MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Albania

ONE LAND · 7 ATLASES

Albania, on the map of history

What was Albania before it was Albania? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Epirus & Illyria (mod. Albania) · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

Epirus and Illyria: Pyrrhus’ kingdom, whose Italian adventure (280–275 BC) taught Rome its own strength; later the coast whose pirate kingdoms drew Rome across the Adriatic — the first eastward step (229 BC). In 167 BC Aemilius Paullus enslaved 150,000 Epirotes in a single organized day: Roman conquest with the mask fully off.

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Epirus & Dyrrhachium (mod. Albania) · The Crusades, 1095–1291

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Epirus (mod. Albania) · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

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Albania · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

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Albania · The Great War, 1914–1918

Independent for barely two years when the war arrived — its borders drawn at London in 1913, its imported German prince gone within six months — Albania became everyone’s corridor: the Serbian army’s retreat crossed it (Ch. 4), and Austrian, Italian, French and Greek forces partitioned it in all but name; the secret Treaty of London had already promised slices of it to three of its “protectors.” It survived to 1920 as a state mostly because its occupiers exhausted each other — and because the Congress of Lushnjë refused every partition scheme and made Italy fight for Vlorë, which it declined to do for long.

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Albania · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

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Albania · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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