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Mala Prespa ( Macedonian and Bulgarian : Мала Преспа , lit.   ' Small Prespa ' ) is a term used to denote a geographical area in eastern Albania , part of the wider region of Prespa . It is located on the western shore of Lake Prespa along the southeastern edge of Albania within the wider Korçë County and bordering the Pogradec and Devoll municipalities. The area is synonymous with Pustec Municipality .

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141-684: It is officially recognised as a Macedonian minority zone. According to the 2011 Census, in Albania there are about 5,000 Macedonians , primarily in the Mala Prespa area, forming 97% of the population of the Pustec Municipality. This area also contains small numbers of Aromanians ( Arvanito-Vlachs ) and, according to Bulgarian sources, Bulgarians . This article about a specific location in Elbasan County , Albania,

282-583: A "Macedonian minority" and to refer to their native language as "Macedonian" . Since the late 1980s there has been an ethnic Macedonian revival in Northern Greece, mostly centering on the region of Florina . Since then ethnic Macedonian organisations including the Rainbow political party have been established. Rainbow first opened its offices in Florina on 6 September 1995. The following day,

423-637: A Dictionary of Three languages: Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish , in which he wrote that the Macedonians are a separate nation and the place which is theirs is called Macedonia. In 1880, he published in Sofia a Grammar of the language of the Slavic Macedonian population , a work that is today known as the first attempt at a grammar of Macedonian. However, he alternately described his language as "Serbo-Albanian" and "Slavo-Macedonian" and himself as

564-483: A South Slavic language . The large majority of Macedonians identify as Eastern Orthodox Christians , who share a cultural and historical "Orthodox Byzantine–Slavic heritage" with their neighbours. About two-thirds of all ethnic Macedonians live in North Macedonia ; there are also communities in a number of other countries . The concept of a Macedonian ethnicity, distinct from their Orthodox Balkan neighbours,

705-482: A "Mijak from Galičnik", a "Serbian patriot" and a "Bulgarian from the village of Galičnik", i.e. changing ethnicity multiple times during his lifetime. Therefore, his Macedonian self-identification is considered by historians to be inchoate and to resemble a regional phenomenon. In 1885, Theodosius of Skopje , a priest who held a high-ranking position within the Bulgarian Exarchate , was chosen as

846-472: A Brittonic language of northern Britain. Celtic regions of mainland Europe are those whose residents claim a Celtic heritage, but where no Celtic language survives; these include western Iberia, i.e. Portugal and north-central Spain ( Galicia , Asturias , Cantabria , Castile and León , Extremadura ). Continental Celts are the Celtic-speaking people of mainland Europe and Insular Celts are

987-643: A Bulgarian national self-consciousness and a regional Macedonian identity similar to the Macedonian regional identity in Greek Macedonia . According to ethnic Macedonian political activist, Stoyko Stoykov, the number of Bulgarian citizens with ethnic Macedonian self-consciousness in 2009 was between 5,000 and 10,000. In 2000, the Bulgarian Constitutional Court banned UMO Ilinden-Pirin , a small Macedonian political party, as

1128-705: A Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions of Cisalpine Gaul (Northern Italy), the oldest of which pre-date the La Tène period . Other early inscriptions, appearing from the early La Tène period in the area of Massilia , are in Gaulish , which was written in the Greek alphabet until the Roman conquest. Celtiberian inscriptions, using their own Iberian script, appear later, after about 200 BC. Evidence of Insular Celtic

1269-613: A Macedonian nation was internationalized and backed by the Comintern which issued in 1934 a resolution supporting the development of the entity . This action was attacked by the IMRO, but was supported by the Balkan communists. The Balkan communist parties supported the national consolidation of the ethnic Macedonian people and created Macedonian sections within the parties, headed by prominent IMRO (United) members. The sense of belonging to

1410-540: A bishop of the episcopacy of Skopje . In 1890 he renounced de facto the Bulgarian Exarchate and attempted to restore the Archbishopric of Ohrid as a separate Macedonian Orthodox Church in all eparchies of Macedonia , responsible for the spiritual, cultural and educational life of all Macedonian Orthodox Christians. During this time period Metropolitan Bishop Theodosius of Skopje made a plea to

1551-568: A borrowing from Frankish * Walholant , 'Roman-land' (see Gaul: Name ) , the root of which is Proto-Germanic * walha- , 'foreigner, Roman, Celt', whence the English word Welsh ( Old English wælisċ ). Proto-Germanic * walha comes from the name of the Volcae , a Celtic tribe who lived first in southern Germany and central Europe, then migrated to Gaul. This means that English Gaul , despite its superficial similarity,

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1692-830: A collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia , identified by their use of Celtic languages and other cultural similarities. Major Celtic groups included the Gauls ; the Celtiberians and Gallaeci of Iberia; the Britons , Picts , and Gaels of Britain and Ireland; the Boii ; and the Galatians . The interrelationships of ethnicity, language and culture in the Celtic world are unclear and debated; for example over

1833-760: A common cultural and linguistic heritage more than a genetic one. Celtic cultures seem to have been diverse, with the use of a Celtic language being the main thing they had in common. Today, the term 'Celtic' generally refers to the languages and cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall , the Isle of Man , and Brittany ; also called the Celtic nations . These are the regions where Celtic languages are still spoken to some extent. The four are Irish , Scottish Gaelic , Welsh , and Breton ; plus two recent revivals, Cornish (a Brittonic language ) and Manx (a Goidelic language ). There are also attempts to reconstruct Cumbric ,

1974-818: A constituent province of the Argead – Macedonian kingdom . In 310 BC, the Celts attacked deep into the south, subduing various local tribes, such as the Dardanians , the Paeonians and the Triballi . Roman conquest brought with it a significant Romanization of the region. During the Dominate period, ' barbarian ' foederati were settled on Macedonian soil at times; such as the Sarmatians settled by Constantine

2115-506: A map of 1903 by Austrian cartographer Karl Peucker depicted Macedonia as a peculiar area, where zones of linguistic influence overlapped. In his first ethnographic map of 1906, Cvijic presented all Slavs of Serbia and Macedonia merely as "Slavs". In a pamphlet translated and circulated in Europe the same year, he elaborated his ostensibly impartial views and described the Slavs living south of

2256-476: A national level, its best result being achieved in the 1994 European elections, with a total of 7,263 votes. Since 2004 it has participated in European Parliament elections and local elections, but not in national elections. A few of its members have been elected in local administrative posts. Rainbow has recently re-established Nova Zora , a newspaper that was first published for a short period in

