One of my favorite things about stamp collecting, is the history and research.
I have been working on studying the "bogus" issues of the Mirdite Republic of 1921. Even though these stamps were never used, the history of the little rebellion is interesting and nearly led to all out war in the Balkans.
Below is what I wrote up about this. Hope you enjoy as I have not seen a page on the Internet yet that goes into this much detail on the Mirdite Republic.
(Please - if you have any additional info or corrections, let me know!)
Albania - Mirdite RepublicAlbania, of today, was roughly born as a result of the First Balkan War in 1912. The war itself was initially sparked by Albanian Revolts against the Turks that occurred between 1908 and 1910.
Albania declared independence in November of 1912 and was officially recognized at the "Conference Of London" in July of 1913.
By WWI however, Albania began to collapse. By 1914 Greece had occupied much of Southern Albania while Serbia and Montenegro occupied much of Northern Albania, which contained a group of Catholic Tribes known as the Mirdites.
A Central Powers offensive eventually pushes out the Serbs and the Greeks and the areas are occupied by the Austria-Hungarians.
In 1915 the "Secret Treaty of London" promises parts of Albania to Italy in echange for entering the War against Austria-Hungary. Greece is promised the south, and Serbia (later part of Yugoslavia) is promised the northern region containing the Mirdites. By the end of the war in 1918, Italy had occupied much of Albania with Serbia occupying the North and Greece a portion of the south.
In January of 1920, at the "Paris Peace Conference", France, Great Britain, and Greece agree to divide Albania among Yugoslavia, Italy and Greece. This was done without Albanian Representation nor with diplomatic assistance from the United States acting as negotiator.
Later in January, the Albanians reject the partition plan and form a government in the city of Tirana. Finally with Diplomatic Assistance from the United States, they are eventually recognized by the League of Nations in December of 1920.
Northern Albania was primarily Catholic, the largest of these tribes was known as the Mirdites. The Mirdite people were unhappy with the new Government in Tirana, seeing them as friends of the Moslem Turks.
In 1920, the hereditary chieftain of the Mirdites, Prenk Bib Doda, was killed in an ambush. With no heirs, his cousin Gjon Marka Gjoni expected that he would succeed Prenk as Chief.
Prenk, however, had made it known that he did not care for Gjoni, as he accused him of "Abandoning the Front" in 1914.
The Tirana government, out of touch with the goings on in the North, offered Gjoni a chance, in April of 1921 to participate in the new administration as a representative of the region. Gjoni rejected this offer, and went to Prizren (A city with a heavy Albanian population, located in Modern Day Kosovo) to seek assistance from the Yugoslav Government.
The Yugoslav's, who did not not like new Government at Tirana, agreed to proclaim Gjoni as the Chief of the Mirdite, in the hopes of extending their influence throughout the region the Serbs had occupied during WWI. The Yugoslavs supported Gjoni financially, and later, with arms.
Gjoni returned to Mirdite and began to seek support among the clansmen. The Tirana Government was seeking to tax the Mirdites, and Gjoni claimed that the Tironi government was Muslim and would seek to restrict the religious liberties of the Catholic Mirdites. He managed to gain support of one tribe (Orash) and with this support, the Yugoslav's in Prizren proclaimed the new "Mirdite Republic" with Gjoni as its leader.
After the Proclamation, the Yogoslav government supplied Gjoni with arms, and Gjoni raised an army of about 2000, composed of a few Mirdites, but primarily of Serbs. His army attacked Tirani Government forces.
Unfortunately, Gjoni received little support from the Mirdite population who did not join him in his revolt. By the middle of November, the Serbian troops taking part in the rebellion had decided to return to Serbia, primarily over issues of pay - which they were not receiving as Gjoni had run out of funds to support his small army.
Shortly after the rebellion had begun, Government troops fought back and quickly captured the Mirdite capital of Orash. Gjoni, on November 20th, issued a proclamation releasing his supporters, and fled to Prizren.
A later League of Nations report did find some interesting facts. Although it derided the rebellion as foolish, it did note that the Serbians were preparing 80,000 troops along the Albanian border in readiness for an all out war with Albania's Tironi government. Because of Gjoni's lack of support among the Mirdites, however, this war would never come to be. It is possible though, that if Gjoni would have received more support from his own Mirdite people, that this could have led to an all out war in the Balkans, just shortly 3 years after the end of WWI.
The Stamp IssuesA series of stamps was printed by the Mirdite Government sometime during 1921 (probably between April and November). These stamps were never actually put into use, and most catalogs note them as Unissued and do not give them catalog numbers (e.g. Scott)
The series of stamps consisted of 6 Face Different stamps in values of 1fr, 5q, 10q, 25q, and 50q. The 1fr stamp exists overprinted "25q" and the 1fr, 5q, 10q, and 25q stamps exist overprinted "Takse". Takse roughly translates to "Tax" (Albanian) or "Fees" (Serbian). This overprint exists on many Albanian regular stamps that were repurposed as Postage Due Stamps. So in this instance, the Takse overprints were likely intended to be used as Postage Dues.
The values "fr and q" were 100q "qint" to 1fr (franc)
Whether or not these stamps actually were intended for use, or were printed as government propaganda is not known. Evidence possibly supports that they were intended for use because of the overprints, but, this is not known.
The original (real) stamps have gum on the back, and the overprints are hand stamped. Later reproductions or forgeries of these stamps have no gum and the overprints are "printed" onto the stamps (not handstamped)
There also exists what appear to be Cancels on some of these stamps, although these are probably more like CTO's and were likely done in the capital of Orash.
Also - Various shades and paper varieties do exist. Most of these are probably due to the reproductions / forgeries.
Posted 02/02/2013 12:42 pm
