Ottoman History Podcast - Paraskevi Kyrias, Albania, and the US at the Paris Peace Conference

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

with Nevila Pahumi hosted by Susanna Ferguson | In 1919, Paraskevi Kyrias went to Paris to advocate for Albanian independence. As a woman in the overwhelmingly masculine space of international diplomacy, she faced sexism and unwanted romantic overtures. Nevertheless, she called on her connections within a global Protestant community, her life in diaspora in the United States, and her experiences at the elite Constantinople Girls' School to play a unique role in the Albanian campaign for independence after World War I. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Nevila Pahumi about Kyrias' story, her leadership of the early Albanian women's movement, and the diary of her experiences in Paris she left behind. We also trace the history of this remarkable woman after 1919, as she and her family were repudiated by a secularizing Albanian state determined to exise Protestant activism from their national history -- until she was once again remade as a feminist icon in the last years of her life. « Click for More »

What is today Albania sits at the westernmost tip of the former Ottoman Empire, closer to Naples than to Stambol. at the westernmost tip of the former Ottoman Empire, closer to Naples than to Stambol. Despite the distance, Albanians were so thoroughly integrated into Ottoman society that they waited longer to break away from the empire than almost anyone else. When the Balkan League declared war on the empire in November of 1912, Albanian officials reluctantly declared their independence. The dramatic events that would soon unfold in southeastern Europe, two Balkan wars followed by World War I in 1914, transformed Ottoman

Albania's political fortunes. Threatened with Italian colonization and Balkan nationalisms, Albanians, like many others around the world, turned their minds towards U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's call for the right to self-determination for small peoples everywhere. At the forefront of calls for Albanian self-determination after World War I stood a remarkable woman. Paraskevi Kyrias, a member of Albania's small but influential Protestant community, went to Paris in 1919 to make Albania's case to heads of state, ambassadors, and diplomats, nearly all of whom were men. Luckily for historians, while she was running around Paris lobbying for Albania's future, Paraskevi also found the time to keep a diary. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Nabila

Pahomi about that diary, which she has just translated under the title The Diary of a Protestant Woman Diplomat, Paraskevi Kyrias, the United States, and Albania at the Paris Peace Conference. We see how this unique source in the history of women's political work and Albanian nationalism also tells a complex story about education, women's activism, and Protestant networks in the wider Ottoman world. We'll also hear how the memory of Paraskevi's work in Paris was first repressed and then reclaimed by the Albanian state, showing how this story about feminism and faith at empire's close lived on into a post-Ottoman world. ¦ ¦ I remember when I found it, I was just so excited by, you know,

it just opens up such a big world. It's like, oh, peace conference. Oh, my God, Paris Peace Conference. Like, she is, I'd known her story for a long time. She's popularized in film, in communist era film. She and her family are notable for significant contributions towards the standardization of the Albanian language and also for running the first state sanctioned, so Ottoman state sanctioned vernacular school for girls. That's kind of what makes them important in Albanian history, in Albanian historiography.

I mean, they're interesting because they're part of a Protestant minority. They create a non-denominational movement in Ottoman Macedonia. She is one of a family of 10 Albanian activists, Albanian Christian activists is the correct term. They convert to Protestantism. It's a sibling process. It's a sibling-initiated sort of process. They convert through neighborly interactions in the 1870s. They live in Monastir, and their next-door neighbor happens to be an American missionary who is representing the American board. One day, he notices that a little girl among them is stricken sick with malaria and he has medicine to offer and it becomes one of many meetings that kind of

sets the stage for the family's eventual kind of wholesale conversion and full immersion into kind of simultaneous British and American missionary movements, both influential in this part of the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the 19th century. These transnational ties would in many ways change the course of Paraskevi's life, preparing her for a debut on the stage of high diplomacy and global politics in 1919. Paraskevi in 1919 is 33 years old. She's been spending all of World War I in Boston as a community activist among the Albanian-American diaspora, kind of settled in the region in New England, kind of in the first decades of the 20th century. For her, this kind of moment in exile is to serve as a voice