2397-596: A national one. The vast majority of Macedonians live along the valley of the river Vardar , the central region of the Republic of North Macedonia. They form about 64.18% of the population of North Macedonia (1,297,981 people according to the 2002 census ). Smaller numbers live in eastern Albania , northern Greece, and southern Serbia , mostly abutting the border areas of the Republic of North Macedonia . A large number of Macedonians have immigrated overseas to Australia,

2538-754: A result, these items quickly became associated with the Celts, so much so that by the 1870s scholars began to regard finds of the La Tène as 'the archaeological expression of the Celts'". This cultural network was overrun by the Roman Empire, though traces of La Tène style were still seen in Gallo-Roman artifacts . In Britain and Ireland, the La Tène style survived precariously to re-emerge in Insular art . The Urnfield-Hallstatt theory began to be challenged in

2679-633: A rethinking of the meaning of "Celtic". John T. Koch and Barry Cunliffe have developed this 'Celtic from the West' theory. It proposes that the proto-Celtic language arose along the Atlantic coast and was the lingua franca of the Atlantic Bronze Age cultural network, later spreading inland and eastward. More recently, Cunliffe proposes that proto-Celtic had arisen in the Atlantic zone even earlier, by 3000 BC, and spread eastwards with

2820-535: A revival. The first recorded use of the name 'Celts' – as Κελτοί ( Keltoi ) in Ancient Greek – was by Greek geographer Hecataeus of Miletus in 517 BC, when writing about a people living near Massilia (modern Marseille ), southern Gaul . In the fifth century BC, Herodotus referred to Keltoi living around the source of the Danube and in the far west of Europe. The etymology of Keltoi

2961-484: A separate Macedonian nation gained credence during World War II when ethnic Macedonian communist partisan detachments were formed. In 1943 the Communist Party of Macedonia was established and the resistance movement grew up. On the other hand, due to the different trajectories of Macedonian Slavs in the three nation-states that ruled the region, the designation "Macedonian" acquired different meanings for them by

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3102-684: A separate community with its own history, only through differentiating itself from Bulgaria. This policy has continued in the new Republic of Macedonia after 1990, although with less intensity. Thus, the Bulgarian part of the identity of the Slavic-speaking population in Vardar Macedonia has died out. Following the collapse of Yugoslavia, the issue of Macedonian identity emerged again. Nationalists and governments alike from neighbouring countries, especially Greece and Bulgaria, espouse

3243-478: A separatist organization. Subsequently, activists attempted to re-establish the party but could not gather the required number of signatures. Significant Macedonian communities can also be found in the traditional immigrant-receiving nations, as well as in Western European countries. Census data in many European countries (such as Italy and Germany) does not take into account the ethnicity of émigrés from

3384-668: A single culture or ethnic group. A new theory suggested that Celtic languages arose earlier, along the Atlantic coast (including Britain, Ireland, Armorica and Iberia ), long before evidence of 'Celtic' culture is found in archaeology. Myles Dillon and Nora Kershaw Chadwick argued that "Celtic settlement of the British Isles" might date to the Bell Beaker culture of the Copper and Bronze Age (from c. 2750 BC). Martín Almagro Gorbea (2001) also proposed that Celtic arose in

3525-676: A special reserved seat in the nation's parliament. In 2002, they numbered 731. Celts Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Celts ( / k ɛ l t s / KELTS , see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( / ˈ k ɛ l t ɪ k / KEL -tik ) were

3666-414: A specific ethno-religious community under Graeco-Byzantine jurisdiction called Rum Millet . Belonging to this religious commonwealth was so important that most of the common people began to identify themselves as Christians . However ethnonyms never disappeared and some form of primary ethnic identity was available. This is confirmed from a Sultan's Firman from 1680 which describes the ethnic groups in

3807-486: A strict ethno-nationalistic meaning, rather, they were loose, often interchangeable terms which could simultaneously denote regional habitation, allegiance to a particular empire, religious orientation, membership in certain social groups. Similarly, a "Byzantine" was a Roman subject of Constantinople, and the term bore no strict ethnic connotations, Greek or otherwise. Overall, in the Middle Ages, "a person's origin

3948-534: A third group distinct from Bulgarians and Serbians, and part of them "under Greek influence". Envisioning a future agreement with Greece, Cvijic depicted the southern half of the Macedo-Slavs "under Greek unfluence", while leaving the rest to appear as a subset of the Serbo-Croats. Cvijić's view was reproduced without acknowledgement by Alfred Stead , with no effect on British opinion, but, reflecting

4089-540: A tribal surname, which epigraphic findings have confirmed. A Latin name for the Gauls, Galli ( pl. ), may come from a Celtic ethnic name, perhaps borrowed into Latin during the Celtic expansion into Italy from the early fifth century BC. Its root may be Proto-Celtic *galno , meaning "power, strength" (whence Old Irish gal "boldness, ferocity", Welsh gallu "to be able, power"). The Greek name Γαλάται ( Galatai , Latinized Galatae ) most likely has

4230-586: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a specific location in Korçë County , Albania, is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Macedonians (ethnic group) Macedonians ( Macedonian : Македонци , romanized :  Makedonci [maˈkɛdɔnt͡si] ) are a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group native to the region of Macedonia in Southeast Europe . They speak Macedonian ,

4371-510: Is not actually derived from Latin Gallia (which should have produced * Jaille in French), though it does refer to the same ancient region. Celtic refers to a language family and, more generally, means 'of the Celts' or 'in the style of the Celts'. Several archaeological cultures are considered Celtic, based on unique sets of artefacts. The link between language and artefact is aided by

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4512-412: Is not supported by archaeology or other historical disciplines and also could marginalize the Macedonian identity. Surveys on the effects of the controversial nation-building project Skopje 2014 and on the perceptions of the population of Skopje revealed a high degree of uncertainty regarding the latter's national identity. A supplementary national poll showed that there was a great discrepancy between

4653-534: Is primarily a linguistic label. In his 'Celtic from the Centre' theory, he argues that the proto-Celtic language did not originate in central Europe nor the Atlantic, but in-between these two regions. He suggests that it "emerged as a distinct Indo-European dialect around the second millennium BC , probably somewhere in Gaul [centered in modern France] ... whence it spread in various directions and at various speeds in

4794-486: Is seen to be a comparatively newly emergent one. The earliest manifestations of an incipient Macedonian identity emerged during the second half of the 19th century among limited circles of Slavic-speaking intellectuals, predominantly outside the region of Macedonia. They arose after the First World War and especially during the 1930s, and thus were consolidated by Communist Yugoslavia's governmental policy after

4935-502: Is unclear. Possible roots include Indo-European * kʲel 'to hide' (seen also in Old Irish ceilid , and Modern Welsh celu ), * kʲel 'to heat' or * kel 'to impel'. It may come from the Celtic language . Linguist Kim McCone supports this view and notes that Celt- is found in the names of several ancient Gauls such as Celtillus, father of Vercingetorix . He suggests it meant the people or descendants of "the hidden one", noting

