Chapter 159 Results of the Meeting

When Constantine talked about their land issues, several representatives of large landowners suddenly tensed up and looked at Constantine nervously.

These people were able to become large landowners because they had served the Ottomans for generations, collecting taxes for the Ottoman government, or serving as officials. Relying on the power in their hands, they seized a large amount of Albanian land, so that now, half of the land in Albania is in the hands of a few large families.

From the words of several people, it is obvious that due to the relationship of interests, these large landowners and Albanian nationalists have different demands.

For these large landowners, whether it is the Ottomans or the Greeks, who will rule Albania, it doesn’t matter, as long as they don’t think about their land.

Obviously, nationalists like Jemali don’t care about such a large landowner class. They want to fight for the independence of Albania. It is unimaginable that nearly half of the land of a country is in the hands of a few large families.

In order to unite and win over more Albanians, nationalists like Jemali advocate certain land reforms, which is a certain thing.

Imagine, if nothing changes after Albania becomes independent, what does it matter to the poor who make up the majority of the Albanian population?

After hearing what Metaxas said, these thoughts flashed through Constantine's mind one by one.

Farona looked at Constantine in silence, gritted his teeth, and said: "Your Highness, as long as you can guarantee that you will not carry out land reform in Albania, our Faroan family is willing to convert to Orthodoxy"

"We can send the young children in the family to the University of Athens or even the Athens Military Academy to study and receive the most orthodox Greek education"

As soon as he said this, even the other landlord representatives were stunned and sighed: The Farona family is really open.

But think about it, it is Greece, not the Ottomans, who rule Albania now.

In a country like Greece where Orthodox Christianity is the mainstream, several MSL family landlords control a large amount of land in Albania. It seems that it is indeed too conspicuous and will be dealt with by Greek political forces sooner or later.

After converting, they can also better integrate into Greek society.

Thinking of this, the other three landlord representatives, Frioni, Toptani, and Vilrachi, also nodded in agreement with Faroan's suggestion.

"Your Highness, as long as you agree that Albanian can be used for education and publishing, we can agree to let Albanian only be spelled with Greek letters in the future," Jemali said helplessly.

Such a compromise is also out of helplessness.

First, the Albanians are not united. Now these big landlords have made a separate deal with the Greek government, leaving aside the Albanian nationalist forces.

Second, in the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, because the Albanian democrats at the time misjudged the situation, they thought that the Ottoman Empire would inevitably be defeated by the joint attack of Russia and its Slavic allies, Bulgaria and Serbia, and it was a good opportunity for them to fight for independence in Albania.

Therefore, when Russia and the Ottoman Empire were fighting fiercely, the Albanian nationalists took advantage of the fact that the Ottoman Empire had no time to care about Albania. Under the organization of the Prizren League, the Albanian national armed forces began to attack the Ottoman Empire's government agencies in Albania and refused to pay taxes and other uprisings.

As a result, after the war between Russia and Austria ended, the situation reversed at the Berlin Conference in 1881. Almost all countries stood on the side against Russia and supported the Ottoman Empire.

After the Ottoman Empire freed its hands from the war, it naturally could not spare these guys who took advantage of the situation and stabbed them in the back. After all, traitors are more hateful than enemies, and bloodily suppressed Albania's independence activities.

The alliance of Albanian democrats at that time, and also the main leader of this uprising-the Prizren League, its members were almost slaughtered by the Ottoman government. A total of two or three thousand people were either killed directly or died in prison. Only some small fish and shrimps were left, and they could not become a big climate.

There were only two or three hundred thousand people in the Albanian region.

The elite class was almost wiped out.

Thanks to the Ottomans, Greece encountered almost no resistance when it took over Albania - all the troublemakers were wiped out.

The nationalists represented by Jemali were at their lowest point and did not have many bargaining chips to trade with Constantine.

Looking at the Albanian representatives who had surrendered, Constantine first agreed not to carry out land reform in Albania for the time being, on the condition that they would convert to Christianity and send their family members to study in Greece.

As for the issue of Albanian language rights mentioned by Jemali, Constantine was somewhat hesitant.

In Albania, suppressing the Albanian language and promoting the Greek language is naturally justified from the Greek perspective.

However, Albania is somewhat special. There are more than 100,000 Albanians living in southern Italy, and Kosovo is also a place where Albanians are dominant. The Greek government's strong promotion of Greek in Albania and abandonment of Albanian will not only anger Albanians living outside Albania, but will also cause Albanians in Greece to have a strong rebellious mentality and cause some trouble.

Thinking of this, Constantine said to Jemali: "If it is Albanian written in Greek letters, I can agree on behalf of the Greek government to allow such Albanian to be used in education and publication, but the Greek government in Albania will still use Greek as the office and administrative language."

As for whether allowing the use of Albanian will become a hidden danger for Greece to rule Albania, there is certainly a possibility, but the threat is not great.

There are only about 300,000 Albanians in Greece, and a considerable number of them are pro-Greek Orthodox Christians.

Secondly, a "small language" used by hundreds of thousands of people cannot threaten the orthodox status of Greek.

In addition, Albanian is very immature. It does not even have a written language now, which is far from enough to compete with the extremely mature Greek language that has been developed for two thousand years.

Such a language is fine for daily communication, but it will encounter many difficulties when used for scientific and cultural exchanges.

What's more, it is Albanian based on Greek letters.

In Constantine's view, with the breakthrough and innovation of communication technology and transportation, the convenience of information exchange, personnel flow and material transportation between Greece and Albania, Greek will eventually defeat Albanian.

Albanian, based on the Greek alphabet, is more like a dialect of Greek.

For nationalists, this is also a huge progress. During the Ottoman Empire, the Albanians struggled for decades to allow the use of Albanian in public education and publishing.

Both sides took a step back and partially achieved their goals.

First, slow down the Albanians and wait until Greece digests the newly acquired land. The initiative is still in Greece's hands.