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Albania 1913: Divided in London
Independence was not enough: Albania's borders still had to be decided
When Albania proclaimed its independence in Valona on 28 November 1912, the political problem was far from settled. The principle that an Albanian state should exist had been asserted, but its form, degree of sovereignty and, above all, its borders still had to be determined. In those weeks the armies of the Balkan League occupied vast areas of the former Ottoman lands in Europe, and each neighbouring state advanced claims which, if fully accepted, would have left very little territory for an independent Albania.
This is the distinction on which the entire reconstruction depends. The Treaty of London of 30 May 1913 did not draw a detailed map of Albania and did not list, town by town, what would remain inside or outside it. It excluded Albania from the general cession of Ottoman territories and entrusted the six Great Powers with defining its frontiers and settling the other questions concerning the new state. The actual line was therefore constructed through the decisions of the Conference of Ambassadors, the work of international commissions and the delimitation protocols.
This is not a terminological distinction but the thread linking all the documents: in the London process of 1913, the Treaty entrusts the Albanian question to the Powers, while the Conference of Ambassadors, together with the subsequent protocols, defines the state and traces its frontiers; in 1915, in the midst of the European war, a new secret agreement once again treats parts of Albanian territory as material for diplomatic compensation.
1. Before London: four territorial projects for Albania
Amedeo Giannini opens his reconstruction by recalling that Austria-Hungary and Italy, although rivals in the Adriatic, ultimately converged on one point: neither could accept the other gaining predominant control over the entire Albanian coast. The prospect of Austria-Hungary extending as far as Valona and therefore towards the Strait of Otranto was perceived in Rome as a strategic threat. Paradoxically, the rivalry between the two powers helped support the solution of an Albania separate from the neighbouring Balkan states.
The ambitions of Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece pointed in the opposite direction. In Giannini's summary, Montenegro aimed to annex Scutari and the territory as far as the Drin; Serbia wanted a corridor to the Adriatic and Durazzo; Bulgaria looked to part of the Lake Ochrida area as part of the Macedonian question; Greece aspired to advance into southern Albania as far as the Semani River. These were claims, not yet decisions. But they show clearly the territorial pressure within which the international compromise of 1913 emerged.
The question of Scutari was especially dramatic. Montenegro succeeded in occupying the city, but pressure from the Great Powers forced Scutari to remain within the new Albanian state. Serbia, for its part, obtained neither Durazzo nor a sovereign corridor to the sea. Greece did not obtain the Semani line. Yet the rejection of these maximal claims did not mean that Albania received the borders demanded by the Albanians: the compromise would leave outside a number of regions and centres that Albanian diplomacy would continue to claim.
2. The Treaty of London of 30 May 1913: what it actually says about Albania
The Treaty of Peace signed in London on 30 May 1913 ended the First Balkan War between the Ottoman Empire and the states of the Balkan League. For the Albanian question, Articles 2 and 3 are particularly decisive, while Article 1 establishes peace and friendship between the parties.
Article 2: Albania is excluded from the general cession of Ottoman territories
Article 2 provides that the Ottoman Empire cede to the allied states all of its European territories lying west of the Enos-Midia line, with one express exception: Albania. This clause is fundamental because it prevents Albanian territory from being treated simply as part of the territorial spoils transferred wholesale to the Balkan victors. The exception, however, does not yet define what 'Albania' means geographically.
Article 3: the frontier is entrusted to the Great Powers
The real crux is Article 3. The Sultan and the allied sovereigns entrust the six Great Powers - Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Great Britain, Italy and Russia - with regulating the delimitation of Albania's frontiers and all other questions concerning the country. In other words, the Treaty does not settle the Albanian question: it transfers it to the Conference of Ambassadors.
Giannini also notes a legal subtlety. Read in isolation, Article 3 makes Albania appear already to be a distinct entity whose territory merely remains to be drawn. If it is read together with Article 2, however, a theoretical doubt could arise as to whether Albania's exclusion from the cession left some form of Ottoman sovereignty intact. According to the author, this thesis had no practical consequence: the Allies did not consider it, and Turkey did not claim any effective restoration of sovereignty over the country. The subsequent decisions of the Conference of Ambassadors would expressly exclude any bond of suzerainty with the Porte.
3. The Conference of Ambassadors: from the Treaty mandate to the birth of the state
The Conference of Ambassadors in London, which began in December 1912 and continued into 1914, thus became the forum in which the Great Powers transformed the principle of a separate Albania into a concrete state order. The decision of 29 July 1913 is one of the most important documents in the entire affair.
The text reproduced by Giannini is divided into eleven points. Albania is constituted as an autonomous, sovereign and hereditary principality according to primogeniture and placed under the guarantee of the six Powers. The Prince is to be designated by those Powers. Every bond of suzerainty with Turkey is excluded. The country is neutralised and its neutrality guaranteed internationally. Control of the civil administration and finances is entrusted to an International Commission composed of delegates from the six Powers and one Albanian delegate.
