Illyrian culture is believed to have evolved from the Stone Age and to have manifested itself in the territory of Albania towardthe beginning of the Bronze Age, about 2000 BC. The Illyrians were not a uniform body of people but a conglomeration of many tribes that inhabited the western part of the Balkans, from what is now Slovenia in the northwest to (and including) the region of Epirus, which extends about halfway down the mainland of modern Greece. In general, Illyrians in the highlands ofAlbania were more isolated than those in the lowlands, and their culture evolved more slowly--a distinction that persisted throughout Albania's history.

In its beginning, the kingdom of Illyria comprised the actual territories of Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, with a large part of modern Serbia. Shkodra (Scutari) was its capital, just as it is now, the most important center of Northern Albania.

The earliest known king of Illyria was Hyllus (The Star) who is recorded to have died in the year 1225 B.C. The Kingdom, however, reached its zenith in the fourth century B.C. when Bardhylus (White Star), one of the most prominent of the Illyrian kings, united under scepter the kingdoms of Illyria, Molossia (Epirus*) and a good part of Macedonia. But its decay began under the same ruler as a result of the attacks made on it by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.

In the year 232 B.C. the Illyrian throne was occupied by Teuta, the celebrated Queen whom historians have called Catherine the Great of Illyria. The depredations of her thriving navy on the rising commercial development of the Republic forced the Roman Senate to declare war against the Queen. A huge army and navy under the command of of Santumalus and Alvinus attacked Central Albania, and, after two years of protracted warfare, Teuta was induced for peace (227 B.C.)

The last king of Illyria was Gentius, of pathetic memory. In 165 B.C. he was defeated by the Romans and brought to Rome as a captive.

Henceforth, Illyria consisting of the Enkalayes, the Taulantes, the Epirotes, and the Ardianes, became a Roman dependency. She was carved out into three independent republics the capitals of which were respectively Scodar (Shkoder), Epidamnus (Durres) and Dulcigno (todays' Ulqin in Montenegro)

Authors of antiquity relate that the Illyrians were a sociable and hospitable people, renowned for their daring and bravery at war. Illyrian women were fairly equal in status to the men, even to the point of becoming heads of tribal federations. In matters of religion, Illyrians were pagans who believed in an afterlife and buried their dead along with arms and various articles intended for personal use.

The land of Illyria was rich in minerals--iron, copper, gold, silver--and Illyrians became skillful in the mining and processing of metals. They were highly skilled boat builders and sailors as well; indeed, their light, swift galleys known as liburnae were of such superior design that the Romans incorporated them into their own fleet as a type of warship called the Liburnian.

The Greeks.

Roughly parallel with the rise of Greek colonies, Illyrian tribes began to evolve politically from relatively small and simple entities into larger and more complex ones. At first they formed temporary alliances with one another for defensive or offensive purposes, then federations and, still later, kingdoms. The most important of these kingdoms, which flourished from the 5th to the 2nd century BC, were those of the Enkalayes, the Taulantes, the Epirotes, and the Ardianes.

After warring for the better part of the 4th century BC against the expansionist Macedonian state of Philip II and Alexander the Great, the Illyrians faced a greater threat from the growing power of the Romans. Seeing Illyrian territory as a bridgehead for conquests east of the Adriatic, Rome in 229 BC attacked and defeated the Illyrians, led by Queen Teuta, and by 168 BC established effective control over Illyria.

The Roman Empire.

Christianity manifested itself in Illyria during Roman rule, about the middle of the 1st century AD. At first the new religion had to compete with Oriental cults--among them that of Mithra, Persian god of light--which had entered the land in the wake of Illyria's growing interaction with eastern regions of the empire. For a long time it also had to compete with gods worshiped by Illyrian pagans. The steady growth of the Christian community in Dyrrhachium (the Roman name for Epidamnus) led to the creation there of a bishopric in AD 58. Later, episcopal seats were established in Apollonia, Buthrotum (modern Butrint), and Scodra (modern Shkodrë).

By the time the empire began to decline, the Illyrians, profiting from a long tradition of martial habits and skills, had acquired great influence in the Roman military hierarchy. Indeed, several of them went on from there to become emperors. From the mid-3rd to the mid-4th century AD the reins of the empire were almost continuously in the hands of emperors of Illyrian origin: Gaius Decius, Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, and Constantine the Great.

