FIRST CONTACTS OF THE BRITISH WITH THE ALBANIAN WORLD ACCORDING TO THE BRITISH ARCHIVES (END OF THE XVIII CENTURY - BEGINNING OF THE XIX CENTURY)
FIRST CONTACTS OF THE BRITISH WITH THE ALBANIAN WORLD ACCORDING TO THE BRITISH ARCHIVES (END OF THE XVIII CENTURY - BEGINNING OF THE XIX CENTURY)

Summary/Abstract: It was neither romantic motives, nor academic interests, nor other scientific-oriented requirements that prompted the attention of Europeans and especially the British to set foot on the land of the Albanians, for the first time in the late Middle Ages. The end of the 18th century (year 1790) or the first years of the 19th century had for the first time put the coasts of southern Arberia, after four centuries of captivity (under the Ottoman Empire), in the attention and focus of France's political and military goals. Bonoparte's armies had subdued for the first time, after almost five centuries of hegemony, the master of the seas, the Republic of Venice. Together with him, the French, based on the preambles of the "Treaty of Campo Formios" (1797), had taken possession of all the coastal military bases that this power had on the shores of the Adriatic, Ionian, Aegean and beyond. In these circumstances, Bonaparte's French troops were placed in the coastal fortresses of the Pasha of loannina, in Butrint, Parga, Preveza, and took possession of the Seven Ionian Islands. After settling in these parts, the French military staffs began to cast their eyes in the depth of the forest lands, for further expansions, activating informants of the military fields. The first French informants tasked with secret military missions on Albanian soil were two botanists, who arrived in these parts in 1797.

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