The Commission is to work out the detailed organisation of the administration, submit a report to the Powers and, until the appointment of the Prince and the formation of a definitive national government, supervise the functioning of the existing authorities and the gendarmerie. The document also establishes the international organisation of the public-security force and provides for foreign officers exercising effective command. The text reproduced by Giannini states in point 9 that these officers were to be selected from the Swedish army; in practice, however, the organisation of the gendarmerie was entrusted to Dutch officers. This is a useful example of how diplomatic decisions could be altered in implementation.
Giannini's material also preserves a discrepancy worth noting: in the narrative of chapter I, the powers of the International Commission are said to last five years; in the documentary text of the appendix, point 5 instead gives a duration of ten years, renewable if necessary. The text of the act should therefore be preferred in the reconstruction, while the inconsistency in the source should remain visible.
4. The Statute of 1914: indivisibility and inalienability of the territory
The next institutional step came on 10 April 1914, when the International Commission approved the Statute of Albania in Valona, a text of 216 articles. For territorial purposes, the first three are particularly important.
Article 1 defines Albania as a sovereign, hereditary constitutional principality under the guarantee of the six Great Powers. Article 2 contains a formula of great importance: Albania is indivisible and its territory is inalienable. Its frontiers are those determined by the six Powers and may not be changed or rectified except by law and with the prior approval of those same Powers. Article 3 confirms Albania's neutralisation, while recognising the country's right to take the measures necessary to defend its territory; it also establishes a special regime for the commercial port to be served by the planned international railway between Serbia and the Adriatic, prohibiting its fortification.
The formula takes on particular weight in light of what would happen in 1915: the territory that the Statute defined as indivisible and inalienable would return, within the framework of wartime compensation, to the centre of a secret negotiation.
5. The northern frontier: from the Boyana to Lake Ochrida
The northern frontier cannot be understood through generic formulas. The document reproduced by Giannini as the protocol for the delimitation of northern Albania, drafted within the framework of the 1913 Conference of Ambassadors, describes a line built through rivers, mountain ridges, villages, tribes and districts. Following that line makes it possible to see concretely which territories were included in the Albanian state and which remained outside; for the north and north-east, however, the physical demarcation on the ground would be resumed and rectified after the war.
The frontier begins on the Adriatic at the mouth of the Boyana, today's Buna/Bojana, and follows the river's thalweg to the village of Goritza. From there it reaches the heights separating the Boyana from Lake Scutari, leaving Taraboche to Albania. It crosses the lake near Dedire-Zogay, also left to Albania, and reaches the bay of Licheni-Hoti.
At this point the line also becomes a boundary between tribal communities. Gruda and Hoti are ceded to Montenegro; Kastrati and Klementi remain in Albania. The frontier continues along the division between the Montenegrin Koutchi and the Klementi, as far as the territories of Gusinje and Plav, which together with their dependencies are left to Montenegro. From there it follows the main range and the watershed between the Lim and Drin basins.
Farther south-east, the protocol provides that the line reach the ridge of the hills south of Gjakova - 'Diakowa' in the document - leaving the town outside Albania. It then continues to the White Drin, follows its course to the west of Prizren and leaves the district of Luma to Albania. From Luma it climbs the Korab ridge: Lower Dibra remains in the new Albanian state, while the district of Reka remains outside it.
A little north of the town of Dibra, today's Debar, the frontier leaves the ridge; the town is left outside Albania. The line reaches the Black Drin, follows it upstream to Zoukowo and then follows the ridges separating the Drin basin from that of the Skumbi. Struga also remains outside. Finally, the frontier reaches the shore of Lake Ochrida, today's Lake Ohrid, near the village of Lin.
The protocol therefore makes it possible to establish a first set of inclusions and exclusions. Taraboche, Dedire-Zogay, Kastrati, Klementi, Luma and Lower Dibra remain with Albania. Gruda, Hoti, Gusinje, Plav, Gjakova, Reka, the town of Dibra and Struga remain outside; Prizren lies east of the line. In his narrative summary Giannini adds that Serbia obtained Prizren, Ipek/Peć, Gjakova and Prilep: this should be read as the author's summary of the territorial settlement, not as a literal list from the protocol. In the case of Prilep in particular, the article does not treat it as a locality assigned by the Albanian protocol, but records only the information as it appears in Giannini's summary.
6. The southern frontier: mandate, criteria and territories to be assigned
For the southern frontier, the London Conference gave the International Commission a particularly detailed mandate. The area in which the Commission was to work was bounded, to the west, by the mountains separating the coastal region assigned to Albania as far as Phtelia from the valley of Argirocastro; to the north-east, by the frontier of the former Ottoman kaza of Koritza. Between these two areas, Venizelos's memorandum formed one of the northern reference points of the field of work, while to the south and south-east the Commission was to extend as far as the line proposed by Austria-Hungary and Italy.
