Reflecții asupra estompării identității aromânilor din Albania

In 1912, Albania, a poor country with a Muslim majority, with an almost completely illiterate population, but with a key geopolitical position on the Adriatic Sea, proclaimed its independence. This was exactly the moment when, breaking with the Ottoman Empire, the Albanian people were given the opportunity to create a state, which did not happen to the Aromanians. In 2019, according to surveys of Aromanians in Albania, it was noted that most of them had lost their main ethnic characteristics, such as: language, religion and consciousness of their own ethnic identity (obviously different in the past from Albanians or the Greeks). The paper aims to analyze a few moments of the secular coexistence of the Aromanians with the Albanians, as reflected in the Albanian written press from 1887 to 1914. From the Balkans shattered by the ambition and greed of the newly created Balkan states and dominated by the interests of the Great Powers, until the Balkans of 1914, it seems that the mutual memories and opinions of the Aromanians and Albanians continue to confront and reconfigure themselves as part of a complex process of adaptation.