for the political claims of territorial sovereignty. Albania is a newly created state. At the end of the Second Balkan Wars, Albania becomes recognized as an independent principality by the London Conference of Ambassadors. But that recognition sets the stage for almost immediate contestation by neighboring Balkan countries and also for political rivalries within the country. Kyrius is notable and gets kind of involved in the fight because she has been influential in running the only official school for girls, a vernacular school for girls. This is in the Ottoman-Albanian Greek borderlands. Paraskevi comes to political activism through the issue of women's education. So around the time of the Young Turk Revolution, she gets involved in cultural politics,

and it's a process that throws her and her entire family into political activism. She's an advocate of cultural rights, specifically education, women's kind of education and organization. And the pushback from the Ottoman authorities pushes her into sort of very active expressions of Albanian claims for territorial independence and also women's kind of stake in the nation creating process that kind of follows with that. Her family has to flee Albania at the beginning of the Balkan Wars. The invading Greek irredentists threatened to burn their school to the ground and so the entire family is forced into exile and they come to the United States slowly but gradually because in the U.S to, had been part of this multilateral agreement with

the American board to facilitate the extension of a non-denominational Protestant mission to Albania. And the board sort of very enthusiastically jumps in because they make the the family somehow uh successfully persuades the board that albania's friendly muslims are uh suddenly ready to embrace protestantism and that perhaps this could become some sort of a symbolic sort of standard or example that the rest of the Muslim Middle East could follow on. And so the board's almost 100-year kind of vision of converting this entire area would become a reality. I think that she recognizes the unlikelihood of that.

Protestant community is a very small and contested minority, and they have to carefully sort of tiptoe among the various networks that they're plugged in to sort of, you know, create a kind of multiple identities, really, within the world of Albanian diplomacy and then Christian work. In 1919, those networks of Albanian diplomacy and Christian work would come together to vault Paraskevi into the halls of power at the peace conference convened in Paris by the victors of World War I, the Allies. It was at this conference that the practical purchase of President Wilson's famous 14-point speech, in which he had gestured at the possibility of self-determination for some of the world's

small peoples, would be hashed out. As the conference wore on, it became increasingly clear that Wilson's promise wasn't meant to apply to everyone. Representatives of small peoples would have to fight to be heard. It was in this context that Protestant women, like Paris Guévy, became so important. The role of Protestant women specifically is connected to the subtle hints right, for people like, for women like Paraskevi. The people she has to lobby with for some measure of American protection for Albania. These negotiations are being made with people she trusts. She's been their student. They've been her

made with people she trusts. She's been their student. They've been her mentors and her professors. They've seen her intellectual development. And this moment represents a culmination of her experience and skill. Education was not only at the center of Pireskivi's own politics. It was also her very preparation for entrance into political life. And in this, she was not alone. Within the Ottoman Empire, she's emblematic of a generation educated at Protestant schools. She herself is an alumni of the Constantinople College for Girls. I mean, what's about the these Protestant schools like

Constantinople Women's College is that after almost a half century of trying to convert their students to Protestantism, American schools just sort of give up on that original vision, secularize their curricula because they realize that they have rising demand from a middle class invested in the education of their daughters. It's a changing world for women, and it becomes obvious to growing numbers of people that, one, there's nothing wrong with educating their daughters, and two, education would open a world of opportunities to them that their mothers and preceding generations would not have. She has an important counterpart, highly recognizable counterpart, Halide Edip, is also a student

at Constantinople College. She also has very important things to say about the future of Turkey. She communicates, both of them communicate these things, their visions, to a man who is a significant supporter of President Woodrow Wilson. This man is Charles Crane. He's a philanthropist from Chicago. His family makes their money in the toilet business, of all things. Crane, he is immersed in all sorts of projects. He loves languages. And he, along the way, develops almost a love and a dedication of finding sort of political ingenues, if you will, people who are sort of up and coming.

