.

The struggle for power: 1921–1924

Final recognition came on 9 November 1921, when the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris recognised Albania as an independent state, largely within the 1913 borders, though with a special provision for Italy's interests. Meanwhile, a fierce struggle for power was under way at home.

In 1921 the "Republic of Mirdita" appeared in the north, a separatist movement stirred up from abroad. In December 1922 Ahmet Zogu became prime minister. His opponents joined forces, among them the Bashkimi ("Unity") society, founded by Avni Rustemi in 1922. On 23 February 1924 Beqir Valteri shot at Zogu on the steps of parliament, but Zogu survived.

The June Revolution. On 20 April 1924 Avni Rustemi was fatally wounded in Tirana. He died two days later, and his murder sparked an uprising. On 10 June the rebels entered Tirana and Zogu fled to Yugoslavia. On 16 June Fan Noli became prime minister. His government announced a 20-point reform programme but got no help from the League of Nations and was not recognised by the leading Western powers. On Christmas Eve, 24 December 1924, Zogu returned with Yugoslav-backed forces and took Tirana. Noli fled to Italy.

The Republic: 1925–1928

In January 1925 Albania was proclaimed a republic, and on 31 January Ahmet Zogu was elected president for 7 years. On paper the republic was parliamentary; in practice it was presidential. The president also headed the government and held an absolute veto.

Parliament had two chambers, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The government won the elections of spring 1925, held while the main opposition leaders were in exile. Economic policy followed an "open door", but Italian capital came first and won concessions for minerals and forests. The National Bank of Albania was founded in 1925, mostly with Italian money, and the SVEA company provided a loan of 50 million gold francs. The First Pact of Tirana with Italy was signed on 27 November 1926, and the Second, a defensive alliance, followed in November 1927.

King Zog's kingdom: 1928–1939

On 1 September 1928 Albania was proclaimed a kingdom, and Zogu took the title Zog I, "King of the Albanians". The Fundamental Statute defined the country as a "democratic, parliamentary and hereditary kingdom". The king was head of state and supreme commander. The Senate was abolished and parliament became unicameral.

The kingdom carried out important reforms. A new civil code on the Swiss model replaced Islamic law (sharia), and the 1929 code introduced civil marriage and the right to divorce. In October 1928 the state organisation "Albanian Woman" was set up, headed by Princess Senije Zogu. In the 1930s the regime campaigned against the veil, and the legal ban on covering the face is usually linked to 1937. Haki Stërmilli portrayed the position of women at the time in his novel If I Were a Boy. Even earlier, the sisters Sevasti and Parashqevi Qiriazi had campaigned for Albanian women's rights.

Crisis and relations with Italy. The world economic crisis hit Albania in 1929–1935. The government took a loan from Italy, cut back the state apparatus, lowered customs duties and passed a land reform law. In 1931 Zogu refused to renew the First Pact of Tirana, which set off the "Albanian-Italian crisis". Albania took part in the Balkan conferences but later turned back to agreements with Italy.

The opposition

Zogu faced both émigré and underground opposition:

• KONARE, the National Revolutionary Committee led by Fan Noli, called for a democratic republic, land reform and an ethnic Albania.

• "National Unity" was a right-wing émigré organisation that wanted a Western-style republic.

• On 20 February 1931, in Vienna, where Zogu was having medical treatment, two members of the Bashkimi society tried to assassinate him; his aide-de-camp was killed.

• In August 1935 the Fier uprising broke out. It was crushed within a few hours, and 242 people were arrested. There was also the Delvina movement.

• The first communist groups worked underground, above all in Shkodër and Korçë. The workers' society Puna ("Labour") was founded in Korçë in September 1933, and another in Kuçovë in 1935. In 1936 a mass "bread demonstration" in Korçë was put down by force.

After the 1935 uprising a more liberal government was formed under Mehdi Frashëri (1935–1936), known as the government of the "young". In April 1939 Fascist Italy presented Zogu with an ultimatum whose demands grossly violated the country's sovereignty, and the king rejected it. What happened next is covered in the next chapter.

Albanians outside the state

After 1913 many Albanians found themselves outside Albania's borders, in Kosovo, Macedonia and Chameria. There they faced colonisation, land confiscation and bans on their own language, and they responded with both armed and political resistance.

In 1918 the "National Defence of Kosovo" committee was formed in Shkodër, led by Hasan Prishtina, Bajram Curri and Hoxhë Kadri Prishtina. The Dibër uprising, the kaçak (outlaw rebel) movement and the Xhemijet organisation in Macedonia all opposed Serbian occupation. In Drenica the kaçaks were led by Azem Bejta (Galica), who was killed in battle in 1924. His wife, Shote Galica, commanded alongside him.

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia settled Serbian and Montenegrin colonists in Kosovo, and its land reform pushed Albanians to emigrate, mainly to Turkey. Land held by people without Yugoslav property documents was confiscated on a mass scale, and there were no Albanian-language schools, newspapers or libraries. On 7 March 1937, in Belgrade, Vaso Čubrilović presented his memorandum "The Expulsion of the Albanians". Albanian deputies in the Yugoslav parliament and the "Kosovo Committee" in exile kept up the resistance.

In Chameria the Greek authorities imposed a military and police regime. On the pretext of collecting weapons, hundreds of Albanians were sent to islands in the Aegean. During the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923, some Muslim Chams were resettled in Turkey, even though they were officially excluded from the exchange. Chams were denied the right to vote, to serve in the army and to sell property. The Albanian government raised the Cham question at the League of Nations several times.

Next: Albania in the Second World War. Previous: The Albanian National Awakening and independence.