Editing Korçë District (section)

=== 20th century === 
In the 1908 statistics of Amadore Virgili as presented by Nicholas Cassavetes for the Pan-Epirotic Union of Northern Epirus showed the entire [[kaza]] of Korçë, which also included surrounding rural areas as well as the modern [[Devoll District]] as having a Muslim majority which was not differentiated by nationality alongside a Christian minority of which there were 43,800 Albanian speakers and 1,214 [[Aromanians]] (Vlachs), with no Greek speakers found, while Bulgarians were not counted for.<ref name = "PsomasOnCassavetesVirgili">Cassavetes, Nicholas J (1919). ''The Question of Northern Epirus in the Peace Conference''. New York: Pan-Epirotic Union of Northern Epirus, American Branch, 1919. Page 77. Cited in Psomas, Lambros (2008), ''The Religious and Ethnographic Synthesis of the Population of Southern Albania (Northern Epirus) in the Beginning of the 20th Century'', discusses on pages 248–252.</ref> For the same area, the 1913 statistics of Destani, which did not differentiate subjects by faith but only language, found 89829 Albanian speakers, 3190 Aromanian speakers, 3985 Bulgarian speakers, no Greek speakers and 527 "others".<ref name = "PsomasOnDestani">Psomas, Lambros (2008). ''The Religious and Ethnographic Synthesis of the Population of Southern Albania (Northern Epirus) in the Beginning of the 20th Century''. Statistics of Destani discussed on 256–260</ref> With regard to the Aromanian population, Lambros Psomas argues the study of Virgili likely undercounted the Aromanian speakers while the study of Destani is more reliable with regard to the Aromanians<ref>Psomas, Lambros (2008). ''Synthesis of the Population of Southern Albania (Northern Epirus)''. Page 259-260: "Virgili's analysis is not proved trustworthy as far as the Vlach-speaking inhabitants are concerned. For instance, Metsovo, a region  which many people are Vlach-speaking even nowadays, appears without Vlach-speaking people at a1l. Thus, the pro-Albanian statistics of 1913 seem to be more as far as they are concerned."</ref> but he also argues the study of Destani was pro-Albanian in motive and drastically undercounted the number of Greek speakers in the Himara and Leskovik kazas,<ref name="PsomasOnDestani"/> while Psomas also excludes Korçë from the collection of regions with notable Greek-speaking presence.<ref>Psomas, Lambros (2008). [https://www.academia.edu/5398308/The_Religious_and_Ethnographic_Synthesis_of_the_Population_of_Southern_Albania_Northern_Epirus_in_the_Beginning_of_the_20th_Century|, ''The Religious and Ethnographic Synthesis of the Population of Southern Albania (Northern Epirus) in the Beginning of the 20th Century'' ] Page 250: " Greek-speaking people were located only in the cazas of Gjirokaster, Delvin and Himara, from the western part of Northern Epirus, and Leskovik, from the eastern. In all these cazas they constituted the majority of the Orthodox Christians (Table 2.1). Finally, there was a small minority of Vlach-speaking inhabitants in the cazas of Korcha and Permet. Surprisingly enough this, does not include the Slav-speaking Orthodox population of the caza of Starovo. Thus, except for the cazas in which a Greek-speaking population was located, the Albanian-speaking people were always the vast majority of the Ottoman cazas. This agrees with the English statistic of 1877, in which Albanians were always the population in advance."</ref> British historian Tom Winnifrith states that during the delineation of the Greek-Albanian border a part of the local pro-Greek element included communities whose native speech was Greek.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Winnifrith|first1=Tom|title=Badlands, Borderlands: A History of Northern Epirus/Southern Albania|date=2002|publisher=Duckworth|isbn=9780715632017|page=133|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dkRoAAAAMAAJ|language=en|quote=Perhaps the American compromise would have been the best solution. It would still have left many Albanian-speakers and some Albanian sympathizers in Greece, and some Greek-speakers and rather more Greek sympathizers in the Korce area of Albania}}</ref>

In 1919, US diplomat Joseph Emerson Haven on special detail in Albania wrote a detailed report regarding the political circumstances in the country.<ref name=Austin93/> Haven wrote that the province of Korçë numbered some 60,000 people of whom 18% had a preference for union with Greece and within that group half were doing so from fear or from being promised financial gain through attainment of Muslim properties and land.<ref name=Austin93>{{cite book|last=Austin|first=Robert Clegg|title=Founding a Balkan State: Albania's Experiment with Democracy, 1920–1925|year=2012|location=Toronto|publisher=University of Toronto Press|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mwi137osWhMC|isbn=9781442644359|pages=93}} "One commissioner from the delegation Sederholm noted the population of Korçë being “entirely Albanian” with “the number of Greeks there” being “quite insignificant”.... "Joseph Emerson Haven, a U.S. diplomat based in Italy on special detail in Albania during the spring of 1919, had already come to a similar conclusion. In his detailed report on the political situation in the country, Haven suggested that the disputed province of Korçë had roughly 60,000 inhabitants, roughly 18 per cent of whom were in favour of Greek sovereignty. Of those 18 per cent, he argued, half were seeking that end out of fear or had been promised material gain in the form of Moslem land and property.... Haven found that the ‘most intense hatred and loathing exists in Southern Albania for Greece, this hatred being shown by both Orthodox Christians and Musselmen. The cry is “We are Albanians first and religionists second.” With the exception of comparatively few residents in the province of Coritsa [Korçë] and a few towns in the region of Chimara [Himarë], the country is absolutely Albanian in sentiment."</ref> Haven also noted that in 1919 there was a degree of antipathy shown by both Muslims and Christians in the district toward Greece, and an ethnic affinity among Albanians that, at the time, came before religious affinity.<ref name=Austin93/> At the Peace Conference in Paris, the Greek delegation argued that all Christians in North Epirus, including those that spoke Albanian, should be classified as Greeks because, they argued, their sentiments were Greek, and they had a common religion with Greeks; Lambros Psomas, however, argued that this did not apply in Korçë kaza, where there were many Orthodox Albanian nationalists.<ref>Psomas, Lambros (2008). ''Synthesis of the Population of Southern Albania (Northern Epirus)''. Page 253, 268–269, 280</ref>