5076-662: The Histories of Herodotus, which placed the Celts at the source of the Danube . However, Stephen Oppenheimer shows that Herodotus seemed to believe the Danube rose near the Pyrenees , which would place the Ancient Celts in a region which is more in agreement with later classical writers and historians (i.e. in Gaul and Iberia). The theory was also partly based on the abundance of inscriptions bearing Celtic personal names in

5217-587: The 1876 Conference of Constantinople included all of present-day North Macedonia (except for the Debar region) and parts of present-day Greek Macedonia. The borders of new Bulgarian state, drawn by the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano , also included Macedonia, but the treaty was never put into effect and the Treaty of Berlin (1878) "returned" Macedonia to the Ottoman Empire. For Christian Slav peasants, however,

5358-516: The 2021 census (roughly 0.31% from the Slavic population). The Bulgarian side does not accept these results as completely objective, citing as an example the census has counted less than 20,000 people with Bulgarian citizenship in the country, while in fact they are over 100,000. The national name derives from the Greek term Makedonía , related to the name of the region , named after the ancient Macedonians and their kingdom . It originates from

5499-530: The 3rd millennium BC , suggesting that the spread of the Bell Beaker culture explained the wide dispersion of the Celts throughout western Europe, as well as the variability of the Celtic peoples. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Alberto J. Lorrio and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero reviewed and built on Almagro Gorbea's work to present a model for the origin of Celtic archaeological groups in Iberia and proposing

5640-512: The Babuna and Plačkovica mountains as "Macedo-Slavs" arguing that the appellation "Bugari" meant simply "peasant" to them, that they had no national consciousness and could become Serbs or Bulgarians in the future. Cvijić thus transformed the political character of the IMRO 's appeals to "Macedonians" into an ethnic one. Bulgarian cartographer Anastas Ishirkov countered Cvijić's views, pointing to

5781-455: The Balkans in general, as part of a broad and complex process of transformation of the cultural, political and ethnolinguistic Balkan landscape before the collapse of Roman authority. The exact details and chronology of population shifts remain to be determined. What is beyond dispute is that, in contrast to "barbarian" Bulgaria, northern Macedonia remained Roman in its cultural outlook into

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5922-703: The Bulgarian Empire , where Khan Boris I of Bulgaria ( r.  852–889 ) welcomed them. As part of his efforts to limit Byzantine influence and assert Bulgarian independence, he adopted Slavic as official ecclesiastical and state language and established the Preslav Literary School and Ohrid Literary School , which taught Slavonic liturgy and the Glagolitic and subsequently the Cyrillic alphabet . The success of Boris I's efforts

6063-653: The Entente approached victory in the First World War , a number other maps and atlases, including those produced by the Allies replicated Cvijić's ideas, especially its depiction of the Macedo-Slavs. The prevalence of the Yugoslav point of view, obliged Georgios Sotiriades , a professor of History at the University of Athens , to map the Macedo-Slavs as a distinct group in his work of 1918, that mirrored Greek views of

6204-532: The Exarchate and on account of the free (and, occasionally, even subsidized) provision of education in Bulgarian schools. Alignment of the Slavs of Macedonia with the Bulgarian, the Greek or sometimes the Serbian national camp did not imply adherence to different national ideologies: these camps were not stable, culturally distinct groups, but parties with national affiliations, described by contemporaries as "sides", "wings", "parties" or "political clubs". The first expressions of Macedonian nationalism occurred in

6345-455: The Gaels ( Irish , Scots and Manx ) and the Celtic Britons ( Welsh , Cornish , and Bretons ) of the medieval and modern periods. A modern Celtic identity was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Britain, Ireland, and other European territories such as Galicia . Today, Irish , Scottish Gaelic , Welsh , and Breton are still spoken in parts of their former territories, while Cornish and Manx are undergoing

6486-404: The Greek Helsinki Monitor estimated that the number of people identifying as ethnic Macedonians numbered somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000, Macedonian sources generally claim the number of ethnic Macedonians living in Greece at somewhere between 200,000 and 350,000. The ethnic Macedonians in Greece have faced difficulties from the Greek government in their ability to self-declare as members of

6627-419: The Iberian Peninsula , Ireland and Britain. The languages developed into Celtiberian , Goidelic and Brittonic branches, among others. The mainstream view during most of the twentieth century is that the Celts and the proto-Celtic language arose out of the Urnfield culture of central Europe around 1000 BC, spreading westward and southward over the following few hundred years. The Urnfield culture

6768-486: The Lepontic inscriptions from the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names. Insular Celtic languages are attested from the 4th century AD in Ogham inscriptions , though they were being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century AD. Elements of Celtic mythology are recorded in early Irish and early Welsh literature. Most written evidence of

6909-403: The Republic of North Macedonia . According to the 2011 Bulgarian census, there were 561 ethnic Macedonians (0.2%) in the Blagoevgrad Province , the Bulgarian part of the geographical region of Macedonia , out of a total of 1,654 Macedonians in the entire country. Also, a total of 429 citizens of the Republic of North Macedonia resided in the province. In 1998, Krassimir Kanev, chairman of

7050-414: The Second World War . The formation of the ethnic Macedonians as a separate community has been shaped by population displacement as well as by language shift , both the result of the political developments in the region of Macedonia during the 20th century. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire , the decisive point in the ethnogenesis of the South Slavic ethnic group was the creation of

7191-434: The Slavs of Macedonia as Bulgarians or as Macedonian Slavs, while their association with Bulgaria was almost universally accepted. Original manuscript versions of population data mentioned "Macedonian Slavs", though the term was changed to "Bulgarians" in the official printing. Western publications usually presented the Slavs of Macedonia as Bulgarians, as happened, partly for political reasons, in Serbian ones. Prompted by

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7332-439: The Socialist Republic of Macedonia after World War II, a state in the framework of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . This was followed by the development of a separate Macedonian language and national literature, and the foundation of a distinct Macedonian Orthodox Church and national historiography. In antiquity, much of central-northern Macedonia (the Vardar basin ) was inhabited by Paionians who expanded from

7473-417: The ancient Greek adjective makednos , meaning "tall", which shares its roots with the adjective makrós , meaning the same. The name is originally believed to have meant either "highlanders" or "the tall ones", possibly descriptive of these ancient people . In the Late Middle Ages the name of Macedonia had different meanings for Western Europeans and for the Balkan people. For the Westerners it denoted

7614-399: The first millennium BC ". Sims-Williams says this avoids the problematic idea "that Celtic was spoken over a vast area for a very long time yet somehow avoided major dialectal splits", and "it keeps Celtic fairly close to Italy, which suits the view that Italic and Celtic were in some way linked ". The Proto-Celtic language is usually dated to the Late Bronze Age. The earliest records of

