Slovene press coverage of the Albanians during the balkan wars

Abstract

During the time of the Balkan Wars, Slovene political newspapers began writing more about the Albanians. Their main source of information were the works of Serbian ethnologist Jovan Cvijić, who claimed that over the past centuries the Albanians had carried out ethnic cleansing against the Serbs in a most criminal manner throughout central and northern Albania and Kosovo and settled on what were formerly Serbian ethnic territories. With the exception of one Social-Democratic paper, the Zarja, the great majority of Slovene political newspapers carelessly adopted this prejudiced attitude against the Albanians and even intensified it. This ultimately resulted in the Slovene press describing the Albanians as treacherous savages, who lived off the spoils of the looting and slaughtering of Serbs, or at best, as a group of primitive tribes, hostile even towards each other, who were not capable of independent political life.