INTRODUCTION
Two main Balkan nations/states today base their national identity on easily disproved pseudo-historical myths. The first and most famous one is the nation of the Slavic-"Macedonians", a newly 20th-century constructed ethnicity that never had a real history and needed to create one from the beginning [1]. The second one is the nation of the Albanians, which, unlike the Slavic-"Macedonians" who in the past centuries were Bulgarians, always formed its own ethnicity, having its own unique language and traditions. However, the Albanian nation was absent in historical records until the 11th century and there is no evidence of Albanian ethnic identity in antiquity and Early Medieval times. This was not a problem for the Albanians, until the 19th century, when they felt threatened by the neighbouring Greek and Serbian nationalisms and had to establish their prestige and territorial claims over the two countries.
THE NEED TO FIND ANCESTORS
As mentioned before, the Albanians were a people of unknown origin and history, so unknown that French journalist Delaisi wrote in 1913 that the Sahara desert has more known history than Albania [2]. In fact, even the Albanians themselves did not know their actual origin and Albanian writers often made up interesting stories. An example is the Italian Arvanite (Arbëresh) writer Francesco Tajani who suggested in 1886 that the Albanians were Scythians who spoke an Indian language but whose place of residence, before they moved to Albania, was in the Caucasus [3].
Their unknown and enigmatic origin made it easy for the Albanians to invent various ancestral myths, depending on their social and national aims, as we will also see later. In 1827, Ibrahim Manzour Effendi reported that Albanians pretended to be descendants of an Arab tribe, the Arnaboude, that was expelled from Arabia during the civil war that broke out because of Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed. Ibrahim Manzour pointed out that:
«It is possible that the Albanians claim such origin because of their national pride, believing like Muslims from all countries that Arabia is the noblest of all lands since the Prophet, his disciples, the caliphs and all the evliya (Muslim saints) were Arabs».
The first identification of Albanians with ancient Balkan populations comes from Western Europe and specifically by German scholar Johann Thunmann in 1774, being the first major exposition of the Illyrian theory [4]. Although, Thunmann's work was both tentative and based mainly on historical evidence, Albanian nationalists managed to adapt this theory to suit their expansionist and nation-building purposes.
HOW ALBANIAN NATIONALISM INFLUENCED WESTERN HISTORIOGRAPHY
Thunmann's Illyrian theory gave the Albanian nationalists the opportunity to make up their own theories about the "true" origin of the Albanians and promote their pseudo-historical propaganda in Western Europe and America. It is important to understand this, because obviously no writer of the 19th and 20th century claiming that famous ancient people were Albanians based his/her research on actual historical facts. Instead, all of them were somehow influenced by Albanian propagandists of the time and laughably their works are presented as "historical evidence" by Albanians on online platforms. The first European "victim" of Albanian pseudo-historical propaganda was Conrad Malte-Brun who claimed that the Albanians were descended from Illyrian tribesmen who had spoken a language ‘affiliated’ to that of the Pelasgians, Dardanians and Macedonians. The French geographer never supported his claims with actual historical evidence, but instead he was inspired by the work of an Albanian named Engjël Mashi which was published in Italian and French. Mashi supported that the languages spoken by the Illyrians, Epirots and Macedonians in classical times were substantially the same, and that this was the source of the Albanian language [5]. The same obsolete views were repeated by the influential Albanian writer Zef Krispi in his his Memoria sulla lingua albanese. All the aforementioned propagandistic works eventually managed to influence the Austrian albanologist Johann Georg Von Hahn who grouped ancient Epirotes, Macedonians and Illyrians under the same "Albanian/Pelasgian" linguistic group [6]. After Hahn's publication, Albanian nationalists (the most prominent was Pashko Vasa) rushed to spread their propaganda world-widely by promoting pseudo-historical articles and maganizes in various languages including Albanian, English and even Greek [7]. The consequence was obviously that various naive Western writers fell victim to Albanian propaganda and promoted the same lies in their books.
USING PSEUDO-HISTORY TO FULLFIL CHAUVINIST DESIRES
Of course, none of these Albanian publications and Pelasgo-Illyrian fairytales was a genuine historical research. The propaganda aimed to defend Albania from Serbian and Greek nationalisms and establish some kind of prestige and territorial claims over its neighbours. Noel Malcolm, prominent British historian and academic writes:
„The primary function of this Pelasgian theory was, of course, to establish a claim of priority […] Albanian political leaders had felt territorially threatened by Greece ever since 1881, when a large part of the Ioannina vilayet was ceded to the Greek state. Their fears were strengthened by the transfer of Ioannina itself to Greece in 1913, and would be intensified in 1918 when news leaked out about the Allied powers’ secret treaty of 1915, which had promised a large part of southern Albania to Greece. Although the idea of basing present day geopolitical claims on theories about ancient Balkan tribes must strike the modern reader as bizarre, the emotional attraction of such theories for Albanians at that time is not hard to understand.“ [7]
However, the implications of the Pelasgian theory went further than mere claims of ‘historic right' to territory:
„The Pelasgian theory also enabled its proponents to claim that some of the most famous elements of ancient Greek culture and history had a Pelasgian, and therefore an ‘Albanian’, origin“ [7].
