The initial sparks of the first Balkan War in 1912 were ignited by the Albanian uprising between 1908 and 1910, which had the aim of opposing the Young Turk policies of consolidation of the Ottoman Empire.

Following the eventual weakening of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria declared war, seizing the remaining Ottoman territory in Europe. The territory of what is now Albania was occupied by Serbia in the north and Greece in the south, leaving only a patch of land around the southern coastal city of Vlora.

The uprisings of 1910–1912, and the Montenegrin, Serbian, and Greek invasion of Albania, led to a proclamation of independence by Ismail Qemali in Vlora, on 28 November 1912. Albanian independence was recognized by the Conference of London on 29 July 1913.

The Conference of London then delineated the border between Albania and its neighbors, leaving more than half of ethnic Albanians outside Albania. This population was largely divided between Montenegro and Serbia in the north and east (including what is now Kosovo and the Republic of Macedonia), and Greece in the south. A substantial number of Albanians thus came under Serbian rule.

At the same time, an uprising in the country’s south by local Greeks led to the formation of the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus in the southern provinces (1914)

The republic proved short-lived as Albania collapsed with the onset of World War I. Greece held the area between 1914 and 1916, and unsuccessfully tried to annex it in March 1916; however in 1917 the Greeks were driven from the area by Italy, which took over most of Albania.

The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 awarded the area to Greece. However the area definitively reverted to Albanian control in November 1921, following Greece’s defeat in the Greco-Turkish War.