The Illyrians, ancestors of today’s Albanians, occupied the western Balkans in the 2nd millennium BC, and a convoy of interested warring states followed. The Greeks arrived in the 7th century BC, set up self governing colonies and in the main traded peacefully with the Illyrians, who set up their own tribal states by the 4th century BC. The Greeks took over the south, and still have a claim on it today. The expanding Roman Empire came to blows with an expanding Illyrian Empire based around Shkodra in present day northern Albania, and the Illyrians came off the worse after the Romans sent 200 warships there in 228 BC. The Romans spread their rule to the whole of the Balkans by 167 BC, and in the main Illyria enjoyed peace and prosperity – as long as you weren’t one of the slaves working on the agricultural estates.
When the Romans couldn’t hold on any longer, the Visigoths, Huns, Ostrogoths and Slavs salivating outside city limits struck poses and compared armies during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. In the 11th century, the Byzantines, Bulgarians and Normans squabbled over the northern region of Illyria, which, before Roman times, had stretched north to the Danube. Serbia, the Turks under the Ottoman Empire and even the Venetians all came and stayed, but in 1479 the Ottomans invaded and ruled until 1912, letting the region languish as the most backward part of Europe. In 1878, the Albanian League at Prizren (in present day Kosovo) began a struggle for autonomy that continues today. The Turkish army squashed the first glimmers of independence in 1881, but further uprisings followed.