Albanian propagandists tried to achieve this by making up Albanian etymologies for famous figures of Hellenic Mythology [8]. Such arguments were taken up enthusiastically by the Albanian publicists in America: Çekrezi referred to ‘the Albanian Zeus, whose memory survives even today in the appellation of God as “Zot” by the modem Albanians,’ while Dako reproduced almost the whole lift of derivations, however dubious, proposed by Pashko Vasa. Here is what modern experts think about these:
„Such derivations, almost all of which would be rejected by modern scholars, exhibit some of the classic features of a mythic style of thinking. They elide the difference between the ancestral past and the present, identifying the ancient Pelasgians as ‘Albanian’ (rather as if one were to refer to the ancient inhabitants of Britain as ’English’, or to ancient Gauls as ‘French’), and assuming that they spoke a version of the modern Albanian language“ [8].
Unfortunately, similar propagandistic tactics are followed by authors of Albanian textbooks even today, in the 21st century. Durim Abdullahu, while examining modern Kosovar Albanian textbooks, observes the attempts of historical distortion made by Albanian authors [9]. Abdullahu enumerates the myths promoted by the textbooks:
1. The Myth of the 'Native People'
2. The Myth of Original Culture
3. The Myths of vertical Continuity and Ethnic Purity
4. The Myths of Religious Tolerance and Indifference
5. The Myth of the Nation: Albano-centrism as Nationalism
6. The Myth of National Awakening
7. The Myths of Victimuzation and Innocence, and of Continuous Resistance
8. The Myth of Scanderbeg and the Relationship with the West
9. The Myth of Cultural Homogeneity
WHEN PROPAGANDISTS ADMIT THEIR PROPAGANDA
The fact that the most prominent Albanian propagandist, Vasa Effendi (or Pashko Vasa), admitted the truth himself cannot be overlooked. In his book titled "The Truth on Albania and the Albanians", where the aforementioned pseudo-historical claims are supported, Vasa Effendi made the following admission:
«The denomination of Epirus, and of Macedonia are of foreign source — Greek; that of Albania is of modern origin; the Europeans, in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, gave that name to the country of the Shqypetárs. But the Shqypetárs themselves do not know what is Epirus, or Macedonia, or Albania; These are names of which they are completely ignorant […] If we speak to them of Epirus, or of Albania, they think that we are talking Chinese or addressing some insult to them in a foreign language, and they are likely to be offended» [10].
The fact that Albanians were not even aware of these historical ancient names, itself proves that Albanians are not native to Macedonia neither Epirus. This passage also proves that the identity of the Albanian people, at least in the time of Vasa Effendi, was never associated with the ancient heritage Epirus and Macedonia carry.
CONCLUSIONS
Pseudo-historical lies occasionally promoted by Albanians are not a product of historical research, but rather made up stories that Albanian intellectuals spread like a virus all across Europe, influencing European writers. These fairytales were required to defend Albania geopolitically, reinforce Albanian national identity through national myths and convince the world that the victimised Albanian nation is the only pure and indigenous race left in the Balkans. Albanian ethno-centric and chauvinist propaganda of the past centuries has influenced in a noticeable level the propagandistic tactics of modern Albanian and Kosovar textbook authors. Myths of priority, ethnic purity, historical distortion and intervention in the past are only some of the elements constituting the modern Albanian nationalist narrative. Albanian historical revisionism has also delayed the establishment of an objective Albanian historiography. As Albanologist Robert Elsie wrote:
„There is still no objective and reliable historiography in Albania upon which such a work can be based. Decades of politically motivated censorship and self-censorship, combined with generations of nationalist thinking, have given rise to many myths and misconceptions. It has been difficult for Albanian historians and scholars to set aside the standard fare of hero glorification and turn their backs on pompous assertions of national grandeur. Albanian history abounds with myths, which have served to disguise the inferiority complexes of a small and underdeveloped people” [11].
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Sources/References:
[1] Eugene Borza, Macedonia in Redux, in: "The Eye Expanded: Life and the Arts in the Greco-Roman Antiquity", p.259
[2] M. Delaisi, Les aspirations autonomistes en Europe, Paris: Alcan 1913, p 23
[3] Francesco Tajani, Le istorie albanesi , Salerno 1886, part 1, pp. xxi-xxii
[4] Johann Thunmann Untersuchungen uber die Cesehichte der ostlichen europäischen Volker (Leipzig: 1774)
[5] Albanian Identities: Myth and History, p. 75
[6] Johann Georg von Hahn, Albanesische Studien, 3 vols, Jena: Friedrich Mauke 1854, vol. l.pp. 214-19
[7] Albanian Identities: Myth and History, pp. 76-77
[8] Albanian Identities: Myth and History, pp. 77-78
[9] Myths and Mythical Spaces: Conditions and Challenges for History Textbooks in Albania and South-Eastern Europe, pp. 33-51
[10] Wassa Effendi, The Truth on Albania and the Albanians
[11] Robert Elsie, Historical Dictionary of Albania, p. xi
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