7755-416: The 1920s led to some failed attempts by the Communists to use the Macedonian Question as a political weapon. In the 1920 Yugoslav parliamentary elections, 25% of the total Communist vote came from Macedonia, but participation was low (only 55%), mainly because the pro-Bulgarian IMRO organised a boycott against the elections. In the following years, the communists attempted to enlist the pro-IMRO sympathies of

7896-491: The 1989 census. Bulgarians are considered most closely related to the neighboring Macedonians, and it is sometimes claimed that there is no clear ethnic difference between them. A total of 1,143 people officially declared themselves to be ethnic Macedonians in the last Bulgarian census in 2021. During the same year, there were five times as many Bulgarian residents born in North Macedonia, 5,450. Most of them held Bulgarian citizenship, with only 1,576 of them being citizens of

8037-508: The 2011 census recorded 93,570 people of Macedonian ancestry. An estimated 45,000 people in Brazil are of Macedonian ancestry. The Macedonians can be primarily found in Porto Alegre , Rio de Janeiro , São Paulo and Curitiba . The Canadian census in 2001 records 37,705 individuals claimed wholly or partly Macedonian heritage in Canada, although community spokesmen have claimed that there are actually 100,000–150,000 Macedonians in Canada. A significant Macedonian community can be found in

8178-454: The 7th century. Yet at the same time, sources attest numerous Slavic tribes in the environs of Thessaloniki and further afield, including the Berziti in Pelagonia. Apart from Slavs and late Byzantines, Kuver 's " Sermesianoi " – a mix of Byzantine Greeks , Bulgars and Pannonian Avars – settled the "Keramissian plain" ( Pelagonia ) around Bitola in the late 7th century. Later pockets of settlers included "Danubian" Bulgars in

8319-431: The 9th century; Magyars (Vardariotai) and Armenians in the 10th–12th centuries, Cumans and Pechenegs in the 11th–13th centuries, and Saxon miners in the 14th and 15th centuries. Vlachs (Aromanians) and Arbanasi (Albanians) also inhabited this area in the Middle ages and mingeled with the local Slavic-speakers. Having previously been Byzantine clients, the Sklaviniae of Macedonia switched their allegiance to

8460-413: The Ancient Macedonians. Slaveikov, himself with Macedonian roots, started in 1866 the publication of the newspaper Makedoniya . Its main task was "to educate these misguided [sic] Grecomans there", who he called also Macedonists . In a letter written to the Bulgarian Exarch in February 1874 Petko Slaveykov reports that discontent with the current situation "has given birth among local patriots to

8601-412: The Balkan territories of the Empire as follows: Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, Vlachs and Bulgarians. Throughout the Middle Ages and Ottoman rule up until the early 20th century the Slavic-speaking population majority in the region of Macedonia were more commonly referred to (both by themselves and outsiders) as Bulgarians . However, in pre-nationalist times, terms such as "Bulgarian" did not possess

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8742-415: The Bell Beaker culture over the following millennium. His theory is partly based on glottochronology , the spread of ancient Celtic-looking placenames, and thesis that the Tartessian language was Celtic. However, the proposal that Tartessian was Celtic is widely rejected by linguists, many of whom regard it as unclassified. Celticist Patrick Sims-Williams (2020) notes that in current scholarship, 'Celt'

8883-424: The Britons resembled the Gauls in customs and religion. For at least 1,000 years the name Celt was not used at all, and nobody called themselves Celts or Celtic, until from about 1700, after the word 'Celtic' was rediscovered in classical texts, it was applied for the first time to the distinctive culture, history, traditions, language of the modern Celtic nations – Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, and

9024-404: The Bulgarian influx, thereby promoting Serbian interests there. The local educator Kuzman Shapkarev concluded that since the 1870s this foreign ethnonym began to replace the traditional one Bulgarians . At the dawn of the 20th century the Bulgarian teacher Vasil Kanchov marked that the local Bulgarians and Koutsovlachs call themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding people also call them in

9165-414: The Bulgarians with their incorporation into the Bulgarian Empire in the mid-800s. In the 860s, Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius , created the Glagolitic alphabet and Slavonic liturgy based on the Slavic dialect around Thessaloniki for a mission to Great Moravia . After the demise of the Great Moravian mission in 886, exiled students of the two apostles brought the Glagolitic alphabet to

9306-505: The Bulgarians, or to describe a separate Slavic group with no ethnic, national or political affiliation. The differentiation of ethnographic maps representing rival national views produced to satisfy the curiosity of European audience for the inhabitants of Macedonia, after the Ilinden uprising of 1903, indicated the complexity of the issue. Influenced by the conclusions of the research of young Serb Jovan Cvijić , that Macedonia's culture combined Byzantine influence with Serbian traditions,

9447-449: The Celtic-speaking people of the British and Irish islands, and their descendants. The Celts of Brittany derive their language from migrating Insular Celts from Britain and so are grouped accordingly. The Celtic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages . By the time Celts are first mentioned in written records around 400 BC, they were already split into several language groups, and spread over much of western mainland Europe,

9588-414: The Celts with the Iron Age Hallstatt culture which followed it ( c.  1200 –500 BC), named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt , Austria, and with the following La Tène culture ( c.  450 BC onward), named after the La Tène site in Switzerland. It proposes that Celtic culture spread westward and southward from these areas by diffusion or migration . A newer theory, " Celtic from

9729-437: The Eastern Hallstatt region ( Noricum ). However, Patrick Sims-Williams notes that these date to the later Roman era, and says they suggest "relatively late settlement by a Celtic-speaking elite". In the late 20th century, the Urnfield-Hallstatt theory began to fall out of favour with some scholars, which was influenced by new archaeological finds. 'Celtic' began to refer primarily to 'speakers of Celtic languages' rather than to

9870-416: The European Union rather than to assert Bulgarian identity. This phenomenon is called placebo identity . Some Macedonians view the Bulgarian policy as part of a strategy to destabilize the Macedonian national identity. As a nation engaged in a dispute over its distinctiveness from Bulgarians, Macedonians have always perceived themselves as threatened by their neighbor. Bulgaria insists its neighbor admit

10011-447: The Gauls claimed descent from an underworld god (according to Commentarii de Bello Gallico ), and linking it with the Germanic Hel . Others view it as a name coined by Greeks; among them linguist Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel , who suggests it meant "the tall ones". In the first century BC, Roman leader Julius Caesar reported that the Gauls called themselves 'Celts', Latin : Celtae , in their own tongue . Thus whether it

