Albanian exodus

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Albanian exodus is term used to refer to the deportation or mass migration of Albanians from their homes.

[edit] Migration to Italy (15th, 16th century)

After the Albanian national hero, George Kastrioti, died and the anti-Ottoman resistance fell, some 300.000 Albanian left their homes and migrated to Italy. Descendants of these émigrés still live today in the southern Italy and retain the old name for Albanian, Arbëreshë.

A significant number of Albanians that settled in Italy came from Greece. Between 11th and 14th century, many Albanians had established important colonies in the Greek regions of Thessaly, Corinth, Peloponnesus, Attica and nearby islands. The fall of these lands under the Ottoman Empire caused another wave of migrations to Italy; Albanian and Greek peoples landed together on the Italian coast.

[edit] The deportation from Sanjak of Niš (1877/1878)

In the Serbian Project Načertanije of the year 1844, the internal affairs minister of Serbia, Ilija Garašanin, expresses his territorial claims on the Albanian populated lands. According to Garašanin’s goals the Greater Serbia would include all the northern Albania down to Shkumbin river.

During the Russian-Ottoman war of the 19th century, Serbia and Montenegro, two Serbian monarchies in Balkans, sided with the Tzar of Russia. This gave them the hope to apply the expansionist projects described by their scholars.

The battlefield between the Ottoman Empire and the growing principality of Serbia was the Albanian populated Sanjak of Niš, which belonged to Vilayet of Kosovo on that time. The continuous defeats of the Ottomans and their retreat, Serbia rushed on an ethnic cleansing of the region. The genocide on the civil population was exercised in front of the eyes of European powers, which not only did not protest but supported the actions of the Serbian government.

As a result of violence, terror, and massacres of the Serbian army on the autochthonous Albanian population, hundred thousands of Albanians were forced to leave their homes and settle as refugees in the inner parts of Kosovo Vilayet. Prosecuted by the Serbian barrels, 160,000 Albanians emigrated. In the meantime, 640 towns and villages of the districts of Niš, Prokuplje, Leskovac, Vranje, Kursumlija etc. were ethnically cleansed.

In the freezing weather of the grand winter 1877-1878 I saw undressed and bare people running away. They had left their warm rooms to remember them with nostalgia… Along the road Grdelica-Vranje and down to Kumanovo, on the both edges of the street you could notice the corpses of the children, old people and others who had died of cold. - Josif H. Kostic, teacher, eyewitnesses

Almost the entire population of the western part of Sanjak of Niš handed over to Serbia, was Albanian of Islamic religion… Therefore, when this sanjak was occupied by the Serbian army, the population could not face the invader. They all run away to the inner parts of Vilayet of Kosovo leaving the whole place abandoned. - John Ross, Commissioner for Serbia’s borders

[edit] References

• Hysni Myzyri - "Historia e popullit shqiptar" Prishtinë 2003 (History of the Albanian People)
• Biography of Ilija Garašanin