The London decisions of August 1913 nevertheless fixed several points of principle for the southern sector. Albania was to include the coastal region as far as Phtelia, including the island of Saseno; the region north of the Greek line; the former kaza of Koritza; and the western and southern shore of Lake Ochrida from the village of Lin to the monastery of Svet Naum. The meaning of this final stretch, however, would later become controversial: in 1924 the Permanent Court of International Justice held that the 1913 texts were not sufficiently precise to regard the frontier at the monastery of Saint Naum as definitively fixed.
The delimitation was to be based on ethnographic and geographical criteria. For ethnographic inquiries, the Commission was to determine the mother tongue, that is, the language spoken within families. The text expressly excluded attempts at plebiscites or other political manifestations from consideration. In districts inhabited by the Koutzo-Vlachs, the Commission was to establish nationality, leaving the final decision on attribution to Albania or Greece to the Powers. Finally, within one month of the completion of the work, Greek troops were to evacuate the territories assigned to Albania.
7. The Protocol of Florence of 17 December 1913: the line point by point
The Protocol of Florence of 17 December 1913 turned that mandate into a concrete line. It is one of the most important documents for understanding the frontier between Albania and Greece because it does not stop at a political formula: it follows ridges, elevations, rivers and villages.
The line begins at the so-called point C, elevation 1738 on the Austrian map, north-east of Mandra Nikolica, where the southern boundary of the kaza of Koritza meets the Grammos ridge. From there it runs south along the ridge to Mavri Petra, passes elevations 2536 and 2019 and reaches Golo. It then follows the watershed to elevation 1740, passes between the villages of Badati and Kursaka and heads towards the hill north-east of Kukesi, from where it descends to the Sarandaporos.
The frontier follows the bed of the Sarandaporos to its confluence with the Vojoussa, the Vjosa. From there it reaches the summit of Mount Tumba, passing between Zipaliça and Messaria and by elevations 956 and 2000. From Mount Tumba it turns west to elevation 1621, passing north of Zrimazes, and then once again follows the watershed to the height north-east of Episkopi.
It is in this section that the protocol begins explicitly to specify the fate of individual villages: Badati remains with Albania, while Gaidohor remains with Greece. The line descends into the Ziinos valley, crosses the river and climbs the hill of Kakavia, which remains with Albania. It then follows the watershed again: Valtista and Kastaniani remain with Greece, Kossoviça with Albania, until it reaches Murgana, elevation 2124.
From Murgana the frontier continues towards Stugara and, passing Vertop and elevation 750, leaves Janiari and Yerva to Albania. It then passes elevations 1014, 675 and 839, turns north-west and leaves Konispoli to Albania. Finally it follows the ridge of the Stilo and Orba hills and, before elevation 254, turns south to the bay of Phtelia.
In his general summary Giannini observes that Greece, although it did not obtain all the southern Albania it had claimed, did obtain Janina. This statement too must be kept distinct from the technical line of the Protocol of Florence: the protocol describes the line and names certain localities on one side or the other, whereas the statement about Janina belongs to Giannini's political summary of the overall Balkan settlement and is not presented here as a clause of the Protocol of Florence.
8. The territories left outside: what the documents allow us to say
Speaking of the 'territories left outside Albania' requires precision because the sources operate on different levels. Some localities are expressly declared outside by the protocols; others are outside because the frontier runs west or north of them; others still are mentioned by Giannini in his summary; finally, a broader group of territories appears in Albanian claims submitted after the war. Confusing these categories produces a list that may look broader but is historically less rigorous.
In the Montenegrin sector
The northern protocol leaves Gruda and Hoti, Gusinje and Plav with their dependencies to Montenegro. Scutari represents the opposite case: it was occupied and claimed by Montenegro but remained with Albania. The frontier therefore did not accept the Montenegrin claim to extend as far as the Drin, even though it assigned Montenegro tribal and mountainous territories that the Albanian side would later regard as part of its national space.
In the Serbian sector and the later Yugoslav area
The protocol leaves Gjakova, Reka, the town of Dibra and Struga outside; it places Prizren east of the line and leaves Luma and Lower Dibra to Albania. In his summary Giannini adds Prizren, Ipek/Peć, Gjakova and Prilep among the centres obtained by Serbia: this is the author's synthesis, distinct from the literal wording of the protocol. In contemporary terminology, a significant number of these centres now lie in Kosovo or North Macedonia; in 1913, however, the relevant framework is that of Ottoman districts and localities and the new state allocations, not today's borders.
