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100 years ago: How America recognized Albania and the role of Korça Kostandin Çekrezi

2022-05-16 18:51:22Histori SHKRUAR NGA ILIR IKONOMI
100 years ago: How America recognized Albania and the role of Korça
100 years ago: How America recognized Albania and the role of Korça Kostandin Çekrezi

In the early 1920s, Kostandin Çekrezi from Ziçishti, a Harvard-educated man, did not leave the case without the intervention of the State Department for America to recognize Albania.

Çekrezi was Albania's commissioner in Washington and his zeal had been noticed. He had a meeting with the Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby, to whom he had argued why America should recognize Albania.

Colby's response was to wait.

By the end of 1921, Albania was officially recognized by almost all major European countries as well as its neighbors.

Cekrez went back to the DASH and met with Assistant Secretary-General Fred Dearing, who told him that the US government should do the same.

100 years ago: How America recognized Albania and the role of Korça
Kostandin Çekrezi

Dearing communicated this in writing to superiors with the recommendation that the US recognize Albania.

"Albanians," he wrote, "have shown a unity, skill and energy that was not expected in the policy they have pursued towards the three countries interested in sabotaging their interests." "But these results are less surprising when we consider that in fact Albania was never subjugated by the Turks and that during the last 400 years, many of the most capable officials of the Ottoman Empire were Albanians."

Dearing also spoke about the economic interest that the US would have in Albania, especially in oil, for which there were promising signs. The American company Standard Oil had started the search for oil in Albania, after the British and Italian companies.

In addition, - wrote Dearing, - "the significant Albanian element in the US and the trust in America that is felt so much, would be a great plus for cultivating these relations with Albania."

But the issue was not progressing.

In early March 1922, Çekrezi had several conversations with the foreign trade adviser at DASH.

In one of them he presented a fancy picture of the situation in Albania, declaring to the adviser that a foreign geologist had discovered platinum reserves there. He proposed that Albania be given a $ 10 million loan, with various concessions as collateral, including oil.

100 years ago: How America recognized Albania and the role of Korça

Despite Çekrez's efforts, in early April 1922 the Albanian government informed him that he had dismissed him as commissioner and that he was closing his office in Washington.

Çekrezi communicated the news to DASH officials, who were told that the Albanian government thought he had failed in the mission for the recognition of Albania by America. But an official told him that knowing or not knowing had nothing to do with Cekrez as a person.

A few weeks after Chekres's dismissal, on April 27, 1922, Secretary of State Hughes informed the U.S. Consul General in Tanger, Maxwell Blake, that the State Department was considering the possibility of recognition.

He asked Mr. Blake to go to Albania and report on the situation in the country, on the stability of the Albanian government and on American interests.

Blake went to Albania in early June and prepared a very positive report. The Albanian government's attitude towards American interests is particularly favorable, Blake wrote, and recommended to the State Department the recognition of Albania.

As the first argument for his recommendation, Blake said that "recognition would be a moral boost for the Albanian people, who are at a critical stage of their struggle for independence."

Blake listed material factors as the second reason. Sooner or later, recognition will come, he wrote. But it would be nice if it is done right away.

At the end of July 1922, the State Department sent an urgent telegram to its commissioner in Tirana, Maxwell Blake, stating:

"On July 28, you can notify the Minister of Foreign Affairs in writing of the de jure recognition of Albania by the United States… The fact of recognition will be given for publication in the morning newspapers of July 28."

(According to documents from the US archive)

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