World War I and its effects on Albania

Albania achieved a degree of statehood after World War I, in part because of the diplomatic intercession of the United States. The country suffered from a debilitating lack of economic and social development, however, and its first years of independence were fraught with political instability. Unable to survive in a predatory world without a foreign protector, Albania became the object of tensions between Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (the later Yugoslavia), which both sought to dominate the country.

With Yugoslav military assistance, Ahmed Bey Zogu, the son of a clan chieftain, emerged victorious from an internal political power struggle in late 1924. Zogu, however, quickly turned his back on Belgrade and looked instead to Benito Mussolini's Italy for patronage. Under him, Albania joined the Italian coalition against Yugoslavia of Kingdom of Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria in 1924-1927. After the United Kingdom's and France's political intervention in 1927 with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the alliance crumbled. In 1928 Zogu coaxed the country's parliament into declaring Albania a kingdom and himself king. King Zogu remained a hidebound conservative, and Albania was the only Balkan state where the government did not introduce a comprehensive land reform between the two world wars. Mussolini's forces overthrew Zogu when they occupied Albania in 1939.