North Macedonia: Difference between revisions

In the early 19th century the name of Macedonia was almost unknown in the modern-day area.<ref>"What is often overlooked is how Bulgarians and Greeks collaborated unknowingly from the middle decades of the 19th century onward in breathing new life into the geographical name Macedonia, which was all but forgotten during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. In the late Ottoman period, ‘‘Macedonia’’ as such did not exist as an administrative unit in the empire... Greek nationalism, fixated on the continuity between ancient and modern Hellenes, was keen to project the name Macedonia as a way to assert the Greek historical character of the area. In 1845, for instance, the story of Alexander was published in a Slavo-Macedonian dialect scripted in Greek characters... For their part, Bulgarian nationalists readily accepted Macedonia as a regional denomination... Macedonia had become one of the ‘‘historic’’ Bulgarian lands... and ‘‘Macedonian Bulgarian’’ turned into a standard phrase." Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Scarecrow Press, 2009, {{ISBN|0810862956}}, Introduction, p. VII.</ref><ref>"In the early 19th c. the modern Greeks with their Western-derived obsession with antiquity played a crucial role in reviving the classical name ‘Macedonia’ in the popular consciousness of the Balkan peoples. For a thousand years before that the name ‘Macedonia’ had meant different things for Westerners and Balkan Christians: for Westerners it always denoted the territories of the ancient Macedonians, but for the Greeks and all other Balkan Christians the name ‘Macedonia’ – if at all used – covered the territories of the former Byzantine theme ‘Macedonia’, situated between Adrianople (Edrine) and the river Nestos (Mesta) in classical and present-day Thrace. The central and northern parts of present-day ‘geographic Macedonia’ were traditionally called either ‘Bulgaria’ and ‘Lower Moesia’, but within a generation after Greek independence (gained in 1830) these names were replaced by ‘Macedonia’ in the minds of both Greeks and non-Greeks." Drezov K. (1999) Macedonian identity: an overview of the major claims. In: Pettifer J. (eds) The New Macedonian Question. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London, {{ISBN|0230535798}}, pp. 50-51.</ref><ref>"In 1813 Macedonia did not exist. A century later, it had become a hotly contested nationalist cause, a battlefield, and an obsession. What led to this dramatic transformation was modernity: a chilly wind of West European provenance that propelled to the Balkans concepts that few in the region understood, wanted or cared about. Among these, the idea of nationalism was the most potent, and the most lethal. Before the 1850s, Macedonia was a poverty-stricken province of the Ottoman Empire, where an Orthodox Christian and mostly peasant population speaking a variety of Slavonic idioms, Greek, or Vlach, was trying to eke out a modest living, and protect it from rapacious brigands and a decaying Ottoman administrative system. Religion was the only collective identity that most of them could make sense of, for ethnicity and language played little role in shaping their loyalties. But the winds of change quickly gathered momentum, and eventually shattered that multi-ethnic community, producing a 'Greek', or a 'Bulgarian', out of a 'Christian'." D. Livanios' review of Vemund Aarbakke, Ethnic Rivalry and the Quest for Macedonia, 1870-1913 in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan., 2005), pp. 141-142</ref> It was revived only in middle of the century, with [[rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire]].<ref>''The ancient name 'Macedonia' disappeared during the period of Ottoman rule and was only restored in the nineteenth century originally as geographical term.'' The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism, John Breuilly, Oxford University Press, 2013, {{ISBN|0199209197}}, p. 192.</ref><ref>''The region was not called "Macedonia" by the Ottomans, and the name "Macedonia" gained currency together with the ascendance of rival nationalism.'' Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Victor Roudometof, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, {{ISBN|0275976483}}, p. 89.</ref><ref>''The Greeks were amongst the first to define these lands since the beginning of the 19th century. For educated Greeks, Macedonia was the historical Greek land of kings Philip and Alexander the Great.'' John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos M. Veremis, Modern Greece: A History since 1821. A New History of Modern Europe, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, {{ISBN|1444314831}}, p. 48.</ref> In the early 20th century the region was already a national cause, contested among Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian nationalists. During the [[interwar period]] the use of the name ''Macedonia'' was prohibited in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, due to the implemented policy of [[Serbianization]] of the local Slavs.<ref>Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide, OUP Oxford, 2009, {{ISBN|0199550336}}, p. 65.</ref><ref>Chris Kostov, Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, Peter Lang, 2010, {{ISBN|3034301960}}, p. 76.</ref> The name Macedonia was adopted officially for the first time at the end of the Second World War by the new [[Socialist Republic of Macedonia]], which became one of the six constituent countries of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After the [[fall of Communism]], with the beginning of the [[breakup of Yugoslavia]], this federal entity declared independence and changed its official name to Republic of Macedonia in 1991. Prior to June 2018, the use of the name ''Macedonia'' was [[Macedonia naming dispute|disputed between Greece and the then-Republic of Macedonia]].

 

 

==History==