by Sahit Ndrecaj. Translation Petrit Latifi

In 1886, Cotton wrote in his book “The Growth of Freedom in the Balkan Peninsula: Notes of a Traveller in Montenegro, Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece” the following:

“Fifty years ago, in the time of King Otto, Athens was only an Albanian village, with 8,000 inhabitants, and in every street, sometimes paved with cobblestones and sometimes with mud, in every neighborhood with stone houses, only the Albanian language was spoken. Not a single voice was heard speaking that Greek language that King Otto of Bavaria called Greece.”

Reference

“The Growth of Freedom in the Balkan Peninsula: Notes of a Traveller in Montenegro, Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece”, James George Cotton Minchin.

Louis Figuier – The Albanian Woman from Eleusis 1872