The Byzantine Empire.

From Illyria to Albania.

In the first decades under Byzantine rule (until 461), Illyria suffered the devastation of raids by Visigoths, Huns, and Ostrogoths. Not long after these barbarian invaders swept through the Balkans, the Slavs appeared. Between the 6th and 8th centuries they settled in Illyrian territories and proceeded to assimilate Illyrian tribes in much of what is now Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. The tribes of southern Illyria, however--including modern Albania--averted assimilation and preserved their native tongue.

In the course of several centuries, under the impact of Roman, Byzantine, and Slavic cultures, the tribes of southern Illyria underwent a transformation, and a transition occurred from the old Illyrian population to a new Albanian one. As a consequence, from the 8th to the 11th century, the name Illyria gradually gave way to the name, first mentioned in the 2nd century AD by the geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria, of the Albanoi tribe, which inhabited what is now central Albania. From a single tribe the name spread to include the rest of the country as Arbri and, finally, Albania. The genesis of Albanian nationality apparently occurred at this time as the Albanian people became aware that they shared a common territory, name, language, and cultural heritage. (Scholars have not been able to determine the origin of Shqiperia, the Albanians' own name for their land, which is believed to have supplanted the name Albania during the 16th and 17th centuries. It probably was derived from shqipe, or "eagle," which, modified into shqipria, became "the land of the eagle.")

Long before that event, Christianity had become the established religion in Albania, supplanting pagan polytheism and eclipsing for the most part the humanistic world outlook and institutions inherited from the Greek and Roman civilizations. But, though the country was in the fold of Byzantium, Albanian Christians remained under the jurisdiction of the Roman pope until 732. In that year the iconoclast Byzantine emperor Leo III, angered by Albanian archbishops because they had supported Rome in the Iconoclastic Controversy, detached the Albanian church from the Roman pope and placed it under the patriarch of Constantinople. When the Christian church split in 1054 between the East and Rome, southern Albania retained its tie to Constantinople while northern Albania reverted to the jurisdiction of Rome. This split in the Albanian church marked the first significant religious fragmentation of the country.

Medieval culture.

Albanian, however, was not the language used in schools, churches, and official government transactions. Instead, Greek and Latin, which had the powerful support of the state and the church, were the official languages of culture and literature.

The new administrative system of the themes, or military provinces created by the Byzantine Empire, contributed to the eventual rise of feudalism in Albania, as peasant soldiers who served military lords became serfs on their landed estates. Among the leading families of the Albanian feudal nobility were the Thopias, Balshas, Shpatas, Muzakas, Aranitis, Dukagjinis, and Kastriotis. The first three of these rose to become rulers of principalities that were practically independent of Byzantium.

The decline of Byzantium.

A few decades later the country was confronted with a new threat, that of the Turks, who at this juncture were expanding their power in the Balkans. The Ottoman Turks invaded Albania in 1388 and completed the occupation of the country about four decades later (1430). But after 1443 an Albanian of military genius--Gjergj Kastrioti (1405-68), known as Skanderbeg--rallied the Albanian princes and succeeded in driving the occupiers out. For the next 25 years, operating out of his stronghold in the mountain town of Kruj, Skanderbeg frustrated every attempt by the Turks to regain Albania, which they envisioned as a springboard for the invasion of Italy and western Europe. His unequal fight against the mightiest power of the time won the esteem of Europe as well as some support in the form of money and military aid from Naples, the papacy, Venice, and Ragusa. After he died, Albanian resistance gradually collapsed, and many Albanians fled to Italy enabling the Turks to reoccupy the country by 1506.

Skanderbeg's long struggle to keep Albania free became highly significant to the Albanian people, as it strengthened their solidarity, made them more conscious of their national identity, and served later as a great source of inspiration in their struggle for national unity, freedom, and independence.

The Ottoman Empire.

The nature of Turkish rule.

Although the Turks ruled Albania for more than four centuries, they were unable to extend their authority throughout the country. In the highland regions Turkish authorities exercised only a formal sovereignty, as the highlanders refused to pay taxes, serve in the army, or surrender their arms--although they did pay an annual tribute to Constantinople.

