Kosovo is the birthplace of the Albanian nationalist movement which emerged as a response to the Eastern Crisis of 1878. In the immediate aftermath of the Russo-Ottoman war, the Congress of Berlin proposed partitioning Ottoman Albanian inhabited lands in the Balkans among neighbouring countries. The League of Prizren was formed by Albanians to resist those impositions.. For Albanians those events have made Kosovo an important place regarding the emergence of Albanian nationalism.. During the remainder of the late Ottoman period various disagreements between Albanian nationalists and the Ottoman Empire over socio-cultural rights culminated in two revolts within Kosovo and adjacent areas. The Balkan Wars (1912–13) ending with Ottoman defeat, Serbian and later Yugoslav sovereignty over the area generated an Albanian nationalism that has become distinct to Kosovo stressing Albanian language, culture, and identity within the context of secession from Serbia. Pan-Albanian sentiments are also present and historically have been achieved only once when part of Kosovo was united by Italian Axis forces to their protectorate of Albania during the Second World War.

Reincorporated within Yugoslavia, Albanian nationalism in Kosovo has drawn upon Kosovar folk culture and traditions which became imbued with theories of descent from ancient Illyrians and Dardanians stressing the purported precedence of Albanian settlement and rights to the area over the Serbs. Traditions of armed resistance by local Albanians to Serbian forces have existed since the interwar period resulting in various and protracted conflicts, ethnic cleansing and violence on both sides. The most recent was the Kosovo War (1999) between the guerilla fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and Yugoslav army who later were evicted from Kosovo through NATO military intervention. Placed under an international United Nations framework, Kosovar Albanians declared independence (2008) which is internationally recognised by some number of countries satisfying a main tenet of Kosovar Albanian nationalism. Albanian nationalism in Kosovo stresses a secular character sidelining religion..

History

Background: Late Ottoman period

.

The Albanian National movement first emerged in Kosovo through the League of Prizren that attempted to prevent Albanian inhabited territories from being awarded to neighbouring states and over time has become a focus of discourses within Albanian nationalism... The geopolitical crisis also generated the beginnings of the Rilindja (Albanian National Awakening) period. With the rise of the Eastern Crisis, Muslim Albanians became torn between loyalties to the Ottoman state and the emerging Albanian nationalist movement.. Islam, the Sultan and the Ottoman Empire were traditionally seen as synonymous in belonging to the wider Muslim community.. While the Albanian nationalist movement advocated self-determination and strived to achieve socio-political recognition of Albanians as a separate people and language within the state. Albanian nationalism was a movement that began among Albanian intellectuals without popular demand from the wider Albanian population.. Geopolitical events pushed Albanian nationalists, many Muslim, to distance themselves from the Ottomans, Islam and the then emerging pan-Islamic Ottomanism of Sultan Abdulhamid II....

During the Russo-Turkish war, the incoming Serb army expelled most of the Muslim Albanian population from the Toplica and Niš regions into Kosovo triggering the emergence of the League of Prizren (1878–1881).. "In consequence of the Russian-Ottoman war, a violent expulsion of nearly the entire Muslim, predominantly Albanian-speaking, population was carried out in the sanjak of Niš and Toplica during the winter of 1877-1878 by the Serbian troops. This was one major factor encouraging further violence, but also contributing greatly to the formation of the League of Prizren. The league was created in an opposing reaction to the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin and is generally regarded as the beginning of the Albanian national movement. Formed as a response to the Eastern crisis and possible partition, the Prizren League was created by a group of Albanian intellectuals to resist neighbouring foreign Balkan states and to assert an Albanian national consciousness by uniting Albanians into a unitary linguistic and cultural nation.. Leaders of the Prizren league opposed both Pan-Slavism of southern Slavic peoples and the Greek Megali Idea.. The Prizren league opposed territory containing Albanian speakers being awarded to Greece, Serbia and Montenegro with the Ottoman state for a while supporting the league's claims as it saw Albanian nationalism possibly preventing further territorial losses to newly independent Balkan states... During the late Ottoman period, ethno-national Albanian identity as expressed in contemporary times did not exist amongst the wider Kosovo Albanian-speaking population. Instead collective identities were based upon either socio-professional, socio-economic, regional, or religious identities and sometimes relations between Muslim and Christian Albanians were tense.. "It also demonstrates that while an ethno-national Albanian identity covering the whole Albanian-speaking population hardly existed in late-Ottoman Kosovo, collective identities were primarily formed from layers of religious, socio-professional/socio-economic and regional elements, as well as extended kinship and patriarchal structures.”; p. 195. “The case of the Fandi illustrates the heterogeneous and multilayered nature of the Albanian-speaking population groups in late-Ottoman Kosovo. These divisions also become evident when looking at the previously-mentioned high level of violence within the Albanian-speaking groups. Whereas we tend to think of violence in Kosovo today largely in terms of ethnic conflict or even “ancient ethnic hatreds”, the various forms of violence the consuls described in their reports in late-Ottoman Kosovo appear to have occurred primarily along religious and socio-economic fault lines, reflecting pre-national identity patterns. In addition to the usual violence prompted by shortages of pastureland or robbery for private gain, the sources often report on religiously motivated violence between Muslims and Christians, with a high level of violence not only between Albanian Muslims and Serbian Christians, but also between Albanian Muslims and Albanian Catholics." Some people coming from a Balkan Albanian speaking or cultural space and often belonging to the urban elite in Kosovo that migrated to Anatolia did not always identify with a concept of Albanianess. Instead they adopted an Ottoman Turkish outlook and came to refer to themselves as Turks or Ottoman Turkish speaking citizens.. Due to the effects of socio-linguistic assimilation, promoters of Albanian nationalism became concerned about migration to Anatolia and degraded Albanians from the lower classes who undertook the journey..

