The Versailles Order and the Making of Albania, 1918–1926

South-East European History

Edited by Mihai Dragnea

Vol. 18

To my wife Mirela

Table of contents

1. List of Figures

2. Foreword

3. Introduction

4. Acknowledgements

5. Chapter 1 Military and Political Circumstances of Albania After World War I

6. Chapter 2 The Adriatic Issue

7. Chapter 3 1920: Wilson’s Response to Albania’s Partition

8. Chapter 4 Scutari, After World War I, The International Regime

9. Chapter 5 Albanian Self-Determination, 1919–1920

10. Chapter 6 War and Diplomacy Against Yugoslav Intervention

11. Chapter 7 Admission of Albania to the League of Nations

12. Chapter 8 Albania’s Political and Constitutional Development, 1920–1926

13. Chapter 9 Major Power Diplomacy and Albanian Statehood, 1921

14. Chapter 10 Greek–Albanian Borders and U.S. Recognition of Albania

15. Conclusions

16. Selected Bibliography

17. Index

Figures

Figure 1.1. Turhan Pasha Përmeti, Prime Minister of the Government of Durazzo, was the Head of the Albanian Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.

Figure 2.1. The map of Southern Albania shows the proposal of Prime Minister Venizelos, the Franco-British proposal, and the American proposal regarding the southern borders of the future Albanian state. To varying degrees, all three of these proposals violated the official border established by the Protocol of Florence on 17 December 1913. (TNA FO 608/29 p. 380)

Figure 2.2. The Albanian Delegation of the Government of Durazzo to the Paris Peace Conference, Father Gjergj Fishta, Monsignor Luigj Bumçi, and Dhimiter Berati.

Figure 3.1. Projected Railways Danube—Adriatic (TNA FO 608/38)

Figure 4.1. Map of the division of the occupation zones of Albania according to the Secret Treaty and the situation on the ground with troops in 1919. FO 608/46, p. 252.

Figure 4.2. The Governor of Scutari, General Bardi de Fourtou, 1918 (Marubi)

Figure 4.3. The end of the World War I: Public gatherings in front of the Scutari municipality, November 1918 (Marubi)

Figure 8.1. The members of the Albanian Parliament in 1921 (Marubi National Institute of Photography, Shkodër)

Foreword

Few nations have navigated the challenges of statehood with the resilience and complexity of Albania in the aftermath of the Great War. The Versailles Order and the Making of Albania, 1918–1926 by Romeo Gurakuqi offers a thorough examination of this critical period, when Albania’s survival was tested by the ambitions of global powers and the determined efforts of its own people. Gurakuqi, a dedicated scholar, has produced a work that sheds light on Albania’s quest for sovereignty while providing a thoughtful analysis of small-state dynamics in the volatile arena of international politics. His careful research, utilising archives in London, Rome, and elsewhere, paired with clear and engaging prose, makes this book a valuable addition to the study of Balkan history and the post-Versailles era.

The years from 1918 to 1926 were a time of immense uncertainty for Albania, a young state recognised only in 1913, now grappling with the challenges of post-war reconstruction. Gurakuqi skillfully explores the interplay of domestic and international forces that defined Albania’s second phase of state-building. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the League of Nations, and the Conference of Ambassadors are presented as critical stages where Albania’s existence was fiercely debated. Through a realist perspective, Gurakuqi reveals how major powers—Britain, France, Italy, and the United States—often placed strategic priorities above the principle of self-determination. Italy’s shifting policies, the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom’s territorial claims, and Greece’s designs on southern Albania are analysed with clarity, highlighting the power politics that risked fragmenting Albania. Yet, Gurakuqi also emphasises the agency of Albanian leaders, intellectuals, and emigrants—especially those in the United States—who capitalised on great-power rivalries to achieve key successes, such as the expulsion of Italian forces in Vlora and Albania’s entry into the League of Nations in 1920.

Introduction

The end of World War I signalled the collapse of long-standing empires and a fundamental reconfiguration of international borders across Europe and beyond. Albania—a nascent and fragile polity whose international recognition had only been secured in 1913—once again became the subject of international contestation in the post-war settlements that culminated in the Versailles order. The monograph The Versailles Order and the Making of Albania, 1918–1926 explores the interplay of international and domestic forces that shaped the making and stabilisation of Albania between 1918 and 1926. It highlights how competing significant power interests, evolving regional dynamics, and internal political divisions converged during this formative phase, commonly understood as Albania’s second period of state formation.

As a broad study of Albania’s international relations and internal political transformation, this work is situated within the theoretical framework of Realism in international relations. Realist theory posits that states act primarily in pursuit of national interest, prioritising power, sovereignty, and survival, which provides the principal analytical lens through which the foreign policy behaviour of central and regional powers in the post-war period is interpreted.