Albanians rose in rebellion time and again against Ottoman occupation. In order to check the ravages of Albanian resistance--which was partly motivated by religious feelings, namely, defense of the Christian faith

The basis of Ottoman rule in Albania was a feudalmilitary system of landed estates, called timars, which were awarded to military lords for loyalty and service to the empire. As Ottoman power began to decline in the 18th century, the central authority of the empire in Albania gave way to the local authority of autonomy-minded lords. The most successful of these lords were three generations of pashas of the Bushati family, who dominated most of northern Albania from 1757 to 1831, and Ali Pasa Tepelen of Janina (now Ionnina, Greece), a colourful Oriental-type despot who ruled over southern Albania and northern Greece from 1788 to 1822. These pashas created separate states within the Ottoman state until they were overthrown by the sultan.

After the fall of the pashas, in 1831 Turkey officially abolished the timar system. In the wake of its collapse, economic and social power passed from the feudal lords to private landowning beys and, in the northern highlands, to tribal chieftains called bajraktars, who presided over given territories with rigid patriarchal societies that were often torn by blood feuds. Peasants who were formerly serfs now worked on the estates of the beys as tenant farmers.

Ottoman rule in Albania remained backward and oppressive to the end. In these circumstances, many Albanians went abroad in search of careers and advancement within the empire, and an unusually large number of them, in proportion to Albania's population, rose to positions of prominence as government and military leaders. More than two dozen grand viziers (similar to prime ministers) of Turkey were of Albanian origin.

Albanian nationalism.

The Albanian League was suppressed by the Turks in 1881, in part because they were alarmed by its strong nationalistic orientation. By then, however, the league had become a powerful symbol of Albania's national awakening, and its ideas and objectives fueled the drive that culminated later in national independence.

When the Young Turks, who seized power in Istanbul in 1908, ignored their commitments to Albanians to institute democratic reforms and to grant autonomy, Albanians embarked on an armed struggle, which, at the end of three years (1910-12), forced the Turks to agree, in effect, to grant their demands. Alarmed at the prospect of Albanian autonomy, Albania's Balkan neighbours, who had already made plans to partition the region, declared war on Turkey in October 1912, and Greek, Serbian, and Montenegrin armies advanced into Albanian territories.

To prevent the annihilation of the country, Albanian national delegates met at a congress in Vlorë. They were led by Ismail Qemal, an Albanian who had held several high positions in the Ottoman government. On Nov. 28, 1912, the congress issued the Vlorë proclamation, which declared Albania's independence.

Independent Albania.

Creating the new state.

The Great Powers also appointed a German prince, Wilhelm zu Wied, as ruler of Albania. Wilhelm arrived in Albania in March 1914, but his unfamiliarity with Albania and its problems, compounded by complications arising from the outbreak of World War I, led him to depart from Albania six months later. The war plunged the country into a new crisis, as the armies of Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia invaded and occupied it. Left without any political leadership or authority, the country was in chaos, and its very fate hung in the balance. At the Paris Peace Conference after the war, the extinction of Albania was averted largely through the efforts of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who vetoed a plan by Britain, France, and Italy to partition Albania among its neighbours.

A national congress, held in Lushnje in January 1920, laid the foundations of a new government. In December of that year Albania, this time with the help of Britain, gained admission to the League of Nations, thereby winning for the first time international recognition as a sovereign nation and state.

Bishop Noli and King Zog.

In the unusually open and free political, social, and cultural climate that prevailed in Albania between 1920 and 1924, the liberal forces gathered strength, and, by mid-1924, a popular revolt forced Zogu to flee to Yugoslavia. Installed as prime minister of the new government in June 1924, Noli set out to build a Western-style democracy in Albania, and toward that end he announced a radical program of land reform and modernization. But his vacillation in carrying out the program, coupled with a depleted state treasury and a failure to obtain international recognition for his revolutionary, left-of-centre government, quickly alienated most of Noli's supporters, and six months later he was overthrown by an armed assault led by Zogu and aided by Yugoslavia.

Zogu began his 14-year reign in Albania--first as president (1925-28), then as King Zog I (1928-39)--in a country rife with political and social instability. Greatly in need of foreign aid and credit in order to stabilize the country, Zog signed a number of accords with Italy. These provided transitory financial relief to Albania, but they effected no basic change in its economy, especially under the conditions of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Italy, on the other hand, viewed Albania primarily as a bridgehead for military expansion into the Balkans. On April 7, 1939, Italy invaded and shortly after occupied the country. King Zog fled to Greece.