10152-654: The Great (330s AD) or the (10 year) settlement of Alaric I 's Goths . In contrast to 'frontier provinces', Macedonia (north and south) continued to be a flourishing Christian, Roman province in Late Antiquity and into the Early Middle Ages . Linguistically, the South Slavic languages from which Macedonian developed are thought to have expanded in the region during the post-Roman period, although

10293-727: The Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople to allow a separate Macedonian church, and ultimately on 4 December 1891 he sent a letter to the Pope Leo XIII to ask for a recognition and a protection from the Roman Catholic Church, but failed. Soon after, he repented and returned to pro-Bulgarian positions. In the 1880s and 1890s, Isaija Mažovski designated Macedonian Slavs as "Macedonians" and "Old Slavic Macedonian people", and also distinguished them from Bulgarians as follows: "Slavic-Bulgarian" for Mažovski

10434-514: The Greeks to apply this name for the type of Keltoi that they usually encountered". Because Classical writers did not call the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland Κελτοί ( Keltoi ) or Celtae , some scholars prefer not to use the term for the Iron Age inhabitants of those islands. However, they spoke Celtic languages, shared other cultural traits, and Roman historian Tacitus says

10575-476: The Isle of Man. 'Celt' is a modern English word, first attested in 1707 in the writing of Edward Lhuyd , whose work, along with that of other late 17th-century scholars, brought academic attention to the languages and history of the early Celtic inhabitants of Great Britain. The English words Gaul , Gauls ( pl. ) and Gaulish (first recorded in the 16–17th centuries) come from French Gaule and Gaulois ,

10716-595: The Macedonian Slavs as Bulgarians when Austria-Bulgaria relations ameliorated, only to renege and employ the designation "Macedonian Slavs" when Bulgaria changed its foreign policy and Austria turned to envisaging an autonomous Macedonia under Austrian influence within the Murzsteg process . The term "Macedonian Slavs" was used either as a middle solution between conflicting Serbian and Bulgarian claims, to denote an intermediary grouping of Slavs, associated with

10857-513: The Macedonians." However after the failure of the Ilinden Uprising, Sarafov wanted to keep closer ties with Bulgaria, supporting the Bulgarian aspirations towards the area. Gyorche Petrov , another IMRO member, stated Macedonia was a "distinct moral unit" with its own "aspirations", while describing its Slavic population as Bulgarian. In 1903, Krste Misirkov published in Sofia his book On Macedonian Matters , wherein he laid down

10998-756: The Republic of North Macedonia. Most Macedonians can be found in Buenos Aires , the Pampas and Córdoba . An estimated 30,000 Macedonians can be found in Argentina. The official number of Macedonians in Australia by birthplace or birthplace of parents is 83,893 ( 2001 ). The main Macedonian communities are found in Melbourne, Geelong , Sydney, Wollongong , Newcastle , Canberra and Perth . The 2006 census recorded 83,983 people of Macedonian ancestry and

11139-809: The United States, Canada, New Zealand and to many European countries: Germany, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Austria among others. The existence of an ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece is rejected by the Greek government. The number of people speaking Slavic dialects has been estimated at somewhere between 10,000 and 250,000. Most of these people however do not have an ethnic Macedonian national consciousness, with most choosing to identify as ethnic Greeks or rejecting both ethnic designations and preferring terms such as "natives" instead. In 1999

11280-1005: The United States. The official number of Macedonians in the US is 49,455 ( 2004 ). The Macedonian community is located mainly in Michigan , New York, Ohio , Indiana and New Jersey There are an estimated 61,000 citizens of North Macedonia in Germany (mostly in the Ruhrgebiet ) ( 2001 ). There are 74,162 citizens of North Macedonia in Italy ( Foreign Citizens in Italy ). In 2006 the Swiss Government recorded 60,362 Macedonian Citizens living in Switzerland. Macedonians are an officially recognised minority group in Romania. They have

11421-558: The West ", suggests proto-Celtic arose earlier, was a lingua franca in the Atlantic Bronze Age coastal zone, and spread eastward. Another newer theory, "Celtic from the Centre", suggests proto-Celtic arose between these two zones, in Bronze Age Gaul, then spread in various directions. After the Celtic settlement of Southeast Europe in the 3rd century BC, Celtic culture reached as far east as central Anatolia , Turkey . The earliest undisputed examples of Celtic language are

11562-683: The World War II ethnic Macedonian institutions were created in the three parts of the region of Macedonia, then under communist control, including the establishment of the People's Republic of Macedonia within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ). The available data indicates that despite the policy of assimilation, pro-Bulgarian sentiments among the Macedonian Slavs in Yugoslavia were still sizable during

11703-447: The ancient heritage of modern Balkan countries is not "the mutually exclusive property of one specific nation" but "the shared inheritance of all Balkan peoples". A more radical and uncompromising strand of Macedonian nationalism has recently emerged called "ancient Macedonism", or " Antiquisation ". Proponents of this view see modern Macedonians as direct descendants of the ancient Macedonians. This view faces criticism by academics as it

11844-416: The autocephalous Archbishopric of Ohrid should be restored; and the Slavic people of Macedonia should be recognized as a separate ethnic community, when the necessary historical circumstances would arise. However, throughout the book, Misirkov lamented that "no local Macedonian patriotism exists" and stated that the Slavic Macedonian population had always called itself "Bulgarian". He also claimed that it

11985-619: The burials "dated to roughly the time when Celts are mentioned near the Danube by Herodotus , Ramsauer concluded that the graves were Celtic". Similar sites and artifacts were found over a wide area, which were named the 'Hallstatt culture'. In 1857, the archaeological site of La Tène was discovered in Switzerland. The huge collection of artifacts had a distinctive style. Artifacts of this 'La Tène style' were found elsewhere in Europe, "particularly in places where people called Celts were known to have lived and early Celtic languages are attested. As

12126-483: The case of the Macedonians, merely declaring their national identity as Bulgarian is enough to gain a citizenship. By making the procedure simpler, Bulgaria stimulates more Macedonian citizens (of Slavic origin) to apply for a Bulgarian citizenship. However, many Macedonians who apply for Bulgarian citizenship as Bulgarians by origin , have few ties with Bulgaria. Further, those applying for Bulgarian citizenship usually say they do so to gain access to member states of

12267-530: The choice between the Patriarchate and the Exarchate was not tainted with national meaning, but was a choice of Church or millet. Thus adherence to the Bulgarian national cause was attractive as a means of opposing oppressive Christian chiflik owners and urban merchants, who usually identified with the Greek nation, as a way to escape arbitrary taxation by Patriarchate bishops, via shifting allegiance to

12408-588: The claims of Romantic nationalists, modern, territorially bound and mutually exclusive nation-states have little in common with their preceding large territorial or dynastic medieval empires, and any connection between them is tenuous at best. In any event, irrespective of shifting political affiliations, the Macedonian Slavs shared in the fortunes of the Byzantine commonwealth and the Rum millet and they can claim them as their heritage. Loring Danforth states similarly,