Many of them are almost obscure. And so the kind of not a discovery of, you know, them by him, but it's almost their meeting points just launches these people's careers into completely new directions elevates them to new heights a few of them are women so he meets Halide Edip for example uh in Istanbul he's part of the Kinkring commission this is what makes Kyrius and all of these women super interesting. They're connected to very important stuff. King Crane Commission is basically the United States' attempt to make sure that the voices of local nationalists

throughout the Middle East, that their voices are kind of represented and heard at the peace conference. And so the King Crane Commission wants to make sure that Arab voices are represented somehow at the Paris peace conference, because obviously territorial claims for independence in the Middle East and also Ottoman Europe itself, former Ottoman Europe, clash quite bitterly with European imperialist projections. And the Americans are the only kind of big power at the kind of seat in Paris that seem to display any kind of concern for inclusion of, you know, perspectives. And so I think that the French and the British are interested in superficial accommodations. While Paris-Guevy was joined in Paris in 1919 by representatives of would-be nations from around the world,

all of them hoping to make a case for self-determination. Her gender made her unusual. I mean, the world of high diplomacy is exclusively male, almost exclusively male. The roles of women there are mostly as auxiliaries, intermediaries, are mostly as auxiliaries, intermediaries, serving as a front for some of the few countries that did actually have female representation in Paris. Among the allied countries, China was the only one to include a woman in its official delegation. What's interesting about Paris KV is that she's not a member of the official Albanian delegation there, but she becomes an important go-between

for the official Albanian delegation and the American Commission to negotiate peace by virtue of these key connections she has within the commission. That's what makes her important. As she has within the commission. That's what makes her important. As she roamed the halls in Paris seeking support for her nationalist aspirations, Paris Givy proved herself to be a talented diplomat, advocate, and politician. But her gender would shape what she could accomplish in both good and bad ways.

So much of her recorded experience is gender. So much of her recorded experience is gendered. She has just sharply worded anger at her Albanian cod. They don't respect meeting times. She's punctual. She is chasing after the meetings that her mentors recommend. I mean, she has an active agenda. Her contacts at the American Commission give her a list of a number of suggestions of people to meet with, Italian diplomats, Yugoslav diplomats. And she chases after them with dedication. She shows up sort of ready to defend her vision, recognizing that it is a narrow one in terms of nationalism. But she desperately wants to save Albania from what she correctly recognizes as Italian imperialism. And she's successful in the pursuit. Among the women that she associates with

that kind of make her professional aspects a lot easier are, so there's one Italian-American journalist, Amy Bernardi. Super interesting because I think she's correct in suspecting that this woman is a spy. Bernardi is the daughter of Italian-American diplomats. She has interest in kind of the academic study of Italian-Americans, and it's clear that they've met, that she and Paraskevi have met before. And Bernardi suddenly shows up in Paris and tracks her down, tracks Paraskevi down to her hotel. So that kind of clues me into the fact that Bernardi knew what she was doing. Bernardi does set Paraskevi up with conversations with highly placed Italian diplomats, the ambassador

to the United States, the Italian ambassador to the United States, among them, and also the Italian foreign minister at the time. They were very tense meetings. I mean, Paraskevi is careful to note that the manner of their reception was very polite, perhaps gendered in the sense that, you know, here's a woman. I mean, she comes with a lot of cultural capital, and that recognition alone makes her so valuable to the Albanian negotiating team in Paris. And yeah, I mean, she had to deal with a lot of patronism, open condescension from the Italian officials. The same is true for the Yugoslav counterpart. He's actually the Serbian foreign minister. I mean, they're telling her things along the lines of, you know, the Italians just want to help the Albanians out.

You know, the Yugoslavs want to help the Albanians out. We have no interest in, you know, territorial expansion there. As she sits in these meetings, Paraskevi is no naive ingenue. She has a clear vision of what she wants for Albania and what she thinks is possible. I think that she recognizes 100% that the likelihood of Albanian sovereignty is a distant prospect. I mean, the course of 1919 itself is so wild in terms of just political changes. And so that makes her very anxious and her ideas change sort of by the minute.

