It was by no means evident in the early years of the twentieth century that Albania in southeastern Europe would become an independent country and would join the family of European nations. After five centuries as a part of the Ottoman Empire, the country was hardly noticed by the other peoples of Europe. This was to change at the time of the Balkans Wars (1912-1913) and the London Conference, at which Albania played a central role and where its fate was decided. The present volume brings together British Foreign Office documents focusing on Albania from 1912 to 1914. Among them are the dispatches and private correspondence of the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, who chaired the London Conference and endeavoured to keep peace in Europe at an age when the Great Powers were unwaveringly gravitating towards war and conflagration.

Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008 - and the overt manipulation of this precedent by Russia in its war with Georgia and South Ossetia shortly afterwards - has focused the world's attention once again on the Balkans. But Albania's role within the region remains little known and less understood. In this revised edition of a major work of contemporary history, two well-known and internationally-respected authorities elucidate Albania's place in the Balkans, from the explosion of violence in the 1990s, which brought the country to the brink of civil war, to the present day. Since 1997, the Albanian region has been forced simultaneously to come to terms with the realities of a post-Communist world and the threat of Slobodan Milosevic's 'Greater Serbia' project. Its people, the authors, argue are involved in the process of national self-emancipation: the re-establishment of free markets and ending of Communist border controls have renewed long dormant cultural and economic links between the Albanian people and the wider region. The future of the Albanians in the Balkans is the most pressing issue in the region today, a fact which the West must pay close heed to if this long neglected nation is to become a European partner. Indeed, the authors argue, in this rapidly evolving political climate, failure to come to terms with the importance of the Albanian question could return the region as a whole to armed conflict.

In order to know what the Albanian National Question (ANQ) is, one should learn it not from what its neighbors, namely Serbia and Greece, have to say, but from a more direct and reliable source, the voice of the Albanians themselves. No nation is in a position in which it can express in a realistic way the needs, the rights and aspirations of a different nation in the same way as an individual cannot be an exact representative for someone but himself. For many years the Western countries used to rely on either Serbian or Greek lenses for the ANQ. In the late 1990s the U.S.-led intervention against Serbia over Kosova on humanitarian grounds and the Albanian insurgency in Macedonia has contributed to an altered power balance in the region. The neighbors frightened by the power shift in the Southern Balkans use their propaganda machinery to express the danger posed by the alleged Greater Albania scheme in order to demonize and morally downgrade the ANQ. However, one can easily see that Albanians since the creation of their state have not, are not, and will not pursue an irredentist agenda toward their neighbors.

WITH A NEW POSTSCRIPT Situated between Greece on the south, the former Yugoslavia on the north and east, and the Adriatic Sea on the west, Albania is the country the world forgot. Throughout this century, Albania has been perceived as primitive and isolationist by its neighbors to the west. When the country ended fifty years of communist rule in 1992, few outsiders took interest. Deemed unworthy of membership in the European Union and overlooked by multinational corporations, Albania stands today as one of the poorest and most ignored countries in Europe. Miranda Vickers and James Pettifer take us behind the veil of former President Enver Hoxha's isolationist policies to examine the historic events leading up to Albania's transition to a parliamentary government. Beginning with Hoxha's death in 1985, Albania traces the last decade of Albania's shaky existence, from the anarchy and chaos of the early nineties to the victory of the Democratic Alliance in 1992 and the programs of the current government. The authors provide us with an analysis of how the moral, religious, economic, political and cultural identity of the Albanian people is being redefined, and leave no question that the future of Albania is inextricably linked to the future of the Balkans as a whole. In short, they tell us why Albania matters.

The 'Albanian question' remains one of the major unresolved questions in south-eastern Europe, with the potential to disrupt the region, with grave consequences for the international community. The exodus of refugees from Kosovo into Albania in the late 1990s - and Kosovo's subsequent declaration of independence in February 2008 - rejuvenated interest in Albania and Kosovo and their place in the Balkans and Yet despite growing interest in the region's recent history, until now Albania's period of independence around World War I has been largely neglected.The Birth of Albania explores how an independent Albania first came into existence in the early twentieth century, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Nicola Guy explains how and why Albanian independence was finally achieved, in the context of the prevailing contemporary ideas of ethnicity and national identity, elaborated most famously by President Woodrow Wilson as 'national self-determination'. The Birth of Albania is the definitive account of this period and an essential contribution to our understanding of an important but often overlooked part of the world.

Professor Skendi, a native of Albania, traces the progress and setbacks of Albania's long struggle for national unity during this least-known period of its intricate history. He discusses the heritage of its people and examines in detail the developments that led to Albanian independence: national resistance to the decisions of the Congress of Berlin, later opposition to Turkey, and the struggle between the Albanians and the Young Turks. Consideration is given to such internal problems as geographic configuration, religious and political division, and to such external problems as Italo-Austrian rivalry, political interference from neighboring states, and the involvement of great powers. Originally published in 1967. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Stalinism, that particularly brutal phase of the Communist experience, came to an end in most of Europe with the death of Stalin in 1953. However, in one country - Albania - Stalinism survived virtually unscathed until 1990. The regime that the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha led from 1944 until his death in 1985 was incomparably severe. Such was the reign of terror that no audible voice of opposition or dissent ever arose in the Balkan state and Albania became isolated from the rest of the world and utterly inward-looking. Three decades after his death, the spectre of Hoxha still lingers over the country, yet many people – inside and outside Albania – know little about the man who ruled the country with an iron fist for so many decades. This book provides the first biography of Hoxha available in English. Using unseen documents and first-hand interviews, journalist Blendi Fevziu pieces together the life of a tyrannical ruler in a biography which will be essential reading for anyone interested in Balkan history and communist studies

67 texts, including hymns, manifestos, articles or extracts from lengthy studies exemplify the relation between Romanticism and the national movements in the cultural space ranging from Poland to the Ottoman Empire. Each text is accompanied by a presentation of the author, and by an analysis of the context in which the respective work was born.The end of the 18th century and first decades of the 19th were in many respects a watershed period in European history. The ideas of the Enlightenment and the dramatic convulsions of the French Revolution had shattered the old bonds and cast doubt upon the established moral and social norms of the old corporate society. In culture a new trend, Romanticism, was successfully asserting itself against Classicism and provided a new key for a growing number of activists to 're-imagine' their national community, reaching beyond the traditional frameworks of identification (such as the 'political nation', regional patriotism, or Christian universalism). The collection focuses on the interplay of Romantic cultural discourses and the shaping of national ideology throughout the 19th century, tracing the patterns of cultural transfer with Western Europe as well as the mimetic competition of national ideologies within the region.

All too often Albania has been considered a relatively minor player in late-19th and early-20th century history. By contrast, this book highlights the significance of this nation and the Albanian question at this time through a detailed analysis of the relationship between Albania, Britain and the Ottoman Empire from 1876 to 1914. Making use of a wide range of archival source materials – some of which are published here in English for the first time – this book explores British foreign policy towards the development of the Albanian national movement and parallel demise of the Ottoman Empire. In doing so it illuminates the objectives of the British government, as well as shining a spotlight on the public opinion of both the British people towards Albanian nationalism and on the reaction of the Albanians towards the British diplomatic position. By looking through such a unique lens, here Daut Dauti is able to provide fresh insight into why the Albanians were not supported by the Great Powers in their national quest in the way that other Balkan countries were and draws significant new conclusions on British, Balkan and Ottoman relations. As such, this nuanced study is vital reading for all scholars interested in modern Albanian history, turn-of-the-century British international relations and the fall of the Ottoman Empire more broadly.