In the Greek sector
The Protocol of Florence leaves Gaidohor, Valtista and Kastaniani to Greece, while retaining Badati, Kakavia, Kossoviça, Janiari, Yerva and Konispoli for Albania. Giannini also lists Janina among the centres that passed to Greece in the wider settlement following the Balkan Wars; this article deliberately keeps that summary separate from the literal content of the Protocol of Florence. The southern region was the most disputed terrain because the Greek side claimed a much larger area, often described in Greek memoranda of the period as 'Northern Epirus', whereas the Albanian side argued for an ethnic line much farther south.
A concise overview of the explicit allocations in the 1913 documents
To grasp the territorial result immediately, it is useful to separate the allocations expressly stated in the protocols from Giannini's narrative summaries. The following table includes only localities and areas explicitly named in the sources used; it should not be read as a complete list of every village falling on one side or the other of the line.
| Sector | Named localities/areas | Documented outcome | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Montenegrin | Gruda; Hoti; Gusinje; Plav and dependencies | Outside Albania; assigned to Montenegro in the northern protocol. | Document XVIII |
| Serbian / eastern | Gjakova; Reka; the town of Dibra; Struga; Prizren east of the line. Giannini adds Ipek/Peć and Prilep in his summary. | Outside Albania according to the line or the source's summary. | Document XVIII; ch. I |
| Southern / Greek | Gaidohor; Valtista; Kastaniani; Janina in Giannini's summary. | To Greece; Janina is mentioned in the narrative summary, not in the detailed wording of the Protocol of Florence. | Document XIX; ch. I |
| Territories retained by Albania | Scutari; Kastrati; Klementi; Luma; Lower Dibra; Badati; Kakavia; Kossoviça; Janiari; Yerva; Konispoli; kaza of Koritza; coast as far as Phtelia. | Within the Albanian state in the documentary passages considered. | Documents XVIII-XIX-XX |
9. The Albanian response: the 'ethnographic frontier' claimed after the war
The material collected by Giannini allows us to see not only what the Powers decided, but also how Albanian diplomacy later described the territorial loss of 1913. At the Paris Peace Conference, the Albanian Delegation presented a maximal programme based on the idea of an 'ethnographic frontier'. It is important to report it as a claim made by the Albanian side, not as a neutral description of the demographic situation.
According to the memoranda summarised by Giannini, the Delegation argued that the Congress of Berlin of 1878 and the London Conference of 1913 had incorporated Albanian territories into Montenegro, Serbia and Greece. The claimed line began at the bay of Spitza, north of Antivari, ran north-east to include Touri, Hoti, Gruda and Triepchi and the city of Podgorica. Following the pre-1912 Montenegrin frontiers, it then included the district of Ipek, the eastern part of the district of Mitrovitza, the districts of Prichtina, Guilan, Ferizovitch and Katchanik, part of the district of Uskub, and then Kankandelen, Gostivar, Kertchov and Dibra.
From Dibra the line would have reached Mal i Thate, between Lakes Okrida and Prespa; from there it would have followed the 1913 line as far as the Grammos ridge and then continued south to the Gulf of Prevesa. Giannini reports that the Delegation described all territories west of this line as 'ethnic and historic Albania'.
The same Delegation claimed that two and a half million Albanians lived in this area: one million within the borders assigned in 1913 and one and a half million in the regions ceded to Montenegro, Serbia and Greece. It further maintained that Albanians made up about 80 per cent of the population in the claimed territories and that in areas such as Ipek, Gjakova, Prizren and Tchameria the Slavic or Greek elements were minorities. These figures formed part of the Albanian diplomatic argument and must be presented as such: they are not independent statistics validated by the Conference.
Giannini adds that, in the broadest formulation, some Albanian circles used 'territorial integrity' to refer to the former Ottoman vilayets of Scutari, Kosovo, Monastir and Janina, together with part of the vilayet of Salonica. This too was a political and territorial programme, not the frontier recognised by the Powers in 1913.
10. The neighbours' claims: why they wanted those territories
To understand the 1913 frontier, it is not enough to know where it was drawn. One must understand the arguments used to try to move it. The memoranda cited by Giannini show that the parties did not speak only of ethnicity: they invoked history, geography, strategy, economics, access to ports and control of communications.
Montenegro: Scutari as an economic and strategic 'gateway'
In the Montenegrin memorandum of 5 March 1919, which repeated arguments already present in 1913, Scutari was claimed for historical, geographical, strategic, ethnic and economic reasons. The Boyana was seen as Montenegro's natural outlet to the sea, and control of Scutari as a condition for regulating the river, reclaiming land and developing the economy. These were Montenegrin arguments; they were not sufficient to overturn the decision that kept Scutari within Albania.
Serbia and later Yugoslavia: Durazzo, the Drin and strategic security
Giannini summarises Serbian and Yugoslav ambitions at three levels: maximum programme, Durazzo; intermediate programme, the Drin; minimum programme, a rectification of the frontier to make it strategically secure. According to the author, the ambition to obtain Durazzo would have entailed the annexation of all northern Albania and a substantial part of central Albania, as far as the Voiussa. In Yugoslav memoranda, Scutari and the Boyana were also linked to the project for a Danube-Adriatic railway.