But she wants to, I mean, she recognizes that the League of Nations is kind of, I mean, this has been talked about and it's being projected. And she is very interested in the possibility of an American mandate over Albania. I mean, the sort of the stated effect was that America would provide, if it could, disinterested protection. And so this is what gets American missionaries and educators, they're so kind of enthusiastic about the idea of Wilson and the King Crane Commission itself. Among the women that she meets with and whose kind of mentorship and sort of guidance she seeks is her former professor, the president of Constantinople Women's College. So she's mentored both Halide and Paraskevi, so she's fond of both of them.

This is Dr. Mary Mills-Patrick. And Mills-Patrick, while she is speaking with Paraskevi, giving her encouragement to stay the course, To stay the course, she comes to Paris armed with her own vision, a list of 14 reasons why America should grant Turkey a mandate. So suddenly, from seeing Paris in 1919 as a masculine space, we've been introduced to many of the women who were active at the conference, pushing for different visions of a post-war future. I asked Neville why there were so many women at the conference and why some groups like the Albanians thought that women might be particularly

powerful advocates for their cause. Because women's suffrage was coming to a successful conclusion in places like England, like the United Kingdom and the United States. They understood that, making it seem as if they too were invested and supportive of women's rights and women's, not suffrage perhaps, but they wanted to put their best and brightest forward. They thought that this would help them be seen as modern, especially since the terms of peace were being set by the allied powers and, you know, coming from, it speaks to a, you know, a hierarchical kind of view of the world, you know, the kind of the civilizers and the civilized.

While the Allied powers claimed the right to dictate political futures around the globe as forces of progress and freedom, only one Allied country included a woman as a member of its official delegation. I brought up China. I mean, China itself was a notable exception because it was the only allied country to include a woman in its official delegation. And what was striking in that example alone is that Sumay Chang's kind of own pedigree is reflective of America's Protestant empire. I mean, she starts her education at a Chinese-based American Protestant school. While Paraskevi wasn't the only woman in Paris in 1919, it's certainly still true that her gender fundamentally shaped her experience there. As a powerful woman in a sea of male diplomats,

she got a lot of attention, and not all of it was welcome. It's interesting, I mean, God, in the span of six months, this woman goes through a number of experiences which make you think, as a 33-year-old woman, she was at the height of her sort of attractive powers in a way. She receives a marriage proposal. So it's all arranged by letter from her American Protestant missionary friend back home. She's like, hey, you know, why don't you sort of give it a thought? It's someone you know. And Bryce Cavey hesitates. It's not clear from the diary how much she thought of it. She receives a proposal while she's in Paris, while she's dealing with the first instance of harassment. And so it's quite interesting to see just how well she sort of balances her ambitions, a level of disillusionment with Wilson, and also almost sort of traumatized by the fact that

traumatized by the fact that her up till then trusted male colleague, a man whose family hers has been supporting back in Boston, he's a family friend. He's a bit older than her. He's also notable in early 20th century Albanian politics. They come from the same area. They kind of got out of the Balkan Wars together, and so I think she's just very shell-shocked. He is sort of the sexual harasser, Gromeno. He confesses his love for her, which is highly unsettling for her. I asked Nebula to read something from Paraskevi's diary about this experience.

And just to warn our listeners, what follows might sound all too familiar, perhaps humorously and perhaps enragingly so. May 13, 1919. It's with reference to persistent harassment from a senior colleague. Mr. Grameno was here and annoyed me plenty saying, I love you, this and that. The blasted fool, a man like him, 50 years old and married to tell me all that i took his passport to make it a condition that he go back to the united states to his wife and there do as he wishes he drinks all day they have a weird relationship too in that she's in charge of him financially.

She is part of a semi-political organization funded in part by the Albanian diaspora. And it's her family sending her money, wiring them money in Paris. And he absolutely, Grameen absolutely depends on her. So the fact that she's able to snatch his passport and find mechanisms to sort of just, you know, tell him to go back home and there, you know, do his own bidding is highly remarkable. But the harassment goes on for quite a while. And it's upsetting to her because I think he fails to grasp that he is not going to succeed. And that there in Paris, he just kind of loses his sense of purpose. And the other reason why it's kind of fascinating to me is that it seems like he may have a genuine sense of admiration for her,

but then finds completely inappropriate ways to express it. I mean, I don't think as a married man and as a father of children, I don't think he's in the right position to be expressive of this particular form of admiration. But they've been traveling together from New York City Harbor and sort of settling into Paris. And, you know, they're alone for prolonged periods of time. And I think it's probably there that he might start to see her in a different light to see an independent you know what must what must it have been like to see an independent woman with a you know a sense of an unattached woman with quite a bit of power over someone like him perhaps I think that's may have been a part of his admiration and she experiences kind of a second taste of something very similar to this with a man in very similar inferior position to her.

