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Whereas the local authors comment on the educational reform and other consequences of
Zogu’s centralism, Viron Koka’s essay published in the edited collection of the Albanian
Academy of Science mentions irredentist movements of the local population that were
initiated by the propaganda of the Greek politics:
Between 1920 and 1930 several tensions considering frontiers between Albania and
Greece appeared. These tensions were evoked by the Athens’ propaganda about
Northern Epirus which was successfully refused by the government in Tirana. Zogu’s
government supported by the League of Nations rejected the Athens’ aim for joining
the southern Albania to Greece. Despite strong Greek propaganda and general
economic crisis, Greece did not succeed in joining Himarë with the Greek state.
Although the three villages of Himarë were bilingual (people also spoke Greek) the
policy of the Ahmed Zogu forbade using Greek language in schools [sic]. (Koka 2004:
222, translations mine).
The local scholar Rusha (2001: 129) mentions trading kept by some large and wealthy
families of Dhërmi/Drimades during the reign of King Zogu. Because of economic crisis and
political situation many of the inhabitants migrated to Greece and some to Italy. But these
accounts can be heard mainly in the oral stories of the elderly people who live in
Dhërmi/Drimades today, while the accounts of the contemporary scholars do not mention this.
Many people of Dhërmi/Drimades I had the opportunity to talk to recalled their stories about
various movements to and fro. Many local men worked as labour migrants in Ioannina, Lavrio
or other towns of Epirus, Corfu in Greece, France, Italy and United States in the period
between the First and the Second World War (1919-1939). Many of those who worked in
Greece, Italy, France or elsewhere in Europe returned to their natal village after they retired,
while many of those who worked in United States did not return at all. Besides the mentioned
sea trading the local people also used the mainland trading routes, where mainly Lorries were
used for the transport. Some villagers can recall that there were around 60 Lorries in the
village (see also http://www.answers.com/topic/himar-1).
Above all, the policy of King Zogu promoted the equation of the differences regarding the
language, religion and territory, which were formed in past centuries surfaced again. People
generated and reappropriated these differences according to their own social and cultural
backgrounds. They were neither the same replication of insinuated political ideas nor the
subject of the people’s own creativity (cf. Herzfeld) but rather the not-quite-replications (cf.
Green 2005) of them. Thus, for example, in this social, political, cultural and historical
contingency the understandings of politically insinuated differences became represented in
some people’s irredentist tensions to join Greece and in others’ aspirations to stay within the
Albanian territory.
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