Common Past, Divided Memories: “Northern Epirus” (1914) and the Afterlives of a Post-Imperial Borderland
Common Past, Divided Memories: “Northern Epirus” (1914) and the Afterlives of a Post-Imperial Borderland

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the contested afterlives of the 1914 “Northern Epirus” episode as a classic case of common past/divided memories in a post-imperial Balkan borderland . Rather than revisiting the diplomatic history of the Autonomous Republic proclaimed in southern Albania, it analyzes how the episode has been integrated into two mutually exclusive national narratives. In Greek memory, “Northern Epirus” emerged as a modern political term of symbolic geography, framed as part of the unredeemed Greek patria. In Albanian memory, the same events were codified as attempted dismemberment, external intervention, and foundational trauma in the fragile birth of statehood. Drawing on diplomatic archives, interwar pamphlets, textbooks, memorial sites, media discourse, and post–Cold War political controversies, the article traces how these memories were institutionalized and periodically reactivated, from Cold War rhetoric to EU accession debates and diaspora mobilization. It argues that the dispute today is less territorial than epistemic: the border is internationally recognized, yet the symbolic geography persists. By situating “Northern Epirus” within broader debates on imperial collapse, nationalism, and memory regimes in Southeastern Europe, the study proposes pathways for memory de-escalation grounded in shared historical complexity rather than competitive victimhood.

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