Months later, I mean, he comes to her reciting poetry and she recognizes the act for what she thinks it is straight away and calls him a blasted fool in the diary. And also notes the fact that he's completely dependent on her financially. She wants to help him out, but at the same time, she's like, well, what can I do? I mean, I'm struggling myself. There's something interesting about the amount of romantic interest Pires-Givy received in Paris. Perhaps, as Neville suggested, she was just at the height of her attractive powers, and of course she was always one of the few women in the room. But I also wonder to what degree it

was her power, drawn from her family resources, her Protestant education and connections, as well as her own considerable skills as a diplomat, with an E, that drew men to her, hoping to use sex as a way to put her back where she belonged. Despite all of these rather unpleasant challenges, however, Paraskevi did what many women in that period might have done. She laughed it off and kept right on working towards the goals she wanted to achieve. And indeed, her achievements, in the end, were substantial. And indeed, her achievements in the end were substantial. She's important in giving the Albanian question, if we can call it that, a bit more higher visibility.

She leaves Paris having been successful in negotiating for two articles with the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune, calling attention to the plight of Albanian refugees. So people had gotten displaced during the war. And she's also kind of achieved other sort of would-be important sort of decisions. While in Paris, she talks to the head of the Red Cross, and it is with kind of his help, the European Red Cross, and it is with his help that the Red Cross sets up actions in Albania later in the year, and they create the Alban the Red Cross sets up actions in Albania later in the year. And they create the Albanian Red Cross in the interwar period through him. Also, she gets interwar women activists plugged into international networks. So the particular network that's for women that's important at this time, it's the International League for Peace and Freedom.

I suspect that this is not fully confirmed, but so the head of the European Red Cross is married to a Geneva-based activist who is a member of this International League for Peace and Freedom. It is created in 1919 as a parallel structure to the Paris Peace Conference. The Allied Nations had excluded women from their official delegations and out of anger, but also out of just the sheer realization that if they're going to do anything, women have to set up parallel structures. So you had asked, you know, what sorts of roles women play. I think they realize in the course of the war that they want to have their voices and perspectives kind of heard and honored, that an international peace would not be successful without women's views of how war and peace affected them as well. In the interwar period, feminist movements arose

across the territories of the former Ottoman Empire. Women, mostly from the elite and middle classes, joined together to participate in emerging transnational networks of feminist activism. They also worked to build feminist movements at home. In this, Paraskevi was no exception. She, like Halide Edip, is kind of at the head of the women's movement. I mean, she and her sister actually start off the first society for women right after the Young Turk Revolution.

And they spearhead what becomes a national movement in the interwar period. The interwar period would also bring new directions for the Albanian state. Albania, not magically, but it is by virtue of circumstance. Albania luckily survives sort of the onslaught of Italian imperialism in 1919. It's undone in 1939 when Albania becomes an Italian colony. But in 1919, Albania narrowly kind of avoids this course of becoming an Italian protectorate. Albania becomes independent. It's recognized as an independent nation by the League of Nations in 1921, so formal recognition,