In 1908 a conference of delegates decided on an Albanian Latin alphabet and the Ottoman government expressed its displeasure alongside other Young Turk policies resulting in a breakdown of relations between Albanian elites and nationalists, many Muslim with Ottoman authorities... The Ottoman Young Turk government was concerned that Albanian nationalism might inspire other Muslim nationalities toward such initiatives and threaten the Muslim-based unity of the empire.. The demands for political, cultural and linguistic rights eventually made the Ottomans adopt measures to repress Albanian nationalism which resulted in two Albanian revolts toward the end of Ottoman rule.. The first revolt during 1910 in Kosovo and northern Albania was a reaction toward the new Ottoman government policy of centralization.. The other revolt in the same areas was in 1912 that sought Albanian political and linguistic self-determination under the bounds of the Ottoman Empire and with both revolts many of the leaders and fighters were Muslim and Catholic Albanians... These Albanian revolts were also a turning point that impacted the Young Turk government which increasingly moved from a policy direction of pan-Ottomanism and Islam toward a singular national Turkish outlook... Ottoman opposition to Albanian-language education and grassroots efforts by Albanian nationalists influenced some Albanian Muslim clergy in Kosovo to embrace the cause of Albanian education during the late Ottoman period. Some Muslim clergy got involved in Albanian cultural clubs and others promoted teaching of Albanian in religious schools and made appeals to others in Kosovar Albanian society to do so.. With a de-emphasis of Islam, the Albanian nationalist movement gained the strong support of two Adriatic Sea powers Austria-Hungary and Italy who were concerned about pan-Slavism in the wider Balkans and Anglo-French hegemony purportedly represented through Greece in the area.. "Περιορίζοντας τις αρχικές του ισλαμιστικές εξάρσεις, το αλβανικό εθνικιστικό κίνημα εξασφάλισε την πολιτική προστασία των δύο ισχυρών δυνάμεων της Αδριατικής, της Ιταλίας και της Αυστρίας, που δήλωναν έτοιμες να κάνουν ό,τι μπορούσαν για να σώσουν τα Βαλκάνια από την απειλή του Πανσλαβισμού και από την αγγλογαλλική κηδεμονία που υποτίθεται ότι θα αντιπροσώπευε η επέκταση της Ελλάδας." "[By limiting the Islamic character, the Albanian nationalist movement secured civil protection from two powerful forces in the Adriatic, Italy and Austria, which was ready to do what they could to save the Balkans from the threat of Pan-Slavism and the Anglo French tutelage that is supposed to represent its extension through Greece.]"

Balkan Wars, World War One and interwar period

Kosovar Albanian nationalism has been defined through its clash with Serbian nationalism where both view Kosovo as the birthplace of their cultural and national identities.. Ottoman rule ended in 1912 during the Balkan Wars and Kosovo became part of Serbia. During this time Serb forces in Kosovo engaged in killings and forced migration of Albanians while the national building aims of the Serbian state were to assimilate some and remove most Albanians by replacing them with Serbian settlers. The Serb state believed that Albanians had no sense of nationhood while Albanian nationalism was viewed as the result of Austro-Hungarian and Italian intrigue.. These events fostered feelings of Albanian victimisation and defeatism, grudges against the Serbs and Great Powers who had agreed to that state of affairs which ran alongside Albanian nationalism. Kosovar Albanian nationalism drew upon and became embedded in popular culture such as village customs within a corpus of rich historical myths, distinctive folk music referring to harvests along with marriage and clan based law..