Albania

The territory of modern Albania was inhabited in antiquity by the Illyrians, a group of Indo-European tribes whose settlements and fortified centers spread across the western Balkans from at least the second millennium BCE. Greek colonists founded coastal trading cities such as Apollonia and Epidamnos (later Dyrrhachium, modern Durres) from the seventh century BCE onward, and a series of Illyrian kingdoms emerged in the interior, the most prominent being that of the Ardiaei under Agron and Teuta in the third century BCE. Successive wars with Rome culminated in the defeat of King Gentius in 168 BCE, after which the region was incorporated into the Roman province of Illyricum and later divided between the provinces of Epirus Nova and Praevalitana. With the partition of the Roman Empire in 395 CE, the Albanian lands fell within the Byzantine sphere, where they remained, with interruptions, for roughly a millennium.

During the medieval period the region was contested by Byzantines, Bulgarians, Normans, Serbs, and the Angevin kingdom of Naples, and a distinct Albanian political identity emerged with the Principality of Arber in the late twelfth century and the short-lived Kingdom of Albania established in 1272. From the late fourteenth century onward Ottoman forces advanced into the area, meeting prolonged resistance under Gjergj Kastrioti, known as Skanderbeg, who from 1443 until his death in 1468 led a coalition of Albanian lords against the Sultan. After Skanderbeg's defeat Albania was fully absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, where it remained for more than four centuries; large portions of the population gradually converted to Islam, while Catholic and Orthodox communities persisted in the north and south.

National revival movements gathered force in the nineteenth century, exemplified by the League of Prizren in 1878, and culminated in the declaration of independence at Vlore on 28 November 1912 under Ismail Qemali, recognised by the Conference of London in 1913. The fragile new state passed through a brief principality under Wilhelm of Wied, occupation during the First World War, a republic proclaimed in 1925 under Ahmet Zogu, and a self-declared monarchy from 1928, when Zogu became King Zog I. Italy invaded in April 1939, and during the Second World War Albania was occupied successively by Italian and German forces while a communist-led partisan movement under Enver Hoxha gained dominance.

In November 1944 the communists took power and proclaimed the People's Republic in 1946, later renamed the People's Socialist Republic in 1976. Hoxha pursued a sequence of breaks with Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and finally China, leaving Albania one of the most isolated states in Europe until his death in 1985. Popular protests in 1990 and 1991 brought an end to one-party rule, and the country adopted multiparty elections, a market economy, and a new democratic constitution ratified in 1998. The collapse of pyramid investment schemes in 1997 produced widespread unrest that required international mediation, after which successive governments pursued Euro-Atlantic integration.

Albania joined NATO in 2009, was granted European Union candidate status in 2014, and formally opened accession negotiations in 2022. The contemporary state is a unitary parliamentary republic, with a directly elected unicameral Assembly, a head of state chosen by parliament, and a head of government drawn from the parliamentary majority.