ABSTRACT
The Balkans were conquered by the Ottomans from the middle of the fifteenth century on. Serbia fell in 1459 and four years later Bosnia with Herzegovina succumbing to the conquerors in 1483. The idea of Yugoslavism, a larger entity where all the ethnic and religious groups could find their common identity, came to the fore after the Balkan wars and precipitated World War I following the Sarajevo murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in 1914. During the turmoil, which swept the Balkans on the eve of the Berlin Congress, the Albanians, as an ethnic group, came up with the concept of including within their fledgling national entity all the Albanians of the Balkans, beyond the geographic boundaries of Albania itself. Being Muslims, the Albanians, like the Islamized Bosnians, enjoyed a privileged status in the Ottoman Empire. In 1878 the Albanian League was established in Prizren, which presented the Greater Albania plan.
