Arthur Read’s Reviews > Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know > Status Update
Arthur Read
is 31% done
The Balkan Wars & now the First World War were absolutely devastating to the people of Kosovo & of course, the rest of the region. The Serbs naturally regarded the taking of Kosovo as a liberation, but by now only 30 or 40% of its population was still Serb. Albanians clearly regarded this as conquest, especially as for generations their leaders had been striving for the unification of all lands inhabited by Albanians
— Sep 16, 2025 02:59AM
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Arthur Read
is 33% done
The government in Belgrade was keen to change the demographics of Kosovo, especially given the hostility of the majority Albanians. Kosovo as such had disappeared from the map, divided between 3 new Yugoslav provinces. This was the fate of all of the new Yugoslavia, the authorities being keen to diminish old regional cum ethnic loyalties in a bid to create loyalty to something higher—that is, Yugoslavia itself.
— Sep 16, 2025 03:22AM
Arthur Read
is 33% done
Schools have always played a major part in the Albanian story in Kosovo. The Turks had resisted schooling in Albanian because they were keen to prevent the emergence of an Albanian national identity. The Austrians, by contrast, keen to cultivate it, opened schools in Kosovo during their brief stay there during the First World War. These were soon shut down by the new Yugoslav authorities.
— Sep 16, 2025 03:18AM
Arthur Read
is 32% done
Serbia was the little David standing up to the Austro-Hungarian Goliath. It is hardly surprising, given that the Kosovo Albanians had lost their chance to unite with Albania and had been massacred by the Serbs in 1912 and 1913, that they should welcome the new invaders. But of course, this was to leave them on the wrong side of history at the end of the war.
— Sep 16, 2025 03:06AM
Arthur Read
is 30% done
Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece all had states and armies to mobilize, unlike the Albanians, so it is hardly surprising that they were unable to successfully resist in Kosovo. Indeed, if it had not been for Great Power politicking, it is possible that there would have been no Albania at all.
— Sep 16, 2025 02:55AM
Arthur Read
is 30% done
By the end of the fighting in 1912, Serbia had taken much of Kosovo, but Montenegro too was in possession of Pec (etc). The Turks had been driven out, but parts of what was emerging as Albania were also occupied by the Serbs & Greeks in the south, & Skadar was in the hands of the Montenegrins. Greece took southern Macedonia including Thessalonika; Serbia took most of the rest, including the Albanian-inhabited parts.
— Sep 16, 2025 02:54AM
Arthur Read
is 30% done
The years between 1878 and 1912, which saw the end of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, were—in Kosovo and Macedonia especially—ones of unrest, revolts, and instability. In 1908 the modernizing Young Turk revolution was initially welcomed by most in Kosovo, as in Albania, although few actually understood what it was about.
— Sep 16, 2025 02:49AM
Arthur Read
is 29% done
Initially, the League [of Prizren] was not opposed by Istanbul, but by 1880, relations had deteriorated. Important voices were now calling for the creation of an independent Albanian state.. In 1881 it was crushed by Turkish troops. Its important legacy however was that, for the first time, it was seen that Albanians could actually work together for their common national interest, something they had never done before
— Sep 16, 2025 02:47AM
Arthur Read
is 29% done
The 18th century saw an increased pace of conversion to Islam in the region, more commonly among Albanians than Serbs.
The vast majority of people in Kosovo were peasants, but power lay with the Muslim Albanian aristocracy. As Muslims, Albanians could and did rise to the highest positions in the Ottoman Empire… Albanians were forced to confront their future w/ the reemergence of the Balkan Christian states in 1804
— Sep 16, 2025 02:35AM
The vast majority of people in Kosovo were peasants, but power lay with the Muslim Albanian aristocracy. As Muslims, Albanians could and did rise to the highest positions in the Ottoman Empire… Albanians were forced to confront their future w/ the reemergence of the Balkan Christian states in 1804
Arthur Read
is 28% done
Noel Malcolm, the British historian who wrote an important history of Kosovo, argues that his research in European archives leads him to conclude that much of the story of the "Great Migration" is actually false. He argues that the situation was far more confused—some Serbs or Orthodox refused to rise up, some fought on the Ottoman side, and many Albanians, including some Muslims, fought on the Austrian side.
— Sep 16, 2025 02:29AM
Arthur Read
is 28% done
The second key date is 1690. Almost three hundred years after Lazar's Battle of Kosovo, the Ottoman advance was finally halted at the siege of Vienna in 1683. After that Habsburg forces began to reverse the Turkish tide. In 1688 Belgrade was taken, & forces led by Count Eneo Piccolomini swept south to Kosovo & to Skopje. Serbs & Catholic Albanians were called upon to rise up and throw off the Ottoman yoke. Many did.
— Sep 16, 2025 02:22AM
