Le passé des territoires : Kosovo-Metohija ÇXVIIIe- XXe siècle). Les guerres du XVIIIe siècle : sous le signe de l'intolérance religieuse

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Dušan T. Bataković

Abstract

Serbian-Albanian rivalry was the result of austro-turkish wars in the 17th
and 18th century. The Albanians as Muslim were settled in Kosovo-Metohija
after the Great Migrations of the Serbs in 1690. The rivalry was twofold:
religious (Islamicized Albanians vs. Orthodox Serbs) and social (Albanians as
cattle-breeders vs. Serbs as peasant serfs). In the age of nationalism their
rivalry became part of the Ottoman state policy who used Albanians to suppress
the Christian national movements. Under sultan Abdulhamid II, founder
of Pan-Islamism, this rivalry was marked by systematic discrimination and
persecution against the Orthodox Serbs encouraged by local authorities. Under
Austro-Hungarian influence, Albanians, considered as a bridge which will take
Dual Monarchy further into Balkans, towards Salonika bay, the persecution
took wide proportions. The serbo-albanian rivalry in the context of serboaustrian
confrontations entered the new phase, after Kosovo in 1912 became
part of Serbia, while Metohija was incorporated into Montenegro. In the common
Yugoslav state after 1918, Kosovo-Metohija became area where the promotion
of Albanian aspiration was inherited by Italy as a new regional power,
which eventually annexed it to “Greater Albania” in 1941. In communist
Yugoslavia, Kosovo-Metohija was used by Tito to balance the numeric preponderance
of the Serbs as bearers of royalist traditions and as fervent anticommunist
forces. The autonomy for the region was gradually enlarged and
the local power eventually transferred to ethnic Albanians in 1968, who took
opportunity for historical revenge against the local Serbs, who were discriminated
in order to move into inner Serbia. It was the first and silent “ethnic
cleansing” in the communist Yugoslavia. The demands of ethnic Albanians in
1981 for a separate republic derived from the logic of titoist order, producing
the ethnic mobilization among the Serbs. Albanian homogenization was the
first step towards the disintegration of titoist order, provoking domino-reaction
which led directly to the civil war.

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