Albania and Her Protectress
First, let us examine the text. The preamble states the object of the Pact to be to "tighten the mutual relations of friendship and security resulting from the geographical situation" of Italy and Albania, to "contribute to the strengthening of peace," and to "maintain the political, juridical and territorial status quo of Albania." These phrases sound somewhat vague. "Peace" has not usually been "strengthened" by the intervention of a Great Power in the affairs of a Balkan state: Russia and Austria-Hungary brought "not peace but a sword" by their interference in the Serbia of the Obrenovitch dynasty; Russia's intrusion into Bulgarian politics led to the abdication of the first Prince of Bulgaria and the long social ostracism of the second; in Greece, the reign of Otho was embittered by the quarrels of the three "Protecting Powers;" German influence was largely responsible for the losses of Turkey in the late war. The principle of "the Balkan Peninsula for the Balkan peoples" is sound and nowadays generally accepted. Nor is it clear what is meant by "maintaining the political, juridical and territorial status quo." Probably, from the standpoint of Ahmed Zogu, the President of the Albanian Republic, the "maintenance" of "the political status quo" means the "maintenance" of himself in power by the strong arm of his ally, whose cannon would protect the huge mansion built for him on the hill overlooking the roadstead of Durazzo and connected (according to a local story) by a secret underground passage with the shore. Who, again, was threatening "the juridical and territorial status quo" of Albania? Neither Greece, who under the Republican system (especially under Pangalos, himself of Albanian origin) has been on particularly good terms with her smaller neighbor, nor Jugoslavia, who would scarcely have dared such an affront to the public law of Europe and was the supporter and host of Ahmed Zogu, a fugitive in Belgrade at a time when Italy was the friend of Fan Noli.
As published, the Pact consists, besides the preamble, of five articles. Article 1 repeats that "Italy and Albania recognize that every disturbance directed against the political, juridical and territorial status quo of Albania is contrary to their political interest" -- a statement admitting of wide and varied interpretation. Article 2 engages "the high contracting parties, for the safeguard of the above interest, to lend to one another their mutual support and their cordial collaboration. They also pledge themselves not to conclude with other Powers political or military agreements prejudicial to the interests of the other party, as defined in the present Pact." Yet we were informed that a similar Pact was offered to Jugoslavia by Albania! Article 3 engages both "parties to submit to a special procedure of conciliation or arbitration the questions which might divide them and which could not be settled by the ordinary diplomatic procedure." "A special convention, to be concluded with the least possible delay," was to regulate "the methods of this procedure." Article 4 fixes the duration of the Pact at five years, and permits of its denunciation or renewal "one year before its expiration." The last article provides for its ratification, and subsequent registration by the League of Nations.
Even supposing that there are no secret articles, the published text of the Pact suffices to cause alarm to the friends of Albanian independence, who did not create an independent Albania in order that it might become an Austrian, Italian or Serbian protectorate. From the time of Francesco Crispi, himself a Sicilian of Albanian origin, Italian statesmen have had their eyes directed to the opposite coast of the Adriatic, visible on a clear day from Otranto. From a much earlier period, that following the death of Skanderbeg and the Turkish conquest in the last third of the fifteenth century, Italian interests in Albania had been aroused and maintained by the considerable Albanian colonies of refugees, who had fled to Southern Italy and found there a second home. Crispi's program was not the annexation of Albania, then Turkish, but the prevention of an Austrian occupation. After the battle of Adua in 1896 and the consequent fall of Crispi, the policy of Imperialism underwent a long eclipse; but in the early years of the present century another Sicilian, the Marchese Di San Giuliano, travelled in Albania and published a little volume of "Letters from Albania," of which he made a holocaust when he became Minister of Foreign Affairs. Consequently, his book is rare, except in a German translation. Meanwhile, Italian consuls, like Millelire at Jannina and Di Gubernatis, worked for the extension of Italian influence. After the declaration of Albanian independence the six months' reign of Prince William of Wied at Durazzo was a continuous struggle between Austria and Italy, in which leading Albanians were used as pawns by the two great players. Meanwhile San Giuliano had done his best to make the Serbs evacuate Durazzo and the Montenegrins Scutari in 1913, and to throw the Greek frontier as far as possible to the south. Even a Prime Minister so little interested in foreign policy as Giolitti told Mr. Kaklamanos (the present Greek Minister in London), then Greek chargé d'affaires in Rome, that "if Greece wished to remain on friendly terms with Italy, she must not touch Valona." Consequently, Mr. Venizelos prevented the Greek troops from occupying Valona and, in 1914, obtained from the Greek parliament the cession to Albania of the islet of Saseno in the bay, which in the British days had been an appendage of the Ionian Islands, and had with them been ceded by Great Britain to Greece in 1864. At the end of 1914, the Italians occupied and fortified Saseno, perhaps on the strength of Lucan's application to it of the epithet, "Calabrian" in his Pharsalia.
There they still remain, although Saseno is waterless and could be commanded by cannon planted on the Akrokeraunian Mountains. Valona and other places in Albania they evacuated under the Tirana agreement in 1921, when Giolitti was again Premier, and the late Take Jonescu, the Rumanian statesman, told the writer that he had congratulated the Italian Prime Minister on having got rid of so thankless a burden. The malaria bred in the lagoons near Valona had wrought havoc among the Italian troops, and one Italian garrison had mutinied rather than go to Albania. At that time the Albanians showed quite plainly that they did not want them, and that l'Albania farà da se. But the modern blackshirts are in many cases too young to remember the unpleasant Albanian bivouacs of the war, while to the present director of Italian policy Durazzo may seem, as it was to the ancient Romans whom he professes to imitate, the first step on that Via Egnatia which led to Salonika. Even before the advent of Fascism, it was obvious that Italian Nationalism, its intellectual predecessor, was bent upon assuming the part formerly played--but with greater experience and local knowledge -- by Austria.
But the Balkan peoples did not, by dint of gigantic sacrifices, rid the Balkan peninsula of Austria in order to put Italy in her place, although Austria had in Bosnia and the Herzegovina a set of officials who on a smaller scale reproduced the British civil service of India. Yet none the less Austria was unpopular, because she was a foreign Power, alien to the national sentiment. Most peoples prefer to be worse governed by their own compatriots than to be better governed by foreigners, as Great Britain found in the Ionian Islands.
more see: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68779/william-miller/albania-and-her-protectress
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