Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

THE STORY OF THE PEOPLE. 75 At present the Albanians regard, and with justice, the Slav peasant as a tool in the hands of an external power which is working for the destruction of Albanian rights. Were these rights defined and recognised, much of this enmity would disappear, with the necessity of struggling for them. 'The Slavs,' says an Albanian paper, 'are a brave people; they may have all sorts of other good qualities too. That is not the question. Our hatred does not extend to individuals, nor even to national groups, but to that spirit of aggression, of religious fanaticism and low political swindling, known under the name of Pan-Slavism.' That there is much truth in this statement I believe to be a fact, for I have on several occasions seen gangs of Slav workmen in the heart of Albania-men who had voluntarily come on building jobs from districts much further East, and who were working hard and cheerfully among Albanian fellow-workmen. It is in the no man's land that the acts of aggression take place. As things at present stand we have a free Servia, a free Bulgaria, a free Greece, a but half ruled and wholly disaffected Albania with no Eastern frontier, and a no man's land of mixed population, which each race hopes ultimately to possess, and over which the Porte has yearly less and less control. The Turk's death is now considered so imminent that the chief concern of each race is how to keep him alive until it has made its own claim clear to Europe.
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About this Item

Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 75
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 1, 2025.
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