A Concise History of Albania

Bernd J. Fischer is Professor Emeritus of History at Purdue University, Fort Wayne. He is the author or editor of numerous works on Albania and the Balkans, most notably King Zog and the Struggle for Stability in Albania (1984), Albania at War 1939-1945 (1999), and Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of Southeast Europe (2006). He is a foreign member of the Albanian Academy of Sciences. Oliver Jens Schmitt is Professor of Southeast European History at the University of Vienna. He is the author of numerous monographs in German on Balkan history including Skanderbeg (2009), The Albanians (2012), and The Balkans in the 20th Century: A Post-Imperial history (2019). Since 2017 he has served as President of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences and as head of the Balkan studies department at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosova.

'A pleasure to read, A Concise History of Albania … takes the reader on an impressive grand tour of what really matters in Albanian history. … Written for both an academic and general readership, the analysis of Albanian history here is particularly informative and stands as an invaluable contribution to the field.' Abdullah Drury, The Muslim World Book Review

• Part I. Between Regional Self-Will and Imperial Rule: 1. The Space and Time of Albanian History; 2. The Albanians in the Middle Ages, 500–1500; 3. The Albanians under Ottoman Rule: The Classic Period of Arnavutluk, 1500–1800; 4. Ottoman Arnavutluk in Crisis, 1800–1912; Part II. State and Nation Construction: 5. Arnavutluk to Albania: The Triumph of Albanianism, 1912–1924; 6. Interwar Albania, The Rise of Authoritarianism, 1925–1939; 7. The Second World War and the Establishment of the Communist Regime, 1939–1944; 8. Albania's Stalinist Dictatorship, 1944–1989; 9. The Struggle to Establish a Democracy since 1989; Political Leaders and Political Systems since 1912; Select Bibliography; Index.