This approach is particularly apt for understanding Albania’s emergence, as the country’s fate was influenced not only by idealistic appeals—such as the persistent demand by its political elites for the restoration of national rights denied by the 1913 Treaty of London—but also, and more decisively, by the geopolitical calculations of the victorious Allied powers and their regional clients—all this while acknowledging that Albania’s principal protector, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had disintegrated, leaving the country without a central great power patron to safeguard its interests. Although the analysis is rooted in Realist assumptions, it does not overlook the agency of Albanian actors. On the contrary, the study demonstrates how Albanian politicians, diplomats, and local leaders navigated the constraints of the international system, exploiting tensions among the great powers and forging limited alliances to defend territorial integrity and secure partial international legitimacy. These strategies underscore how small states, even within an unfavourable structural context, can exercise adaptive agency. The emergence during this period of a political tendency among the Albanian elite to seek support from the Anglo-Saxon powers further illustrates this shift.

In the Realist conception, the international system is dominated by great powers whose competing interests frequently override the sovereignty and aspirations of smaller states. Albania’s experience during and after the Versailles settlement offers a paradigmatic example of such dynamics: a small, internally divided polity whose political future was often shaped in foreign capitals rather than through domestic consensus. The formal decisions made at the Paris Peace Conference, the ambiguous legal status Albania held throughout the post-war three years, and its belated—but strategically significant—international recognition all reflect the primacy of power politics over the principle of national self-determination.

The ambitions of Italy, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and Greece—alongside the hesitancy of the United States and the fluctuating priorities of France and Britain, the unprincipled swings of Italian foreign policy, sometimes in favour of Albania and sometimes against it—are best understood through a Realist reading of post-war diplomacy. This study also interrogates broader transformations in diplomatic practice, notably the transition from secretive diplomacy to the more open, Wilsonian paradigm of New Diplomacy. It analyses the consequences of this shift for Albania, including the gradual (over three years) abrogation of the 1915 Secret Treaty of London, the reassertion of the 1913 borders as the basis for resolving the Albanian question, and the increasing influence of Anglo-American perspectives within the peace process.

The settlement imposed on 9 November 1921 did not fully meet Albanian national aspirations. However, it represented a compromise aimed at reconciling the interests of all relevant foreign parties, albeit at the expense of Albania’s territorial coherence and political normalisation. The delineation of Albania’s borders, the question of recognition, and its institutional future were governed less by legal norms than by strategic calculation.

By situating Albania’s international position within a Realist framework, this study illustrates how decisions taken by France, Britain, and Italy regarding mandates, frontiers, and state recognition followed patterns of geopolitical interest, often couched in the language of idealism. The Paris Peace Conference operated as a forum for asserting spheres of influence rather than functioning as a disinterested arbiter of Wilsonian ideals. Albania’s admission to the League of Nations in 1920 did not redress this fundamental asymmetry.

Despite Albania’s lack of full international recognition and the unresolved status of its borders (as determined by the later Conference of Ambassadors), I examine this admission through the lens of legal scholarship, particularly the analysis offered by Colin Warbrick in States and Recognition in International Law. The study thereby seeks to clarify what has often been viewed as an anomalous or contradictory moment in international legal practice.

However, this study also challenges overly deterministic interpretations of Realism by exploring how Albanian actors—diplomats, insurgents, and political elites—navigated structural constraints to assert a degree of agency. While Albania lacked the capacity to determine international outcomes unilaterally, it succeeded in leveraging rivalries among the great powers to secure limited yet meaningful gains. Illustrative examples include the reversal of the Venizelos-Tittoni Agreement, the successful expulsion of Italian forces during the Vlora Campaign, and the defence of Shkodra and the Battle for Dibra

In sum, this study situates Albania’s post-war trajectory within a Realist analytical framework that foregrounds both the structural limitations and the strategic opportunities encountered by small states in a hostile international environment. It argues that Albania’s survival and partial consolidation in this period were not inevitable but rather the outcome of contingent geopolitical shifts and a domestic capacity for political adaptation.

