The Perception of the Greek in the Albanian National Identity-Building Process (1886-1938)

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This paper presents the first findings of a longitudinal research to History School Textbooks in the Albanian-speaking Western Balkans, in Albania and outside it, from the Albanian National Awakening Movement to 2010s. The project aims at studying the Image of the 'Other' and its transformations during this time period and is, as far as we are aware, the first of its kind tracing all school history textbooks in a time-series spanning three centuries – Albania being a good example for a case-study. Longitudinal research on history textbooks, rarely pursued (Meyers 1976), seeks to add value to textbook research, as it provides an opportunity to trace the development of history-textbooks' production parallel to the history of a state and the construction of cultural 'remembering.' In doing so, the project, utilizing the idea of researching textbooks for traces of social controversy (Christophe 2010, Klerides 2010) and political conflict (Taylor, Guyver 2011), attempts to identify the role of textbooks in the historical origins and development of socio-political biases towards the 'Other' in Albania, a topic linked with cognitive aspects of collective memory (Beim 2007). One of the research project's facets is to investigate the image of the "Greek" in identifications and identification shifts of the study time and regions vis-a-vis majority/minority group, domestic and international developments, new states, bilateral and multilateral relations. We argue that the image of Greek as the ethnic "Other" in Albania school textbooks transforms in the frame of domestic developments in both countries and of bilateral relations. In this present paper we shall deal specifically with representation of Greek/Greece/Hellenes in the earliest recorded history textbooks in Albania until 1938, a period that corresponds with the first educational initiatives of Albania's national awakening movement (cultural awakening), the nascent Albanian state and its consolidation through mass educational movement until World War II. Our sampling units consist nine history textbooks including Naim Frasheri's Histori e Pergjithshme per Mesonjetoret e Para (General History for the First Schools) (1886, republished in 1920), the very first History textbook used in Albanian schools. In view of the noticeable differences between the various newer editions of older texts we deemed appropriate to code them, although this seemed to be the case more at Chekrezi 1935 as different from Cekrezi 1920, rather than the Frasheri example, where the two versions of the texts are identical. But we decided to include it nonetheless, since this book was reprinted and re-used in schools and one could argue it continued to have some impact.