12549-402: The common historical roots of their languages and nations, a view Skopje continues to reject. As a result, Bulgaria blocked the official start of EU accession talks with North Macedonia. Despite sizable number of Macedonians that have acquired Bulgarian citizenship since 2002 (ca. 9.7% of the Slavic population), only 3,504 citizens of North Macedonia declared themselves as ethnic Bulgarians in

12690-664: The delimitation of frontiers. A Balkan committee of experts rejected Cvijić's concept of the Macedo-Slavs in 1914. However, Bulgaria's entry into World War I on the side of the Central Powers in 1915, after the Allies failed to convince Serbia to hand over the ‘ Uncontested Zone ’ in Macedonia to Bulgaria, precipitated a complete turnaround in the Allies' opinion of Macedonian ethnography, and several British and French maps echoing Cvijić were released within months. Thus, as

12831-576: The descendants of economic migrants who left the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in the 1950s and 1960s. The Macedonians in Serbia are represented by a national council and in recent years Macedonian has begun to be taught. The most recent census recorded 22,755 Macedonians living in Serbia. Macedonians represent the second largest ethnic minority population in Albania . Albania recognises

12972-558: The disastrous idea of working independently on the advancement of their own local dialect and what's more, of their own, separate Macedonian church leadership." The activities of these people were also registered by the Serbian politician Stojan Novaković , who promoted the idea to use the Macedonian nationalism in order to oppose the strong pro-Bulgarian sentiments in the area. The nascent Macedonian nationalism, illegal at home in

13113-601: The division of the region of Macedonia amongst the Kingdom of Greece , the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Serbia , the idea of belonging to a separate Macedonian nation was further spread among the Slavic-speaking population. The suffering during the wars, the endless struggle of the Balkan monarchies for dominance over the population increased the Macedonians' sentiment that the institutionalization of an independent Macedonian nation would put an end to their suffering. On

13254-411: The early 19th century, after the foundation of the modern Greek state with its Western Europe-derived obsession with Ancient Greece . As a result of the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire , massive Greek religious and school propaganda occurred, and a process of Hellenization was implemented among Slavic-speaking population of the area. In this way, the name Macedonians was applied to

13395-684: The early Celts comes from Greco-Roman writers, who often grouped the Celts as barbarian tribes. They followed an ancient Celtic religion overseen by druids . The Celts were often in conflict with the Romans , such as in the Roman–Gallic wars , the Celtiberian Wars , the conquest of Gaul and conquest of Britain . By the 1st century AD, most Celtic territories had become part of the Roman Empire . By c. 500, due to Romanisation and

13536-421: The exact mechanisms of this linguistic expansion remains a matter of scholarly discussion. Traditional historiography has equated these changes with the commencement of raids and 'invasions' of Sclaveni and Antes from Wallachia and western Ukraine during the 6th and 7th centuries. However, recent anthropological and archaeological perspectives have viewed the appearance of Slavs in Macedonia, and throughout

13677-673: The existence of a Macedonian minority within the Mala Prespa region, most of which is comprised by Pustec Municipality . Macedonians have full minority rights within this region, including the right to education and the provision of other services in Macedonian . There also exist unrecognised Macedonian populations living in the Golo Brdo region, the "Dolno Pole" area near the town of Peshkopi , around Lake Ohrid and Korce as well as in Gora . 4,697 people declared themselves Macedonians in

13818-612: The first time in 1932 the existence of a separate ethnic Macedonian nation. In 1933 the Communist Party of Greece , in a series of articles published in its official newspaper, the Rizospastis , criticizing Greek minority policy towards Slavic-speakers in Greek Macedonia, recognized the Slavs of the entire region of Macedonia as forming a distinct Macedonian ethnicity and their language as Macedonian. The idea of

13959-645: The historical territory of the Ancient Macedonia , but for the Balkan Christians, it covered the territories of the former Byzantine province of Macedonia , situated around modern Turkish Edirne . With the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the late 14th century, the name of Macedonia disappeared as a geographical designation for several centuries. The name was revived just during

14100-471: The interwar period. However, if the Yugoslavians would recognize the Slavic inhabitants of Vardar Macedonia as Bulgarians, it would mean that the area should be part of Bulgaria. Practically in post-World War II Macedonia, Yugoslavia's state policy of forced Serbianisation was changed with a new one — of Macedonization . The codification of Macedonian and the recognition of the Macedonian nation had

14241-471: The involvement of Macedonian Slavs in Bulgarian nationalist uprisings and the Macedonian origins of Bulgarian nationalists before 1878. Although Cvijic's arguments attracted the attention of Great Powers, they did not endorse at the time his view on the Macedo-Slavs. Cvijić further elaborated the idea that had first appeared in Peucker's map and in his map of 1909 he ingeniously mapped the Macedonian Slavs as

14382-408: The latter 20th century, when it was accepted that the oldest known Celtic-language inscriptions were those of Lepontic from the 6th century BC and Celtiberian from the 2nd century BC. These were found in northern Italy and Iberia, neither of which were part of the 'Hallstatt' nor 'La Tène' cultures at the time. The Urnfield-Hallstatt theory was partly based on ancient Greco-Roman writings, such as

14523-550: The linguistic researches of Vatroslav Jagić and Aleksandar Belić , and the Serb features of their customs, such as the zadruga . For Cvijić, the Macedo-Slavs were a transitional population, with any sense of nationality they displayed being weak, superficial, externally imposed and temporary. Despite arguing that they should be considered neutral, he postulated their division into Serbs and Bulgarians based on dialectical and cultural features in anticipation of Serbian demands regarding

14664-564: The local Slavs, aiming to stimulate the development of close ties between them and the Greeks , linking both sides to the ancient Macedonians , as a counteract against the growing Bulgarian cultural influence into the region. Although the local intellectuals initially rejected the Macedonian designation as Greek, since the 1850s some of them, adopted it as a regional identity, and this name began to gain popularity. Serbian politics then, also encouraged this kind of regionalism to neutralize

14805-492: The local language had its own identifying characteristics compared to Bulgarian and Serbian. He wrote in a Saint Petersburg newspaper that the Macedonians should be recognized by Russia in a full national sense. Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization leader Boris Sarafov in 1901 stated that Macedonians had a unique "national element" and, the following year, he stated "We the Macedonians are neither Serbs nor Bulgarians, but simply Macedonians... Macedonia exists only for

14946-595: The lower Strymon basin. The Pelagonian plain was inhabited by the Pelagones and the Lyncestae , ancient Greek tribes of Upper Macedonia ; whilst the western region (Ohrid-Prespa) was said to have been inhabited by Illyrian tribes, such as the Enchelae . During the late Classical Period, having already developed several sophisticated polis -type settlements and a thriving economy based on mining, Paeonia became

