The emergence of the cham issue 1820 - 1943, Blerina N. Sadiku

Titulli: The emergence of the cham issue 1820 - 1943 (kopertinë e trashë)
Origjinali: Lindja e çështjes çame 1820 - 1943 (kopertinë e trashë)
Gjinia: Histori
Autori: Blerina N. Sadiku
Përktheu nga gjuha shqipe: Arben P. Latifi
Shtëpia botuese: Naimi
Viti: 2011
Fq. 318
Pesha: 0.52 kg
ISBN: 978-9928-109-11-8

Comment by Pëllumb Xhufi

The emergence of the Cham issue, 1820-1943", by the young scholar Blerina N. Sadiku, is welcomed for a couple of reasons. First, it adds an original light on the Cham historiography, which, in spite of the numerous publications over the last twenty years, still remains incomplete compared to the need for satisfying both the common reader's and scientific interest.

Second, unlike many other publications that tend to deal with the Cham Issue "in its entirety", the author has managed to identify the red thread around which coherently evolves and unfolds, from its beginnings to the verge of its "final solutions" in 1944-45, one of the most sensitive issues of the Balkan-European politics and diplomacy and, more specifically, of the Albanian-Greek relations.

Starting her analyses from the 1820s, when, as it is known, preparations had begun for an independent Greek state, the author proves through incontestable facts that the ideological grounds (The Grand Idea) of this new state, even though founded thanks to a decisive contribution of the Albanian people, would, from its earliest steps, lead it in a strongly anti Albanian direction.

Athens inherited an anti- Albanian project, masterminded by the fathers of modern Greek nationalism, which would materialize right away via the mass persecution and expulsion of the Albanian Muslim population form Peloponnese, and later on from Thessaly, Macedonia and Epirus, in a programmed effort to assimilate the considerable numbers of Albanian Christians who had been living for centuries in almost every province and island of Greece. According to Sadiku such an anti Albanian disposition was rooted in two factors- ethnic fanaticism and religious fanaticism- which gave it the form of demonstrative genocide.