By Elton Ligu & Adriano Xhafaj. Translation Petrit Latifi

In this publication from 1877, discovered by Elton Ligu, and re-published by Adriano Xhafaj, we can read that young Greeks had to learn from Albanians, “the homogeneous race of Greece”, and that Greece was mostly inhabited by Albanians (Arvanites).

Cited:

“It was a duty of gratitude, a duty of civilization, for the younger Greeks, liberated from the tyrannical yoke and forming an independent nation, to turn their gaze towards the races homogeneous with themselves and to make their civilization, if liberation were to be one of their main concerns.

And that, around which all governmental and private concern had to revolve, is Albania, that chivalrous land that, through its brave sons, contributed to the liberation of this part of Greece, and whose blood still flows today at the sight of the blue and gold cross waving on the battlements of Corfu, under which their brothers Votzaris, Tzavelas, Miaoulis, Androutzos and Bouboulina fought gloriously. However, rather than the neighboring nation Italy, on the pretext of ancient kinship, has its eyes fixed on the “Acrokeraunian peaks of those mountains which are visible from Otranto”.

Those of us who do not know what Albania is and what its relationship with Greece is certainly opposed to the idea that a large part of Greece was once inhabited by Albanians and that their descendants are those who speak the Albanian language today, and they also consider the relationship of the Greeks with the Albanians as a national loss, and this because with this name they assume a barbaric people who are atheists and who fought against our independence with the Turks.

However, following us in the revelations of the wise author of Albanian Studies, Dr. G. de Hahn, who gave new life to this issue, and the following Albanian origin D. Kamardas, to whose work we owe most of his notes, will justify us in not embracing their opinion until proven otherwise by those wiser than us, this study does not in any way provoke, because otherwise it becomes inexplicable how the Albanian language could have been preserved in Greece for so many centuries, after so many others were introduced by conquering powerful, foreign nations.”

Source

“Society” on May 18, 1877. Document No. 130 of the album 438 A BRIEF HISTORICAL STUDY ON ALBANIA AND THE ALBANIANS. Authors. K. Ch. Vamvas, 1877