The Principality of Albania survived invasions during World War I (1914—1918) and subsequent disputes over Albanian independence during the Paris Peace Conference (1919—1920).

The Great Powers selected Prince Wilhelm of Wied, a nephew of Queen Elisabeth of Romania, to become the sovereign of the newly independent Albania.

In the spring of 1914, the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus was proclaimed by ethnic Greeks in the territory and recognized by the Albanian government, though it proved short-lived as Albania collapsed with the onset of World War I.

Surrounded by insurgents in Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September 1914, just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front.

In late October 1914, Greek forces entered Albania in the Protocol of Corfu's recognized Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus.

[citation needed] Under the secret Treaty of London signed in April 1915, Triple Entente powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary.

The treaty was to leave a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers, thus meaning it would have no foreign policy.

Albania's new government campaigned to end Italy's occupation of the country and encouraged peasants to harass Italian forces.

Belgrade then backed a disgruntled Gheg clan chief, Gjon Markagjoni, who led his Roman Catholic Mirditë tribesmen in a rebellion against the regency and parliament.

As a result of this, in October 1921, the Sacred Union Government was created to pressure Yugoslavia to recognize Albania's territorial sovereignty.

The League of Nations dispatched a commission composed of representatives of Britain, France, Italy, and Japan that reaffirmed Albania's 1913 borders.

The Popular Party's ranks included the reform-minded Orthodox bishop of Durrës, Fan Noli, who was imbued with Western ideas at his alma mater, Harvard University,[8] and had even translated Shakespeare and Ibsen into Albanian.

The Popular Party's head, Xhafer Ypi, formed a government in December 1921 with Noli as foreign minister and Zogu as internal affairs minister, but Noli resigned soon after Zogu resorted to repression in an attempt to disarm the lowland Albanians despite the fact that bearing arms was a traditional custom.

When the government's enemies attacked Tirana in early 1922, Zogu stayed in the capital and, with the support of the British ambassador, repulsed the assault.

Noli and other Western-oriented leaders formed the Opposition Party of Democrats, which attracted all of Zogu's many personal enemies, ideological opponents, and people left unrewarded by his political machine.

Ideologically, the Democrats included a broad sweep of people who advocated everything from conservative Islam to Noli's dreams of rapid modernization.

The opposition withdrew from the assembly after the leader of a radical youth organization, Avni Rustemi, was murdered in the street outside the parliament building.

Noli encountered resistance to his program from people who had helped him oust Zogu, and he never attracted the foreign aid necessary to carry out his reform plans.

Under Fan Noli, the government set up a special tribunal that passed death sentences, in absentia, on Zogu, Verlaci, and others and confiscated their property.

But his government lasted just six months, and Ahmet Zogu returned with another coup d'état and regained the control, changing the political situation and abolishing the principality.

Since 1920, when the government came to power out of Lushnjes Congress until 1934 (at which time the study was done Hajj Shkoza author), Albanian national administration, along with the development of all its activities in different branches economy, was also involved in the organization of the customs system.

This continued well into the war years 1939–1944, after Italy, for propaganda purposes, liberalized trade with Albania, enabling you to our country pouring wholesale goods.

The landowners had always held the principal ruling posts in the country's central and southern regions, but many of them were steeped in the same conservatism that brought decay to the Ottoman Empire.

The landowning elite expected that they would continue to enjoy precedence, but the country's peasants were beginning to dispute the landed aristocracy's control.

The highland clans were suspicious of a constitutional government claiming to legislate in the interests of the country as a whole, and the Roman Catholic Church became the principal link between Tirana and the tribesmen despite the Muslim religious affiliation of most of the population.