Greece: the Voiussa line and the question of Koritza
In the Mémoire sur les frontières de l'Epire presented in 1913, the Greek government proposed a frontier following the Voiussa upstream from its mouth to Clissura, then the Dangli mountains, and reaching the mountain system separating Lakes Okrida, Prespa and Malik from the basins of the Devoli and Skumbi. Since international conditions made a claim to Valona impracticable, the proposal was moved south of the port: from the bay of Gramata towards the Keravnia, Kjore, Cepin and Suhogora mountains, to the confluence of the Drin and the Voiussa and then to Clissura.
The question of Koritza, today's Korçë, became particularly sensitive. Greek memoranda cited schools, community institutions and the national consciousness of the Orthodox population; the Albanian side disputed the automatic equivalence between Orthodox religious affiliation and Greek nationality. The 1913 Conference and later decisions retained the former kaza of Koritza within Albania. Here too, therefore, the frontier was the result of a compromise among ethnographic, geographical and strategic criteria, not the mechanical application of a single rule.
11. 1914: the order created in London falls apart
The 1913 settlement had very little time to consolidate. The Principality of William of Wied quickly entered into crisis and, with the outbreak of the First World War, Albanian territory was once again crossed by occupations and competing centres of power. Giannini describes a situation in which Scutari was administered by a local commission, the Mirditi retained their traditional organisation, the Malissori lived under their patriarchal system, Essad Pasha dominated Tirana, Durazzo and the central area, southern Albania was occupied by Greek forces and Valona was administered locally.
In the autumn of 1914 Italy, still neutral, sent a naval mission to Valona and took possession of the island of Saseno. During the same period Greek forces landed at Santi Quaranta and occupied the districts of Argirocastro and Premeti. Giannini's chronology contains an internal inconsistency in the October dates here; it is therefore more prudent to retain the substantive fact - the simultaneous Italian and Greek penetration - without basing the reconstruction on that single printed date.
When Italy began negotiating its entry into the war with the Entente, Albania was therefore not a state stably organised within the borders of 1913, but a formally recognised and internationally guaranteed territory that on the ground had once again become fragmented. It was in this context that the Treaty of London was born.
12. The Treaty of London of 26 April 1915: Albania in the Entente's secret negotiations
A documentary clarification is necessary before turning to the clauses. Giannini opens the chapter devoted to the agreement by giving the date 24 April 1915, but elsewhere in the same volume he uses 26 April. The diplomatic text published in the records of the U.S. Department of State bears the signature date 26 April 1915: this is the date that should be adopted for the agreement.
13. How the agreement came about: Valona, Durazzo and the idea of a small central Albania
According to the diplomatic documents used by Giannini, by late July 1914 the French government had already shown itself favourable to Italy receiving Trentino and Valona in a future settlement, while Serbia and Greece would in turn receive territorial compensations on the Adriatic. Great Britain was prepared to add Trieste to the concessions offered to Italy. The Russian minister Sazonov acknowledged Italy's interest in Valona.
As the terms of Italy's entry into the war began to take shape, Rome insisted that Durazzo should remain with an independent central Albania, while Valona and Saseno would pass under full Italian sovereignty together with a territory large enough to guarantee their defence. Giannini summarises this belt approximately as lying between the Voiussa to the north-east and the northern frontier of the district of Chimara to the south.
Russia instead pressed for a solution more favourable to Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. Giannini reconstructs a Russian position favouring a Serbian-Greek common frontier across Albanian territory, assigning Epirus to Greece and northern Albania as far as the Drin to Serbia and Montenegro. Italy continued to support the existence of an independent Albania with Durazzo as its capital, but accepted, under certain conditions, that it would not oppose a partition of the northern and southern areas.
This is the indispensable premise for reading Articles 5, 6 and 7 correctly: they are not three isolated clauses, but the outcome of a negotiation in which the Adriatic, Italy's entry into the war and Balkan aspirations were treated as part of the same package.
14. Article 5: the Adriatic coast and Durazzo
Article 5 of the agreement primarily concerns Dalmatia and the Adriatic settlement, but it contains two provisions directly relevant to Albania. On the one hand, it provides for the broad neutralisation of the Adriatic coast; on the other, in the territorial note, it includes San Giovanni di Medua among the ports of the sector intended for the South Slav states and provides that the port of Durazzo be assigned to the independent Muslim state of Albania.
The formula is significant. Durazzo is assigned neither to Italy nor to Serbia: it is to serve as the outlet of an independent Albanian entity. But this independence, as Article 7 makes clear, does not necessarily imply preserving the Albania of 1913 in its entirety. The agreement envisages a potentially much smaller central Albanian state.
