Editing History of Albania (section)

=== Projects of partition in 1919–1920 ===

[[File:Lufta e Vlorës.jpg|thumb|239x239px|<blockquote title="Vlora war">Albanian soldiers during the [[Vlora war]],1920.</blockquote>]]

After [[World War I]], Albania was still under the occupation of Serbian and Italian forces. It was a rebellion of the respective populations of Northern and Southern Albania that pushed back the Serbs and Italians behind the recognized borders of Albania.

Albania's political confusion continued in the wake of [[World War I]]. The country lacked a single recognized government, and Albanians feared, with justification, that [[Italy]], [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]], and [[Greece]] would succeed in extinguishing Albania's independence and carve up the country. Italian forces controlled Albanian political activity in the areas they occupied. The [[Serbs]], who largely dictated Yugoslavia's foreign policy after World War I, strove to take over northern Albania, and the Greeks sought to control southern Albania.

A delegation sent by a postwar [[Parliament of Albania|Albanian National Assembly]] that met at [[Durrës]] in December 1918 defended Albanian interests at the [[Paris Peace Conference, 1919|Paris Peace Conference]], but the conference denied Albania official representation. The National Assembly, anxious to keep Albania intact, expressed willingness to accept Italian protection and even an Italian prince as a ruler so long as it would mean Albania did not lose territory. [[Serbia]]n troops conducted actions in Albanian-populated border areas, while Albanian guerrillas operated in both [[Serbia]] and [[Montenegro]].

In January 1920, at the [[Paris Peace Conference, 1919|Paris Peace Conference]], negotiators from France, Britain, and [[Kingdom of Greece|Greece]] agreed to allow Albania to fall under Yugoslav, Italian, and Greek spheres of influence as a diplomatic expedient aimed at finding a compromising solution to the territorial conflicts between Italy and Yugoslavia.

Members of a second [[Congress of Lushnjë|Albanian National Assembly held at Lushnjë]] in January 1920 rejected the partition plan and warned that Albanians would take up arms to defend their country's independence and territorial integrity.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Albania in the Twentieth Century, A History: Volume 1: Albania and King Zog|last=Pearson|first=Owen|publisher=I.B. Tauris|year=2004|location=New York|pages=138}}</ref> The Lushnjë National Assembly appointed a four-man regency to rule the country. A [[bicameral parliament]] was also created, in which an elected lower chamber, the [[Chamber of Deputies]] (with one deputy for every 12,000 people in Albania and one for the Albanian community in the United States), appointed members of its own ranks to an upper chamber, the Senate. In February 1920, the government moved to [[Tirana]], which became Albania's capital.

One month later, in March 1920, U.S. President [[Woodrow Wilson]] intervened to block the Paris agreement. The United States underscored its support for Albania's independence by recognizing an official Albanian representative to Washington, and in December the [[League of Nations]] recognized Albania's sovereignty by admitting it as a full member. The country's borders, however, remained unsettled following the [[Vlora War]] in which all territory (except [[Saseno]] island) under Italian control in Albania was relinquished to the Albanian state.

Albania achieved a degree of statehood after the First World War, in part because of the diplomatic intercession of the United States government. The country suffered from a debilitating lack of economic and social development, however, and its first years of independence were fraught with political instability. Unable to survive a predatory environment without a foreign protector, Albania became the object of tensions between [[Italy]] and the [[Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes]], which both sought to dominate the country.<ref name="Interwar Albania">{{cite web | editor1-first= Raymond |editor1-last= Zickel |editor2-first= Walter R.|editor2-last= Iwaskiw |year= 1994 | title= Interwar Albania, 1918–41 |website = Albania: A Country Study | url=http://countrystudies.us/albania/24.htm }}</ref>