did not share in this division.

Geographical conditions affected Tosk social organization. The region's
accessibility led to its coming much more firmly under Turkish rule.
This rule in turn resulted in the breakup of the large, independent
family-type units and their replacement by large estates owned by
powerful Muslim landowners, each with his own retinues, fortresses, and
large numbers of tenant peasants to work the lands. Their allegiance to
the sultans in the period before 1912 was secured by the granting of
administrative positions either at home or elsewhere in the Ottoman
Empire.

The large estates were usually confined to the plains, but the process
of their consolidation was a continuing one. Landowning _beys_ would get
peasants into their debt and thus establish themselves as semifeudal
patrons of formerly independent villagers. In this way a large Muslim
aristocracy developed in the south, whose life style was in marked
contrast both to that of the chieftains of the highlands in the north
and to that of the peasantry, the majority of whom assumed the
characteristics of an oppressed social class. As late as the 1930s
two-thirds of the rich land in central and southern parts of the country
belonged to the large landowners.

There was a sharp contrast between the tribal society of the Geg
highlanders and the passive, oppressed Tosk peasantry, living mostly on
the large estates of the _beys_ and often represented in the political
field by the _beys_ themselves. This semifeudal society in the south
survived well into the twentieth century because of the lack of a strong
middle class. After independence in 1912, however, a small Tosk middle
class began to develop, which in the 1920-24 period, having common
interests with the more enlightened _beys_, played a major role in
attempts to create a modern society. But the advent of Zogu in 1925 as a
strong ruler put an end to Tosk influence and, from that time until the
Italian invasion in 1939, Zog cemented his power in the tribal north by
governing through a number of strong tribal and clan chiefs. To secure
the loyalty of these chiefs, he placed them on the government payroll
and sent several of them back to their tribes with the military rank of
colonel.

In the 1939-44 period general anarchy prevailed throughout the country,
and in the north the tribal chieftains assumed their old independent
positions. The three major resistance movements that developed duri