page_title: Albanian nationalism (Kosovo)
section_title: Balkan Wars, World War One and interwar period
hierarchical_section_title: Albanian nationalism (Kosovo) / History / Balkan Wars, World War One and interwar period
caption_attribution_description: Kosovo Albanian rebels (Kachaks) in the 1920s controling a road in Kosovo.
context_page_description: Kosovo is the birthplace of the Albanian nationalist movement which emerged as a response to the Eastern Crisis of 1878. In the immediate aftermath of the Russo-Ottoman war, the Congress of Berlin proposed partitioning Ottoman Albanian inhabited lands in the Balkans among neighbouring countries. The League of Prizren was formed by Albanians to resist those impositions. For Albanians those events have made Kosovo an important place regarding the emergence of Albanian nationalism. During the remainder of the late Ottoman period various disagreements between Albanian nationalists and the Ottoman Empire over socio-cultural rights culminated in two revolts within Kosovo and adjacent areas. The Balkan Wars ending with Ottoman defeat, Serbian and later Yugoslav sovereignty over the area generated an Albanian nationalism that has become distinct to Kosovo stressing Albanian language, culture and identity within the context of secession from Serbia. Pan-Albanian sentiments are also present and historically have been achieved only once when part of Kosovo was united by Italian Axis forces to their protectorate of Albania during the Second World War.
context_section_description: Kosovar Albanian nationalism has been defined through its clash with Serbian nationalism where both view Kosovo as the birthplace of their cultural and national identities. Ottoman rule ended in 1912 during the Balkan Wars and Kosovo became part of Serbia. During this time Serb forces in Kosovo engaged in killings and forced migration of Albanians while the national building aims of the Serbian state were to assimilate some and remove most Albanians by replacing them with Serbian settlers. The Serb state believed that Albanians had no sense of nationhood while Albanian nationalism was viewed as the result of Austro-Hungarian and Italian intrigue. These events fostered feelings of Albanian victimisation and defeatism, grudges against the Serbs and Great Powers who had agreed to that state of affairs which ran alongside Albanian nationalism. Kosovar Albanian nationalism drew upon and became embedded in popular culture such as village customs within a corpus of rich historical myths, distinctive folk music referring to harvests along with marriage and clan based law.
  During the First World War occupation by Austro-Hungarian forces, Albanian schools were opened that later were shut down during the interwar years by Yugoslav authorities while religious Islamic education was only permissible in Turkish. Serbian language education based upon a curriculum of common Slavic identity was instituted by authorities as a medium to integrate Albanians into the state, while they viewed Yugoslav education policy as denationalisation. Yugoslav education policy repressed Albanian secular education to undermine sentiments of Albanian national identity and culture with a view to preventing possible nationalist challenges to Yugoslavia. Religious private Muslim schools were condoned by authorities and seen as promoting collective identity based on religion among Albanians. During the 1920s education taught by Albanian Muslim clergy moved to Muslim tekkes, maktabs and madrasas which emerged as underground centres for spreading and generating Albanian nationalism strengthening within Albanian nationhood the religious element. Albanian nationalists were against this development as their efforts were toward building Albanian national identity on secular grounds. Religious Muslim schools by the 1930s became viewed as a threat to the state and Yugoslav authorities replaced Albanian Muslim clergy with pro-Serbian Slavic Muslim clergy and teachers from Bosnia to prevent Albanian nationalist activities developing in religious institutions. Albanians opposed those moves and boycotted imposed teachers. The Albanian language was prohibited by Yugoslav authorities and some Albanians were made to emigrate.
  Secessionist sentiments after the First World War became expressed through the Kaçak movement led by the Kosovo Committee made up of Kosovar Albanian exiles opposed to Yugoslav rule. Represented on the ground as a guerilla group the Kaçak movement was led by Azem Galica and later his wife Shota Galica that fought a small scale war (1918-1921) in formations of çetas or fighting bands  against the Yugoslav army. Supported by Italy who gave financial aid and Albania, the Kaçak movement was eventually suppressed by the Serbs during the late 1920s. The movement contributed to the development of an Albanian national consciousness in Kosovo and Macedonia. Yugoslav authorities in the 1930s replaced Albanian imams with ones that were hostile to Sufism from Bosnia weakening Albanian nationalism. Kosovar Albanians were viewed by Yugoslav authorities as an enemy within that could challenge the territorial integrity of the state. Albanians in Kosovo felt that Serbian and later Yugoslav rule constituted a foreign conquest. Confiscations of Albanian land and settlement of Serbian colonists throughout the interwar period drove Kosovar Albanians during the Second World War to collaborate with the Axis powers who promised a Greater Albania.
caption: Kosovo Albanian rebels controlling a road in Kosovo, (1920s)
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