15087-616: The main goal: finally to ban any Bulgarophilia among the Macedonians and to build a new consciousness, based on identification with Yugoslavia. As a result, Yugoslavia introduced again an abrupt de-Bulgarization of the people in the PR Macedonia , such as it already had conducted in the Vardar Banovina during the Interwar period . Bulgarian sources claim around 100,000 pro-Bulgarian elements were imprisoned for violations of

15228-671: The majority of the Slavic-speaking population in today's Republic of North Macedonia (the second anti-Greek revolt was in Skopje) to have a separate " Bulgarian Millet ", finally bore fruit in 1870 when a firman for the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate was issued. In September 1872, the Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimus VI declared the Exarchate schismatic and excommunicated its adherents, accusing them of having “surrendered Orthodoxy to ethnic nationalism”, i.e., " ethnophyletism " ( Greek : εθνοφυλετισμός ). At

15369-688: The members was also Krste Misirkov. In 1905 the Society published Vardar , the first scholarly, scientific and literary journal in the central dialects of Macedonia, which later would contribute in the standardization of Macedonian language . In 1913, the Macedonian Literary Society submitted the Memorandum of Independence of Macedonia to the British Foreign Secretary and other European ambassadors, and it

15510-826: The mid-1990s, with reportedly 20,000 copies being distributed free of charge. Within Serbia , Macedonians constitute an officially recognised ethnic minority at both a local and national level. Within Vojvodina , Macedonians are recognised under the Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina , along with other ethnic groups. Large Macedonian settlements within Vojvodina can be found in Plandište , Jabuka , Glogonj , Dužine and Kačarevo . These people are mainly

15651-445: The migration of Germanic tribes, Celtic culture had mostly become restricted to Ireland, western and northern Britain, and Brittany . Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity. They had a common linguistic, religious and artistic heritage that distinguished them from surrounding cultures. Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of

15792-609: The non-governmental organization Bulgarian Helsinki Committee , claimed that there were 15,000–25,000 ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria (see here ). In the same report, Macedonian nationalists (Popov et al., 1989) claimed that 200,000 ethnic Macedonians lived in Bulgaria. However, according to the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, the vast majority of the Slavic-speaking population in Pirin Macedonia had

15933-586: The offices had been broken into and had been ransacked. Later Members of Rainbow had been charged for "causing and inciting mutual hatred among the citizens" because the party had bilingual signs written in both Greek and Macedonian . On 20 October 2005, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) ordered the Greek government to pay penalties to the Rainbow Party for violations of 2 ECHR articles. Rainbow has seen limited success at

16074-554: The population in their cause. In the context of this attempt, in 1924 the Comintern organized the filed signing of the so-called May Manifesto , in which independence of partitioned Macedonia was required. In 1925 with the help of the Comintern, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (United) was created, composed of former left-wing Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) members. This organization promoted for

16215-466: The population's sentiment and the narrative the state sought to promote. Additionally, during the last two decades, tens of thousands of citizens of North Macedonia have applied for Bulgarian citizenship. In the period since 2000 more than 100,000 acquired it, while ca. 50,000 applied and are still waiting. Bulgaria has a special ethnic dual-citizenship regime which makes a constitutional distinction between ethnic Bulgarians and Bulgarian citizens . In

16356-665: The positions he espoused in On Macedonian Matters . Later in his life, Misirkov oscillated between a pro-Macedonist and Greater Bulgarian stance, including controversially claimed that all Macedonian and Torlakian dialects were, in fact, Bulgarian . Another major figure of the Macedonian awakening was Dimitrija Čupovski , one of the founders of the Macedonian Literary Society , established in Saint Petersburg in 1902. One of

16497-462: The presence of inscriptions. The modern idea of a Celtic cultural identity or "Celticity" focuses on similarities among languages, works of art, and classical texts, and sometimes also among material artefacts, social organisation , homeland and mythology . Earlier theories held that these similarities suggest a common "racial" ( race is now a contested concept) origin for the various Celtic peoples, but more recent theories hold that they reflect

16638-468: The previous decades, a majority of Christian Slavs inhabiting Greek and Vardar Macedonia used the collective name "Macedonians" to describe themselves, either as a nation or as a distinct ethnicity. The 1928 Greek census recorded 81,844 Slavo-Macedonian speakers, distinct from 16,755 Bulgarian speakers. In 1924 the Politis–Kalfov Protocol was signed between Greece and Bulgaria, concerning

16779-437: The principles of the modern Macedonian nationhood and language. This book, written in the standardized central dialect of Macedonia , is considered by ethnic Macedonians as a milestone of the process of Macedonian awakening. Misirkov argued that the dialect of central Macedonia (Veles-Prilep-Bitola-Ohrid) should be adopted as a basis for a standard Macedonian literary language, in which Macedonians should write, study, and worship;

16920-518: The protection of the Bulgarian minority In Greece. However, it was not ratified by the Greek side, because public opinion stood against the recognition of any “Bulgarian” minority". Prior to the 1930s, "it seems to have been acceptable" for Greeks to refer to Slavophones of Macedonia as Macedonians and their language as Macedonian. Ion Dragoumis had argued this viewpoint. The consolidation of an international Communist organization (the Comintern ) in

17061-419: The publication of a Serbian map by Spiridon Gopčević claiming the Slavs of Macedonia as Serbs , a version of a Russian map, published in 1891, in a period of deterioration of Bulgarian-Russian relations , first presented Macedonia inhabited not by Bulgarians, but by Macedonian Slavs. Austrian-Hungarian maps followed suit in an effort to delegitimize the ambitions of Russophile Bulgaria, returning to presenting

17202-412: The question of whether they were Serbs or Bulgarians, the people more often started answering: "Neither Bulgar, nor Serb... I am Macedonian only, and I'm sick of war." Stratis Myrivilis noted a specific instance of a Slav-speaking family wanting to be referred to, not as "Bulgar, Srrp, or Grrts" , but as "Makedon ortodox" . By the 1920s, following a negative reaction to the national proselytization of

17343-425: The reorientation of Serbian aims towards dividing Macedonia with Greece, Cvijić eliminated the Macedo-Slavs from a subsequent edition of his map. However, in 1913, before the conclusion of the Treaty of Bucharest he published his third ethnographic map distinguishing the Macedo-Slavs between Skopje and Salonica from both Bulgarians and Serbo-Croats , on the basis of the transitional character of their dialect per