The social base of Zog's power was a coalition of southern beys and northern bajraktars. With the support of this coalition--plus a vast Oriental bureaucracy, an efficient police force, and Italian money--King Zog brought a large measure of stability to Albania. He extended the authority of the government to the highlands, reduced the brigandage that had formerly plagued the country, laid the foundations of a modern educational system, and took a few steps to Westernize Albanian social life. On balance, however, his achievements were outweighed by his failures. Although formally a constitutional monarch, in reality Zog was a dictator, and Albania under him experienced the fragile stability of a dictatorship. Zog failed to resolve Albania's fundamental problem, that of land reform, leaving the peasantry as impoverished as before. In order to stave off famine, the government had to import food grains annually, but, even so, thousands of people migrated abroad in search of a better life. Moreover, Zog denied democratic freedoms to Albanians and created conditions that spawned periodic revolts against his regime, alienated most of the educated class, fomented labour unrest, and led to the formation of the first communist groups in the country.

World War II.

Meanwhile, the various communist groups that had germinated in Zog's Albania merged in November 1941 to form the Albanian Communist Party and began to fight the occupiers as a unified resistance force. After a successful struggle against the fascists and two other resistance groups--the National Front (Balli Kombtar) and the pro-Zog Legality Party(Legaliteti)--which contended for power with them, the communists seized control of the country on Nov. 29, 1944. Enver Hoxha, a college instructor who had led the resistance struggle of communist forces, became the leader of Albania by virtue of his post as secretary-general of the party. Albania, which before the war had been under the personal dictatorship of King Zog, now fell under the collective dictatorship of the Albanian Communist Party. The country became officially the People's Republic of Albania in 1946 and, in 1976, the People's Socialist Republic of Albania.

The man who became the dominating figure of the Communist resistance movement almost from the beginning was the party leader Enver Hoxha (1908-85). Hoxha rose from a boiling crucible made up of several explosive ingredients: the daily travail of poorly armed and badly organised guerrilla units fighting against well-equipped and highly trained occupying armies; a nationalist determination to prevent the more powerful Yugoslav resistance movement from interfering unduly in Albanian domestic affairs; constant bickering with mainly right-wing British liaison Officers operating in Albania during the war years; and the civil war of 1943-4. Hoxha emerged from this blood-stained period as a very ambitious, ruthless, cunning and fanatical Communist guerrilla leader and politician. He also managed to combine very dogmatic Communist beliefs with fierce nationalism.

After pursuing the retreating Nazi armies from Albania and defeating their right-wing rivals the Communists set up their own government, under Hoxha's leadership, in November 1944. Unlike the Yugoslav Communists, their Albanian counterparts had no direct links with Moscow during the war. This state of affairs continued in the early post-war years, when the Albanian regime was in effect a Yugoslav satellite. But Tito and his colleagues soon discovered that their desire to make Albania part of the Yugoslav federation was strongly opposed by Hoxha himself. They consequently tried hard to replace him with a more pliant leader. But Hoxha employed all his machiavellian deviousness to thwart Yugoslav efforts to topple him, and in fact succeeded in doing so. Hoxha came to display the same ruthlessness in his determination to create a one-party state. All opposition - political, economic, social and cultural - was crushed with the utmost brutality. The only group towards whom he showed any wariness or consideration during the early years was the peasants, who made up the great majority of the population. He first introduced a mild agrarian reform in order to win their support. But later, when he had consolidated his own position in the party and the country, he embarked upon a fierce campaign of full collectivisation of agriculture.

