'The very Categorical Desire': The 1924 Mixed Commission’s Survey along the Greek-Albanian-Yugoslav Borderland

• In Event: League of Notions?: Local Agency, State Power, and International Institutions in Interwar East European Borderlands

Abstract

In 1923, Greece and Turkey, with the support of international powers, agreed to a compulsory “exchange” of their populations at Lausanne based on the conflation of religion with ethnicity. As a result, the exchange uprooted over 1.8 million people across the Eastern Mediterranean. Consequently, Turkey denaturalized and deported its indigenous Christian populations—Greek Orthodox, Armenian Christians, and others—to Greece. In turn, Greece expelled its autochthonous Muslim communities, including Albanian-speaking Muslims to the new Turkish nation-state. Albanian officials and local Albanian-speaking Muslims living in Greece resisted against the international sanctioned categorical usage of “ethnicity.” The League of Nations requested a survey be completed across the regions of northern Greece—Epirus and Macedonia—to distinguish Albanian Muslims from Turkish Muslims in early 1924. The Mixed Commission stated that because it became too difficult to distinguish language and customs amongst the local Muslim populations, they relied on the “desired” category of individuals. In turn, the Mixed Commission stated that only 3-5% of Muslims declared themselves Albanians. This paper examines the Commission’s survey reports along the Greek-Albanian-Yugoslav borderland. The paper analyzes how different categories between language, race, culture, religion, and national consciousness were employed by the Commission through their reports. Secondly, I read the sources against the grain to show the assumptions behind the categories used in the survey. Framing the 1924 Mixed Commission’s survey in a comparative context, I argue that the foreign survey reports used to delineate borders and identities inscribed violence on the very borderlands it sought to distinguish.

Author

• Lediona Shahollari, U College London (UK)