Founding a Balkan State: Albania’s Experiment with Democracy, 1920–1925 by Robert C. Austin (review)

Based on various primary sources – from Albania, the United States, Britain, and the League of Nations – as well as on a rich secondary literature, Robert C. Austin offers with this book an important contribution to the understanding of a crucial period in the formation of the Albanian state at the beginning of the twentieth century. A senior lecturer in the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, Austin had already published a study in Albanian on the subject, under the title “The Path Not Taken of Fan Noli: Albanian Democracy in the Years 1920–1924” (Shtegu i pashkelur i Fan Nolit. Demokracia Shqiptare në vitet 1920–1924, Tirana, 2000), on which the present work relies. Thus, for the author, the central figure of this historical period is Fan Noli, a Christian Orthodox Albanian who became the prime minister of a “revolutionary government” that was set up in June 1924 and fell in December 1925. An intellectual born in the region of Edirne, having emigrated to Greece, Egypt, and later the United States, where he was a worker, a journalist, and later a bishop of a newly established Albanian Orthodox Church, Fan Noli played an important role on the Albanian political scene, especially during the months when he was head of the Albanian government. This makes Austin’s book more a work on the year 1924 than on the whole period, even if in order to discuss the period of Noli’s government he gives many analyses of previous developments. However, this choice leads the author to underestimate the roles of other political actors, with the exception of Ahmet Zogu. In fact, Austin tends to present the Albanian political scene as marked by the opposition between Fan Noli and Ahmet Zogu, which is only partly true. In addition, this opposition is sometimes too caricatured: coming from the United States, Noli is portrayed as liberal, democratic, and Westernist, whereas Zogu is depicted as a Muslim conservative tribal chief with an oriental education and world view. This approach may result from some lack of distance from the discourse of contemporary actors. It may also come from the too frequent discrediting of the Ottoman period in the historiography of the Balkans. Austin seems, for example, to ignore the fact that the political culture in general – not only the conservative trends – at the beginning of the 1920s in Albania was, at least partly, the legacy of a political culture forged during the last year of the Ottoman period, with the emergence of parties, associations, secret committees, and so on.

That said, beyond these caricatures, this study shows very well the contradictions of Noli himself, whose government was the result of a very heterogeneous coalition that did not implement planned reforms, carried out a systematic elimination of its political opponents, and delayed the holding of elections. Concerning the political life of Albania during this period, the author offers many insightful details on the different mobilization channels – parties and organizations – and particularly on the roles of the Bashkimi organization and the army. He rightly insists on the regional cleavages, gives interesting analyses of the elections before 1924, and appropriately underlines the centrality of the issue of the elections on the inner political scene and in foreign affairs. He presents a convincing analysis of the oil issue, which was less important in Albanian foreign relations than in elections. More generally, his analysis concerning the complex relations of Noli’s government with foreign countries (Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union) and the League of Nations is persuasive.

To understand the formation of the Albanian state, further studies will nevertheless have to look more closely at the years 1920–23 to broaden the understanding of political actors and the socio-political inquiry on the post-Ottoman state-building process.