15. Article 6: Valona and Saseno to Italy
Article 6 is unequivocal: Italy is to receive full sovereignty over Valona, the island of Saseno and a surrounding territory extensive enough to guarantee the military defence of these points. The official text places this territory approximately between the Voiussa to the north and east and the frontier of the district of Chimara to the south.
The strategic meaning is clear. Valona controlled the eastern entrance to the Strait of Otranto; Saseno, lying in front of the bay, completed the position. In 1913 the island had been included among the territories assigned to Albania by the Commission for the southern frontier. In 1915, by contrast, the agreement explicitly transferred it to Italy together with Valona. In barely two years, therefore, a point that the London system had placed within Albania was put back on the table as wartime compensation.
16. Article 7: the plan to partition Albania
Article 7 is the crucial provision for understanding how far the 1915 project could go. The clause is conditional: it does not order an immediate and automatic partition of Albania, but provides that if Italy received the compensations laid down in the preceding articles and a small neutralised autonomous state were formed in Albania, Rome would not oppose any future wish by France, Great Britain and Russia to divide Albania's northern and southern frontier districts among Montenegro, Serbia and Greece.
The same clause provided that the coast from the southern limit of the Italian territory of Valona to Cape Stylos was to be neutralised and that Italy would be entrusted with representing the Albanian state in relations with foreign powers. The final passage of Article 7 is phrased in an unusual way: Italy agreed, in any event, to leave sufficient territory east of Albania to ensure the existence of a frontier line between Greece and Serbia west of Lake Ochrida. This is the wording of the British diplomatic edition of 1920, which is substantively consistent with the text published in the U.S. records.
The result is a configuration very different from the 1913 settlement: a central Albanian core, Valona and Saseno assigned to Italian sovereignty, the possible division of northern and southern Albania among Montenegro, Serbia and Greece and, on the eastern side, provision for leaving enough space for Greece and Serbia to share a common frontier west of Lake Ochrida. The agreement, however, does not provide a precise delimitation of all these territories: every map of the 1915 scheme must therefore be read as a reconstruction or interpretive diagram, not as a simple transcription of a border already described article by article.
Giannini insists on a distinction: in his view, Italy preferred a solution with an independent Albania and Durazzo as its capital and accepted the possibility of partition only as a subsidiary option, to accommodate the Allies and Balkan aspirations. This, however, is the author's interpretation of Italian policy; the certain documentary fact is the clause itself, which commits Italy not to oppose such a possible division if the stated conditions were met.
The difference from 1913 is therefore clear: then the Powers constructed a frontier through commissions and protocols; in 1915 the secret treaty chiefly defined rights, destinations and possible partitions, deliberately leaving the precise line of several sectors undetermined.
17. The agreement was secret
Article 16 stipulated that the treaty was to remain secret. This explains why the 1915 agreement belonged to a diplomatic logic different from the public and multilateral process of 1913. The Powers were not openly redesigning the Balkan settlement at an international conference; they were negotiating Italy's entry into the war through reciprocal territorial promises.
The publication of the secret treaties by the revolutionary Russian government after 1917 made the contents of the agreement known. From that point onward, the Treaty became one of the most debated documents in post-war Adriatic diplomacy and one of the foundations of the disputes over Albania's fate at the Peace Conference.
18. 1913 and 1915: two acts, two different logics
Comparison of the two moments reveals a radical change in the diplomatic context. In 1913 the Great Powers excluded Albania from the general cession of Ottoman territories, defined its political order and entrusted international commissions with tracing its frontiers. In 1915, by contrast, the European system that had guaranteed that settlement had already been shattered by war, and the Albanian question was absorbed into negotiations over territorial compensation.
By 1915, the international system that had guaranteed Albania was already at war with itself. Germany and Austria-Hungary did not participate in the agreement; France, Great Britain and Russia negotiated with Italy. Valona and Saseno were promised to Rome; Durazzo remained with the Albanian core; the north and south could be divided among Montenegro, Serbia and Greece. The neutrality of 1913 gave way to the logic of compensation in a world war.
For this reason it is misleading to merge the 'Treaty of London' of 1913 and the 'Treaty of London' of 1915 into a single event. The first, dated 30 May 1913, ended the First Balkan War and entrusted the Powers with defining Albania. The second, dated 26 April 1915, was a secret wartime agreement that reopened the Adriatic settlement and contemplated a further territorial reduction of Albania. They are connected, but they are not the same act.
19. From a decided border to a border on the ground: Koritza, Vermosh and Saint Naum
Even after 1915, the problem was not closed. The war had prevented completion of some delimitation operations, especially in the north and north-east. On 9 November 1921 the principal Allied Powers returned to the issue and broadly confirmed the line established in 1913, while providing for local rectifications and renewed activity by the commissions on the ground.
