Disputed Albania in the Diplomatic Negotiation of the Treaty of Rapallo

The Albanian question arose for the first time at the Berlin Congress of 1878. Initially underestimated by the great powers, over the years, it became one of the decisive issues of the "Balkan tangle" in the unstoppable decline of the Ottoman Empire. In a complex diplomatic game with its ally Austro-Hungary, Italy became increasingly involved in defining an Albanian space to exchange the Albanian territories with Vienna for the unredeemed lands. This determined a convoluted and ambiguous Italian policy towards Albania, in which the Albanian question and the eastern border became the two ends of a negotiation that found a solution only with the intervention of President Wilson in favor of Albanian independence, under Italian tutelage and the talks in Rapallo on the so-called strategic border.