This monograph examines Albania’s political history from the end of World War I until the 9^th of November 1921, when the final international status and the borders of the Albanian state were determined. In addition to the political history, the monograph meticulously covers the diplomatic handling of the Albanian Question at the Peace Conference in Paris and the subsequent Conference of Ambassadors up until the status and the borders were ultimately settled in principle on 9 November 1921. While the issue of discussion and determination of international status is closed here, the issue of setting boundaries on the ground continued to be treated until the final act in 1926. Similarly, the process of establishing diplomatic relations with the United States and Great Britain continued until 1922. The main focus of this book is the treatment of the Albanian question at the Conference of Paris 1919. The Albanian question was considered at three international events over three years: the Peace Conference of Paris, the League of Nations, and the Conference of Ambassadors. These instances were even set up by the highest forum of the Peace Conference, the Supreme Council, and were tasked with providing solutions to specific issues raised by the war, including the Albanian issue. This happened because, in practice, members of the Supreme Council acted as a world government, the recognition of this institution’s power and its long-term decisions is essential to understanding all subsequent developments of unresolved issues in the world, including Balkan and Adriatic issues. Every parallel or subsequent treatment of the Albanian question was related to and conditioned by the fundamental decisions of the peacemakers assembled at the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919. Certain committees were set up by the High Forum of Peace and the Supreme Council of Alliance and were assigned the task of sorting out the social questions raised by war, including the Albanian question.

The Paris Peace Conference is one of the most important events of the twentieth century, which influenced the determination of several geopolitical lines on the world map, which will remain unchanged for the next seventy years. The victorious powers in the war, Great Britain, France, and the United States (Italy and Japan, although Allied powers were bypassed at the Conference), decided on the political borders of the states of Europe and Western Asia after the war. The configuration of the world based on the dominant position of the Western Allied powers was institutionalised with the creation of the League of Nations, an international body established by the victorious powers (without the participation of the United States), as an organisation that legitimised the solution given in Versailles, through a framework of international law, created based on the image of the nation-state.¹ The new world order, dominated by Western powers, was established through five treaties signed with the Central Powers, concluded during the war. Specifically, these are: 1. The Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919) with Germany, 2. The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (10 September 1919) with Austria, now an independent state; 3. The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine (27 November 1919) with Bulgaria; 4. The Treaty of Trianon (4 June 1920) with Hungary, now as an independent republic; 5. The Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920, with the Ottoman Empire, was later modified by the Cairo Conference in 1921 and by the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923.

At this conference, the Albanian question was discussed within the context of the Adriatic and the Balkan questions. Thus, during this international investigation, the question of Albanian statehood became intertwined with several previous international acts and the complex web of secret diplomacy, which struggled to confront the changing reality of international relations. During World War I, Albania was a victim of the successive conquests of the powers in conflict. Even though it was not allied with any power, it was regarded the same way as the losers were after the war ended. Besides the reasons related to the disintegration of the state, another contributing factor was likely the fact that the majority of Albanians welcomed the liberation of Albania by Austro-Hungarian forces and regarded their three-year administration of the country as that of a saviour. This meant that the claims of the Albanian representatives to have the Albanian state and its national borders recognised were not taken into consideration. On the contrary, the Albanian borders that had been agreed upon in 1913 were in danger. On the other hand, Serbia and Greece, both of which shared a border with Albania, were treated as winners by the conference. Consequently, their territorial claims were given priority at the expense of Albania’s interests, in complete contradiction with the principles of self-determination that had been declared in Paris. This occurred because the conference’s policy was to punish former opponents and compensate their allies and those affiliated with them. Motivated by such interests, the great peacemakers violated the principles of their cultural policy and created artificial states whose function was the further strategic punishment of former war enemies. One of the states that was compensated with priority was the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom, the formation of which came at a heavy price, especially for the Albanians.

The Peace Conference in Paris did not settle the Albanian question, so Albania did not disintegrate. The Italians kept the Albanian people subjugated until August 1920, when the Albanians rioted and pushed them back to the sea. Following these developments, and immediately after the Preliminary Protocol on 2 August 1920, the Italians withdrew their military forces from Albania. Nonetheless, they successfully exercised a policy of economic penetration and gradual political infiltration. Besides carrying out significant military incursions until the beginning of 1922, the Yugoslavians controlled a narrow strip of land, sometimes as wide as 15 km, within the Albanian borders of 1913. The question of Albania’s international status, its borders, and the role of the Italian state in the small Balkan country was theoretically resolved long after the Peace Conference through diplomatic agreements. In contrast, the physical settling of Albania’s borders was a technical and political process that extended until 1926.

In addition to the diplomatic treatment, this study examines the recommencement of internal political life in Albania after World War I, the chronology of governance from December 1918 to December 1924, the constitutional structures upon which the Albanian governments were created, and through which they exerted their activities, the process of crystallisation of the political parties and their respective programmes, the resumption of inner political confrontation and the beginning of the anti-constitutional activities carried out by specific strong individuals. This monograph shows special consideration to both state and private coordinated efforts to defend the territorial entity of Albania in 1919 against Yugoslavian, Italian, and Greek interventions as well as against the de-stabilising tendencies that accompanied the revival of the Albanian state, namely the internal confrontation that took place between the political forces that still viewed Albania as an extension of Turkey and the freedom-loving political forces that fought for a proper future transformation of Albania into a democratic European state.