ion of Albanian culture and the defense of Albanian rights. In
1908 a congress of intellectuals from all parts of Albania and the
Albanian colonies abroad, especially the Italo-Albanian colonies in
Italy, convened in Monastir (Bitolj) to decide on an Albanian alphabet;
it adopted the Latin one as most suitable for the country. This decision
marked a great advance toward Albanian unification and eventual
statehood.

In the summer and fall of 1912, while Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and
Greece, prodded by Russia, were waging war against Turkey, the Albanians
staged a series of revolts and began to agitate for the creation of an
autonomous and neutral Albania. Accordingly, a group of Albanian
patriots, led by Ismail Qemal bey Vlora, a member of the Turkish
Parliament, proclaimed Albania's independence at Vlore on November 28,
1912, and organized an Albanian provisional government. Supported by
Austria and Italy, Albania's independence was recognized on December 12,
1912, by the London Conference of Ambassadors, but its boundaries were
to be determined later. In March 1913 agreement was reached on the
northern frontiers, assigning Shkoder to Albania but giving Kosovo and
Metohija (Kosmet), inhabited then chiefly by Albanians, to Serbia. This
frontier demarcation was very similar to the frontiers between
Yugoslavia and Albania as they existed in 1970.

The boundaries in the south were more difficult to delineate because
Greece laid claim to most of southern Albania, which the Greeks call
Northern Epirus. The Conference of Ambassadors appointed a special
commission to draw the demarcation line on ethnographic bases and in
December 1913 drafted the Protocol of Florence, which assigned the
region to Albania. The 1913 boundaries in the south, like those in the
north, were almost the same as those that existed between Greece and
Albania in 1970. The Albania that emerged from the Conference of
Ambassadors was a truncated one; as many Albanians were left out of the
new state as were included in it.

The Conference of Ambassadors also drafted a constitution for the new
state, which was proclaimed as an autonomous principality, sovereign,
and under the guarantees of the Great Powers; created an International
Control Commission to control the country's administration and budget;
and selected as ruler the German Prince Wilhelm zu Wied. Prince Wied
arrived in March 1914 but had to flee the country six months later
because of the out