17484-600: The same origin, referring to the Gauls who invaded southeast Europe and settled in Galatia . The suffix -atai might be a Greek inflection. Linguist Kim McCone suggests it comes from Proto-Celtic *galatis ("ferocious, furious"), and was not originally an ethnic name but a name for young warrior bands . He says "If the Gauls' initial impact on the Mediterranean world was primarily a military one typically involving fierce young *galatīs , it would have been natural for

17625-556: The same way. During the interbellum Bulgaria also supported to some extent the Macedonian regional identity , especially in Yugoslavia. Its aim was to prevent the Serbianization of the local Slavic speakers, because the very name Macedonia was prohibited in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Ultimately the designation Macedonian, changed its status in 1944, and went from being predominantly a regional, ethnographic denomination, to

17766-447: The second half of the 19th century mainly among intellectuals in Belgrade , Sofia , Thessaloniki and St. Petersburg . Since the 1850s some Slavic intellectuals from the area adopted the Greek designation Macedonian as a regional label, and it began to gain popularity. In the 1860s, according to Petko Slaveykov , some young intellectuals from Macedonia were claiming that they are not Bulgarians, but rather Macedonians, descendants of

17907-452: The special Law for the Protection of Macedonian National Honour , and over 1,200 were allegedly killed. In this way generations of students grew up educated in a strong anti-Bulgarian sentiment which during the times of Communist Yugoslavia , increased to the level of state policy . Its main agenda was a result from the need to distinguish between the Bulgarians and the new Macedonian nation, because Macedonians could confirm themselves as

18048-428: The theocratic Ottoman Empire, and illegitimate internationally, waged a precarious struggle for survival against overwhelming odds: in appearance against the Ottoman Empire, but in fact against the three expansionist Balkan states and their respective patrons among the great powers. The first known author that overtly speaks of a Macedonian nationality and language was Georgi Pulevski , who in 1875 published in Belgrade

18189-427: The time and was used as an official document to advocate for Greece's positions in the Paris peace conference . After World War I, Cvijić's map became the point of reference for all Balkan ethnographic maps, while his concept of Macedo-Slavs was reproduced in almost all maps, including German maps, that acknowledged a Macedonian nation. After the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and the World War I (1914–1918), following

18330-452: The time of its creation, the only Vardar Macedonian bishopric included in the Exarchate was Veles . However, in 1874, the Christian population of the bishoprics of Skopje and Ohrid were given the chance to participate in a plebiscite, where they voted overwhelmingly in favour of joining the Exarchate (Skopje by 91%, Ohrid by 97%) Referring to the results of the plebiscites, and on the basis of statistical and ethnological indications,

18471-419: The time of the National Liberation War of Macedonia in the 1940s. According to historian Ivan Katardžiev those who came from the Bulgarian part or were members of the IMRO (United) practically felt themselves as Bulgarians, while those who had experienced Serbian rule and had interacted with the Croatian and Slovenian national movements within Yugoslavia had developed a stronger Macedonian consciousness. After

18612-438: The view that the Macedonian ethnicity is a modern, artificial creation. Such views have been seen by Macedonian historians to represent irredentist motives on Macedonian territory. Moreover, some historians point out that all modern nations are recent, politically motivated constructs based on creation "myths", that the creation of Macedonian identity is "no more or less artificial than any other identity", and that, contrary to

18753-532: The ways in which the Iron Age people of Britain and Ireland should be called Celts. In current scholarship, 'Celt' primarily refers to 'speakers of Celtic languages' rather than to a single ethnic group. The history of pre-Celtic Europe and Celtic origins is debated. The traditional "Celtic from the East" theory, says the proto-Celtic language arose in the late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of central Europe, named after grave sites in southern Germany, which flourished from around 1200 BC. This theory links

18894-425: Was Serbia and Bulgaria's conflict over Macedonia, which according to Misirkov would eventually lead to its partition. Therefore, he argued, it would be better for both Macedonians and Bulgarians if there was a united Macedonian Macedonia than a partitioned Bulgarian one, where Bulgaria would not be allowed to go any further than the left bank of the Vardar. In 1905, he returned to a pro-Bulgarian stance and renounced

19035-452: Was a major factor in making the Slavs in Macedonia—and the other Slavs within the First Bulgarian State —into Bulgarians and transforming the Bulgar state into a Bulgarian state. Subsequently, the literary and ecclesiastical centre in Ohrid became a second cultural capital of medieval Bulgaria. After the final Ottoman conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the 14/15th century, all Eastern Orthodox Christians were included in

19176-423: Was distinctly regional", and in Ottoman era , before the 19th-century rise of nationalism , it was based on the corresponding confessional community . The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century brought opposition to this continued situation. At that time, the classical Rum Millet began to degrade. The coordinated actions, carried out by Bulgarian national leaders and supported by

19317-407: Was first the Byzantine Greeks who starting calling the local Slavs "Bulgarians" because of their alliance with the Bulgars , during the incessant Byzantine–Bulgarian conflict which in the eyes of the Byzantine Greeks eventually forged both Slavs and Bulgars into one people with a Bulgarian name and a Slavonic language. Misirkov's primary motivation for a separate Macedonian nationhood and language

19458-436: Was given to them by others or not, it was used by the Celts themselves. Greek geographer Strabo , writing about Gaul towards the end of the first century BC, refers to the "race which is now called both Gallic and Galatic ", though he also uses Celtica as another name for Gaul. He reports Celtic peoples in Iberia too, calling them Celtiberi and Celtici . Pliny the Elder noted the use of Celtici in Lusitania as

19599-501: Was preeminent in central Europe during the late Bronze Age , circa 1200 BC to 700 BC. The spread of iron-working led to the Hallstatt culture (c. 800 to 500 BC) developing out of the Urnfield culture in a wide region north of the Alps. The Hallstatt culture developed into the La Tène culture from about 450 BC, which came to be identified with Celtic art . In 1846, Johann Georg Ramsauer unearthed an ancient grave field with distinctive grave goods at Hallstatt , Austria. Because

19740-446: Was printed in many European newspapers. In the period 1913–1914, Čupovski published the newspaper Македонскi Голосъ ( Macedonian Voice ) in which he and fellow members of the Saint Petersburg Macedonian Colony propagated the existence of a Macedonian people separate from the Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs, and sought to popularize the idea for an independent Macedonian state. From 1878 until 1918, most independent European observers viewed

19881-515: Was synonymous with "Macedonian", while only "Bulgarian" was a designation for the Bulgarians in Bulgaria. In 1890, Austrian researcher of Macedonia Karl Hron reported that the Macedonians constituted a separate ethnic group by history and language. Within the next few years, this concept was also welcomed in Russia by linguists including Leonhard Masing , Pyotr Lavrov , Jan Baudouin de Courtenay , and Pyotr Draganov . Draganov, of Bulgarian descent, conducted research in Macedonia and determined that

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