The Yugoslav ambition to annex Albania created a split within the Albanian party between a pro-Yugoslav and an anti-Yugoslav faction. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the leader of the pro-Yugoslav faction, Koci Xoxe, was appointed Minister of the Interior, thus in control of the secret police and all other security forces. The 1948 schism between Stalin and Tito suddenly gave Hoxha an opportunity to achieve three main political ambitions: to escape once and for all from Yugoslavia's clutches; eliminate pro-Tito opponents who had made life difficult for him for several years; and to establish his first direct links with Moscow. From 1948 onwards he was to embrace Stalinism with unparalleled eagerness and fervour. One could say he became one of the Soviet dictator's most natural and consistent disciples. Hoxha visited Stalin in Moscow on several occasions, when he discovered, to his delight, that there was great affinity between them. Although the Albanian leader had been a natural pro-Stalinist most of his life, the close alliance and friendship with Stalin served to confirm and reinforce all his innate domineering and bloodthirsty propensities. Both believed in absolute personal power, which was justified by a very flexible ideology which could be manipulated to suit all possible situations. Like Stalin, Hoxha was utterly determined to destroy all opponents, real or imaginary, and remove every obstacle his policies encountered. Hence under his rule every trace of natural justice, of freedom of thought and expression, as these terms are understood in the civilised world, was wiped out in his country, just as it had been in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Stalin's death in 1953 and the emergence of Nikita Khrushchev as party leader in Moscow were a severe blow to Hoxha. Not only did he lose a powerful friend and like-minded teacher, he suddenly passed under the control of a highly volatile and unpredictable political leader who held dangerous reformist ideas. Hoxha's first shock came in 1955 when Khrushchev decided to bring about a reconciliation between Moscow and Yugoslavia, whose relations had remained frozen since 1948. The Albanian leader was asked to bring to an end his regime's long hostility towards Yugoslavia and establish normal relations with it. Although he made a few superficial friendly gestures towards his neighbour, Hoxha was at heart opposed to any genuine reconciliation, and he remained so mainly because he feared Tito's reformist ideas. Another greater shock was Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in his 'secret speech' of 1956. Hoxha saw this as an attack not only against the policies of his regime but also against his own personal position in the Party and government. The Soviet leader's efforts to persuade Hoxha to reform his rule and give up some of his Stalinist policies also proved ineffective. As a result, tension between Moscow and Albania steadily grew from 1955-61, when the final break occurred. The first signs of trouble in the Soviet-Albanian alliance appeared in 1960, when Hoxha sided with China in the early stages of the Soviet-Chinese ideological dispute. Matters came to a head at the international conference of 81 Communist parties held in Moscow in November 1960, where the Albanian leader openly defied Moscow by supporting China's cause. A year later Moscow broke off diplomatic relations with Albania and stopped all economic, industrial and military aid. The Chinese quickly came to the rescue of their small ally in Europe with a package of economic help. They undertook to build 25 industrial plants in Albania with the assistance of Chinese technicians. But relations between the two countries faced great difficulties from the beginning because of their immense difference in size and the huge cultural and political chasm that divided them. Nevertheless, Mao's cultural revolution did have a profound impact on Hoxha: it led him to make all religious practices illegal in 1967. However, serious strains between the two countries arose when the Chinese government opened up to the USA and Yugoslavia in the early 1970's. Hoxha rejected China's advice that his government should do the same. The alliance finally came to an end in 1978, when Peking stopped all economic and military aid and withdrew its experts. As a result, not only was Albania left completely isolated, it was also deprived of all foreign aid it so desperately needed.

The end of the alliance with China marked the beginning of a period of steady economic and industrial decline. Factories and industrial plants built in the 1950's with Soviet bloc aid became outdated and derelict. Shortage of new machinery and equipment led to the widespread use of manual labour in collective farms. The situation was aggravated by a highly centralised bureaucratic system and inefficient management. At the same time, incessant official propaganda exhorted people to increase production and to rely more than ever on their own efforts and on natural resources. 1985 was an important watershed for all communist countries of Europe, especially for Albania. In March, Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet Communist leader. In April, Enver Hoxha died at the age of 76, after having ruled the country almost like his private life for over 40 years. He was succeeded by Ramiz Alia, a member of the Politburo who had served for several years as Hoxha's principal deputy.

February 20th 1991, thousands of demonstrators protesting in the capital, Tirana, topple down the statue of Enver Hoxha. Religion is legalised, the religious institutions are opened and the ex-persecuted priests and hoxha's are allowed to exercise their profession freely. March 31, elections are organised all over Albania. The Party of Labour (reformed as Socialist Party) wins the elections. In June, the formation of coalition government for national stability. In December the collapse of the coalition government is forced by the Democratic Party, because the Socialists are seen to be stalling on the reform programme. Fresh general election is held in March 1992, the Democratic Party wins a landslide victory with over 65% of the popular vote. In April, Dr Sali Berisha is sworn in as the new President. The new government vowed to implement a wide-ranging reform programme which will affect all aspects of life in Albania.