I think that Paraskevi definitely played a role, at least insofar as the American input was to leave Albania alone. If you stuck with us this far, it won't come as a surprise to you that Paraskevi had a whole host of dreams for herself in this new world. But she was, as we all are, subject to broader historical forces that she could not predict or control. And these would make her activism harder and harder to pursue in the later decades of her life. She has ideas for what she wants to do. Like Halide Adib, she has this dream of becoming a minister of education. She actually has a roadmap, a plan for making that happen. She shares this plan with the sitting minister of education. And it's not clear what becomes of that. In 1921, her family returned to Albania, and they set up their school again, and they seek state funding for it. So it goes from being a provincial school to the most

important school for girls set up in the Albanian capital. It's a private institution, institution but it gains respect and funding and for for about 15 years it is the leading educational establishment for girls. It's shut down in 1931 as a way to deal with the aggressive expansion of Italian investment in Albania so there have been a lot of Italian private schools. And so the Albanian state, sort of one fell swoop, wants to do away with that. And unfortunately, that means school closure for these guys, her and her family. And for much of the 1930s, they sort of sit home and write and are bitter about the fact that so much of their work is discredited. And unfortunately, when World War II breaks out, the family is arrested and sent to a concentration camp in Belgrade, Anahatla Gabanitsa.

to a concentration camp in Belgrade, on Hadlaga Banica. And from that point forward, their kind of life is marked by tragedy. The Albanian communist state takes no interest in them. They have, you know, they're writing from Belgrade in 1944 for some sort of help from the state to get them home.

They have two pregnant women with them, and the state shows no concern for them whatsoever. This is one of the reasons why the Protestant connection, the family's kind of Protestant work is left out in kind of existing Albanian historiography is because for so much of the communist period, they represented a suspicious foreign element. The fact that they had these important British and American connections made them suspicious. They are allowed to, they do go back, they do go back,

but all of their sort of professional endeavors are kind of put to a halt. Some of them are imprisoned. Her parskady sister dies. For a time, for the first two decades, while the communist state is being consolidated, the families completely shunned, they're condemned to manual labor. Out of all of this tragedy and disappointment, yet again the tables turn, bringing Paraskevi back into public life as an older woman in a new and different frame. I think the state eventually comes to realize that these guys are kind of important.

And Paraskevi herself, having spearheaded the women's movement in the 1920s, boy, you know, she could be a nice voice for state feminism. In 1967, the Albanian communist state creates important provisions for the women's movement. And so it's the last time that Barskevi appears in public. She is then in her early 70s, I believe, and she's brought to speak as a former member of the movement, as a former figurehead herself. And she comes to speak to a large audience of women from across the country. And she recounts her story. I've seen records, printed records of this, and nothing about her trajectory

as a Christian activist is visible there. And it's sad that at the very end, you'd expect after a life of service, the end would be sweet. but it is unfortunately extremely bitter. From family, you know, from conversations I've had with interviews with family, surviving family members, who were very, very reluctant to delve into the Protestant background, almost resisting it and pushing back because they had suffered so much during the communist period. What I discovered was that around the same time, you know, she's speaking for women's, you know, women's organizations. at work burning sacks full of letters and documents that would have been so priceless to have at this moment. This particular aspect was frustrating for me to work with and sort of dig through what bits and pieces of information I could piece together as to, you know, the family's

kind of Protestant history. And it's that occluded Protestant history, erased by the Albanian state, even as it has sought to resuscitate Paraskevi for its own state feminist agenda, that stands at the heart of Neville's project as a translator and as a historian. Returning to this remarkable woman, not just the pieces of her life and work that later state officials have deemed useful for themselves, but the fullness and the context of her own visions as a feminist, an Albanian nationalist, and a woman deeply forged by Protestant faith and the opportunities it provided in the early years of the 20th century. This is kind of my aim with this. My goal with the translation is to kind of say that, you know, while scholars have made important inroads into just starting to begin the impact of American Protestant influence in Ottoman Europe, we have quite a lot of work ahead of us. Part of what speaks to the lack of scholarship, quite honestly, is that communism just silenced these voices. And

everywhere from Bulgaria to Yugoslavia, certainly Albania, to Protestants were persecuted and silenced, if not jailed. And, you know, communities that had been thriving for decades had to close in on themselves and go underground. And after the fall of communism, that's begun to change. But it just means that scholarship is behind. It's still at the beginning, yes. That concludes our interview with Dr. Nabila Pahumi. To learn more about the topic and check out related episodes, visit our website at www.autumnhistorypodcast.com. I'm Susie Ferguson. Thanks for listening, and join us next time for another episode of Ottoman History Podcast. © transcript Emily Beynon