The fourteen villages of the kaza of Koritza
When Greece requested that, north of the Grammos, the frontier should follow a different mountain chain instead of the old administrative boundary of the kaza of Koritza, the Conference of Ambassadors rejected the request. Giannini stresses that the change would have entailed the annexation to Greece of fourteen villages and control of the Janina-Koritza-Florina road. The Conference's reasoning was that the 1913 protocol had declared the former Ottoman kaza of Koritza an integral part of Albania. After a long sequence of protests and postponements, Albanian troops took possession of the disputed area on 31 October 1924.
Vermosh
In the Vermosh sector, the Tellini Commission, relying on the decisions of 1913, initially rejected the rectifications requested by Yugoslavia. Further investigations concluded that the valley should be assigned to Albania, except for a part dependent on Gusinje and Plav, which had already been assigned to Montenegro. The issue nevertheless became part of a broader negotiation with Yugoslavia, closely linked to the Saint Naum case.
Saint Naum
The London texts of 1913 stated, within the framework of the Southern Commission's work, that the western and southern shore of Lake Ochrida from the village of Lin to the monastery of Svet Naum should form part of Albania. But the dispute over the exact frontier at the monastery remained unresolved. In Advisory Opinion No. 9 of 4 September 1924, the Permanent Court of International Justice reconstructed the acts of 1913 and concluded that they were not precise enough to demonstrate that the frontier at Saint Naum had been definitively fixed at that time. The Conference of Ambassadors had assigned the monastery to Albania by decision of 6 December 1922, and the Court held that, with that decision, the Powers had exhausted the mission entrusted to them on that point. The affair did not end there: in 1925, after new evidence was produced and direct negotiations took place, Albania and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes reached a compromise that left the monastery to Yugoslavia and assigned the locality of Pichkoupiya/Peshkëpi to Albania. Giannini places this compromise within the wider frontier negotiation that also involved Vermosh.
The completion of the process in 1926
According to Giannini's reconstruction, the final act of delimitation was signed in Paris on 30 July 1926, with the participation of representatives of the Powers and the states concerned, formally closing the long process of tracing Albania's frontiers. The author concludes that the frontier with Yugoslavia derived from the London line of 1913, the decisions of 1921 and subsequent rectifications on the ground; the frontier with Greece derived from the London agreements of 1913 and the Protocol of Florence, likewise supplemented by local corrections. The date and concluding function of the act of 30 July 1926 are also confirmed by archival documentation relating to the delimitation of Albania.
Giannini's final judgement is explicitly evaluative: he regards the frontier as unsatisfactory from geographical, ethnic, economic, administrative and political perspectives and argues that a significant part of the Albanian population and territory was incorporated into neighbouring states. This is the author's conclusion and reflects his point of view; what the documentation independently demonstrates is that the border was the product of successive compromises rather than a single linear act.
20. A chronology to keep the acts distinct
Conclusion. A recognised state, but drawn from outside
The story of London cannot be reduced to the single formula that 'the Great Powers divided Albania'. That formula conveys the political perception of territorial loss, but it does not explain the concrete mechanism through which it occurred. To understand it, one must distinguish the Treaty of 30 May, the decisions of the Conference of Ambassadors, the delimitation protocols, the Statute of 1914 and, finally, the secret agreement of 1915.
The Treaty of 30 May 1913 removed Albania from the collective cession of Ottoman territories to the Balkan victors, but it did not assign Albania an already defined frontier. That power was transferred to the six Great Powers. The Conference of Ambassadors gave institutional form to the new state; the northern and southern protocols transformed the political decision into a geographical line; the Protocol of Florence fixed the southern frontier point by point.
For Albanians, however, the problem was not merely a list of towns. The Delegation to the Peace Conference argued that the frontier of 1913 had left outside a much larger part of the Albanian ethnic space: from Montenegro and Kosovo to western Macedonia and Tchameria. Those were political and demographic claims made by the Albanian side and must be read as such, but they show the scale of the gap between internationally recognised borders and the Albanian national programme.
The Treaty of London of 26 April 1915 went further. At the moment when the European system was collapsing into war, the same Albania that in 1914 had been declared indivisible and inalienable again became an object of negotiation. Valona and Saseno were promised to Italy; Durazzo was reserved for a small Albanian state; the division of northern and southern Albania among Montenegro, Serbia and Greece was contemplated as an explicit and conditional possibility. The difference between 1913 and 1915 lies precisely here: in the first case the Powers constructed, through a sequence of acts, the borders of a new state; in the second they accepted that this state might be reduced again in order to satisfy a wartime balance.
The history of Albania's borders, finally, ended neither in London nor in Florence. It continued through protests, commissions, arbitrations, occupations, rectifications, Vermosh and Saint Naum, until the final act of 1926. It is this long sequence - not a single signature - that truly explains how the political map of modern Albania came into being.
Notes and Sources
1. Amedeo Giannini, L'Albania dall'indipendenza all'unione con l'Italia (1913-1939), 4th ed., Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, 1939. The supplied volume is the guiding source for the article; Giannini's political assessments are distinguished from the documentary texts he reproduces.
