MBI CAKTIMIN E KUFIRIT NDËRMJET SHQIPËRISË DHE GREQISË
ON DEFINING THE BORDER BETWEEN ALBANIA AND GREECE

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with the history of the state boundaries established between the last Balkan State created after the dismemberment of European Turkey in 1913, namely the Principality of Albania and the Kingdom of Greece. The course of events is viewed from two different international relations’ time contexts. The first period 1881-1914 and the second 1918-1926. The land and sea boundary between Albania and Greece has been essentially a foreign policy’s problem, involving not only the two interested parties but also the Great Powers. We are referring to strained relations which have been renewed between the two nations in various forms, after every Balkan and world crisis for almost the entire 20th century. The author argues that the relations between the two countries were characterized by: 1. A steady attitude of the Greek state to establish a land and sea boundary strategically favorable, disregarding the international rights based on ethnographic, geographic, economic and strategic requirements foreseen in international agreements since at least the Final Act of the Vienna Congress in 1815; 2. An almost insensitive official policy of Greece towards national, antiottoman and European interests of the Albanians, and an almost constant support for Serbia against Albania, even in questions in which Greece was remotely related (Kosovo); 3. The permanent inability of the Albanian state to establish institutional political representation which would allow the implementation of the state’s territorial integrity and provide freedom for regions with specific ethnic and religious features. This article provides a complex analysis, in which the study of national and Balkan history i s intertwined with the history of international relations, the law of the sea and political science. It is a research study based on primary sources found in the British archives and maps which the Albanian State Archive does not possess.

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