Albanians and Europe



Geography has connected the Albanian people with Europe,but history has kept it divided from Europe for a long time.
Although from a geographical position it is Europe,from a historical one it was compelled for a long period to be Asia.
The history of the Albanian people,as one of the ancient peoples of the Balkans,is a great history between East and
West:a great history made tragic by both East and West in their turn,made tragic by the East because of the West,and
by the West because of the East.Experts of geography take it to be good fate,and those of history maintain that it was
unfortunate to have to live in the Balkans.If Geography has been unable to duly prove the former,history in its turn has
proved for so many times the latter.This is not true only for the Albanian people.Peoples that have tried life in the
continent,but that wanted to try the coast;those that have tried life at the coast,but that wanted to try the continent too;
peoples that wanted to occupy the West and peoples that wanted to conquer the East;strong nations longing to be rich;
and nations that wanted to prove strong besides being rich,have often met in the Balkans,bringing the Albanians and
their neighbours their faiths and beliefs,their codes and mentalities.All these incomers,stopping at the Balkans for short
and long,have confronted the indigenous Albanians with the necessity of preserving or losing their spiritual and cultural
identity,of choosing between freedom and slavery,between life and death.
Living at such a crossroad,where people coming from opposite geographical directions,but with similar
conquering intentions,have met,where great civilisations of Christianity and Islam met,where irreconciable interests
intermingled,political and economical,the Albanian people has tried what it means to be living at the ends of both worlds
whithout belonging in full to any of them,or in fact belonging at times to both of them.The Western type and the Eastern
type of Christianity;Islam as a faith of the overwhelming part of the population; Western reasoning and Eastern fatalism;
the Eastern way of life and the Western way of life - all of these represent sufficient proof of a dual character of the
Albanian culture,as much as of its dramatic historical life at the brinks of Rome,Bysantium,and Istambul,under their
spiritual and cultural political and military imperialism.This means that the history of the Albanian people more than
once during the centuries changed its European inclination being overcome by the Eastern inclination.
Ideologies of pulling the Albanians away from Europe,or of their return to Europe are the following ones;
the Islamic religious ideology,the Albanian national ideology,the communist political ideology,and the democratic
ideology.