During a critical period of transformation prior to World War I, a generation of Ottoman-Albanian activists whose engagements with ‘modernization’ not so much marked an end of the Ottoman Empire but a phase of its more complicated adaptation. Known in subsequent generations as heroes of Albanian nationalism, the Ottoman-Southern Albanian (Tosk) activists studied here demonstrate how a self-selective constituency challenged the Ottoman government to adapt to a changing world. In the end, the Frashëri family (Sami, Abdyl, and Naim Frashëri) mobilized the ecumenical possibilities embedded in the era’s iteration of ‘nationalism’ and expected the Ottoman state to do the same. In this respect, Ottoman subjects like the Frashëris instrumentalized the empire’s diverse cultural, political, and socio-economic heritage to support their political and economic aims to save the empire from the ethno-nationalism awaiting it from 1900 onwards.