ABSTRACT
Little is known of the early history of what is now Albania, but its people comprise a distinct ethnic group speaking a language of the Indo-European family but distinct from Greek or Slavonic. They may, or may not, be identifiable as the Illyrians of Roman times. The Albanians came under Turkish rule in 1431 and remained so except between 1443 and 1468 under Prince Gjergj Kastrioti, surnamed Skanderbeg, a national hero, and again briefly in the eighteenth century. Ambitious Albanians, not unlike their peers from the Baltic states in the Russian Empire, were prominent in the administration of the Turkish Empire. The nineteenth-century khedives of Egypt were of Albanian stock. Although an Albanian League was founded in 1880 and ruled for 2 years, attempts to obtain independence were unsuccessful, and Albania was to be the last European nation to be carved wholly out of the Turkish Empire. Its independence was proclaimed at Vlorë on 28 November 1912 and the principle of autonomy agreed at the London Ambassadorial Conference on 20 December 1912 when the new country’s frontiers were also approximately determined. Prince Wilhelm of Wied accepted the crown on 21 February 1914, and the power of government was vested in him and an International Commission of Control.
