The Formation Of Albanian Ethnicity History Essay
The formation of Albanian ethnicity is associated with the pre-Roman population (i.e. Illyrian tribes) in the Balkans and their contacts with Romans. Seven hundred years of Roman presence in the region set the conditions for the emergence of a new people. It is from the fusion of mountain tribes and acculturated Illyrians on the Adriatic coast that Albanian ethnicity evolved.
The number of ethnic Albanians totals some 7 million. Administratively, the core area of Albanian settlement forms part of two states in the Balkanic region. One is Albania with its coastline on the Adriatic Sea which is the home of 3 million Albanians, the other being land-locked Kosovo with an Albanian population of some 2 million. The Albanians in Kosovo are called Kosovars. Another 2 million Albanians are scattered, as minority groups, over various states. In Macedonia, the half million Albanians account for 25 per cent of the total population. Albanian minorities are also found in Greece, western Turkey and Italy. There has been much fluctuation with the Albanian population in recent years. Before the war in Kosovo (1999) when this region was still a province of Yugoslavia the Serbian militia had expelled more than 1 million Kosovo Albanians who were accepted, as refugees, by countries in western Europe. At the beginning of the twentyfirst century Germany was home for some 0.5 million expatriated Kosovars. In recent years, many of them have returned to Kosovo that declared its independence in 2008. The Albanians in Greece have been, for long, under the assimilation pressure of the surrounding Greek majority, and many have experienced a language shift to Greek. Similar conditions can be observed in the area with Albanian population in southern Italy (Cosenza province) where assimilation to Italian is the major trend. When the Romans set out to conquer the region on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea their first encounters were with...