2. Treaty of Peace of London, 17/30 May 1913, Articles 1-3. In addition to Giannini's reproduction, the text has been checked against Nouveau Recueil général de traités, 3rd series, vol. VIII, no. 3, pp. 16-19: Article 2 excludes Albania from the general cession of Ottoman territories west of the Enos-Midia line; Article 3 entrusts the six heads of state of the Great Powers with delimiting the frontiers and settling the other questions concerning Albania.
3. Decisions of the Conference of Ambassadors, London, 29 July 1913, Document I in Giannini, pp. 195-196. The decision is also cited in the historical documentation of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Albania.
4. Statute of Albania drafted by the International Commission of Control, Document II in Giannini, pp. 197 ff.; Articles 1-3 on the form of the state, indivisibility, inalienability and neutrality.
5. Protocol for the delimitation of northern Albania, Conference of Ambassadors, London, 1913, Document XVIII in Giannini, pp. 266-267. On the fact that part of the northern and north-eastern frontier had not yet been definitively marked on the ground, see also the decision of 9 November 1921 and the subsequent work of the Delimitation Commission.
6. Decisions and instructions of the London Conference of 1913 for the delimitation of the southern frontier, Document XX in Giannini, pp. 270-271. The reconstruction of the Saint Naum question has also been checked against Permanent Court of International Justice, Question of the Monastery of Saint-Naoum (Albanian Frontier), Advisory Opinion No. 9, 4 September 1924, Series B, No. 9.
7. Protocol signed in Florence on 17 December 1913 by the Commission for the delimitation of the southern frontier, Document XIX in Giannini, pp. 268-269.
8. Giannini, ch. IX, Le aspirazioni albanesi, pp. 63-68: the demographic figures and the line extending to Prevesa are presented as claims made by the Albanian Delegation at the Peace Conference.
9. Giannini, chs. VI-VIII, pp. 49-61, for the Montenegrin, Yugoslav and Greek memoranda and arguments.
10. Agreement between France, Russia, Great Britain and Italy, London, 26 April 1915, published in Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Miscellaneous No. 7 (1920), Cmd. 671, pp. 2-7, and in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917, Supplement 2, The World War, vol. I, doc. 416.
11. In the text of the 1915 agreement, Article 5 regulates the Adriatic settlement and reserves Durazzo for the independent Muslim state of Albania; Article 6 promises Italy full sovereignty over Valona, Saseno and a surrounding territory sufficient for their defence; Article 7 contemplates, under specified conditions, the possible division of northern and southern Albania among Montenegro, Serbia and Greece and the representation of the Albanian state abroad by Italy; Article 16 requires the agreement to remain secret.
12. Decision relating to the frontiers of Albania, 9 November 1921, also reproduced in League of Nations documentation; Giannini analyses it in the chapter devoted to the definitive delimitation.
13. Giannini, pp. 150-166, for the disputes over Koritza, Vermosh, Saint Naum and the conclusion of the delimitation process. For Saint Naum: Permanent Court of International Justice, Advisory Opinion No. 9, 4 September 1924; for later developments, see also the records of the Court and of the Conference of Ambassadors relating to the 1925 compromise.
14. The text of 29 July 1913 refers to 'Swedish' officers for the gendarmerie; the actual organisation was later entrusted to Dutch officers. See also the historical documentation of the Armed Forces Museum of the Republic of Albania.
15. The date 24 April 1915 appearing at the beginning of ch. II in Giannini is an inconsistency within the work: the diplomatic agreement is dated 26 April 1915, as attested both by the British parliamentary edition of 1920 and by the FRUS publication; Giannini himself uses 26 April elsewhere.
Essential Bibliography
• Amedeo Giannini, L'Albania dall'indipendenza all'unione con l'Italia (1913-1939), 4th ed., Milan, ISPI, 1939.
• Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Miscellaneous No. 7 (1920), Cmd. 671, Agreement between France, Russia, Great Britain and Italy, signed at London, April 26, 1915.
• Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Approximative zones according to the secret Treaty of London (April 26th 1915): [Albania], 1915, G6831.F2 1915 .R3, useful as a historical cartographic comparison for the 1915 project.
• Permanent Court of International Justice, Question of the Monastery of Saint-Naoum (Albanian Frontier), Advisory Opinion No. 9, 4 September 1924, Series B, No. 9.
• Documents XVIII, XIX and XX reproduced in Giannini: northern protocol of 1913, Protocol of Florence of 17 December 1913, and the London Conference protocol on the southern frontier.
• Nouveau Recueil général de traités, 3rd series, vol. VIII, no. 3, pp. 16-19, text of the Treaty of Peace of London of 17/30 May 1913; decision of the Powers of 9 November 1921 and documentation of the Delimitation Commission for the Albanian frontiers.
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