Macedonians as an obsolete terminology was used in regional and in ethnographic sense and had several meanings, different from these used mostly today.[1] The name of Macedonia was revived on the Balkans during the early 19th century as result of the Western Europe-derived obsession with Ancient Greece.[2][3] The designation Macedonian arose at the eve of the 20th century and was used beyond but its meanings have changed during the time, and some of them are rarely used anymore.
A postcard containing the motto "Macedonia for the Macedonians" with a demographic map of the region, issued by the Union of Macedonian Students in Vienna during the 1920s. According to the map, the ethnic composition of the population included Bulgarians, Bulgarian Muslims (Pomaks), Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, Turks, Gagauzes and "Vlachs" (Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians).
At first place it was an umbrella term to designate all the inhabitants of the region of Macedonia, regardless of their ethnic origin.[4] "Macedonians" as an umbrella term covered Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians, Albanians, Serbs, etc.[5] Simultaneously a political concept was created, to encompass all these "Macedonians" in the area, into a separate supranational entity, based on their collective Macedonian regional identity.[6] The new state would to be cantonized, something as "Switzerland on the Balkans".[7] An example is the bylaws of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization. As written originally during 1920s, the bylaws' concept of "Macedonians" had only geographic and not ethnographic meaning, and was equally valid for all ethnic groups in Macedonia.[8] As a remnant from these times, even the latest version of this bylaws, from 2016, retains this very definition of the terms “Macedonians” and "Macedonian emigrants".[9]
Peoples and languages map of the Balkan Peninsula before the wars 1912–18, in German (Historical Old Map Collection from 1924). Macedonian Slavs in Western Macedonia are depicted as separate ethnicity, while in Eastern part, as Bulgarians. After Bulgaria lost World War I, when it controlled most of Macedonia, the expansionist ideas of the Serb Jovan Cvijić, incl. on the distinctiveness of the Slavic Macedonians, became the point of reference for most Balkan ethnographic maps.[10][11]
At that time, this designation was used also to describe the Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia, but not as a separate ethnic group, because this population was defined then mostly as Bulgarians,[12] while their association with Bulgaria was universally accepted.[13] However, since the second half of the 19th century there were cases when "Macedonian" was used to define and express a separate ethnicity.[14][15] In the early 20th century, the anarchist Pavel Shatev described the first precursor of the process of an ethno-national differentiation between Bulgarian and Macedonian, while some people he met felt “only Bulgarians”, but others despite being Bulgarians "by nationality", felt themselves Macedonians above all.[16] During the interbellum Bulgaria also stimulated to some extent the development of the Macedonian regional identity, especially in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Its aim was to prevent the Serbianization of the local Slavic Macedonians, because the very use of the name Macedonia was avoided there.[17][18] Ultimately the designation Macedonian, changed its status in 1944, and went from being predominantly a regional, ethnographic denomination, to a national one within the framework of Democratic Federal Macedonia.[19] Nevertheless, among the older Macedonian immigrant communities, as for example in the USA and Canada, the terms Macedonian, Bulgarian and Macedonian Bulgarian, kept their similar meanings in the first decades after the Second World War.[20][21][22]
The first page of Orohydrography of Macedonia by Vasil Kanchov (1911). According to him, the local Bulgarians and Aromanians who lived in the area called themselves Macedonians, and the surrounding nations also called them so.
At the eve of the 20th century, the Bulgarian teacher Vasil Kanchov marked that the local Bulgarians and Aromanians called themselves "Macedonians", and that the surrounding people also called them in the same way.[23] These "Vlachs" (Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians) tended to call themselves Macedonians after moving to urban areas.[24] The urban Aromanians were usually pro-Greek. They also were called by the Romanians as "Macedo-Romanians" because some of them emigrated to Romania from Macedonia during the early 20th century.[25] The designation "Macedonian" for them was also widespread in Romania.[26] When the researcher Keith Brown visited North Macedonia on the eve of the 21st century, he realised that the local Aromaniandialect still had no way to distinguish "Macedonians" from "Bulgarians" and that the locals used the designation "Bulgarians" for both ethnic groups.[27]
Piotr Eberhardt, Jan Owsinski, Ethnic Groups and Population Changes in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe: History, Data and Analysis, Routledge, 2015, p. 349, ISBN1317470966.
John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos M. Veremis, Modern Greece: A History since 1821. A New History of Modern Europe, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, ISBN1444314831, p. 48.
Many disinterested observers at the time concluded that the Slavic-speaking inhabitants of Macedonia were " Bulgarians " (R. King 1973: 187) and that the term " Macedonian " was not used to identify people as belonging to a distinct "Macedonian" ethnic or national group. Rather "Macedonian" was either used in a general regional sense to designate all the inhabitants of Macedonia, or it was used more specifically to refer to the Slavic - speaking Christians living in the geographical area of Macedonia. If pressed to assert some other form of collective identity, these people may well have said they were " Bulgarians " (Perry 1988: 19; Lunt 1959: 20). For more see: Loring M. Danforth (1997). The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World. Princeton University Press, ISBN0691043566, p. 60.
The IMARO activists saw the future autonomous Macedonia as a multinational polity, and did not pursue the self-determination of Macedonian Slavs as a separate ethnicity. Therefore, Macedonian (and also Adrianopolitan) was an umbrella term covering Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, Vlachs, Albanians, Serbs, Jews, and so on. While this message was taken aboard by many Vlachs as well as some Patriarchist Slavs, it failed to impress other groups for whom the IMARO remained, as the British journalist and relief worker Henry Brailsford and others called it, ‘‘the Bulgarian Committee.’’ For more see: Bechev, Dimitar. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN0810862956, Introduction.
Tchavdar Marinov, We, the Macedonians, The Paths of Macedonian Supra-Nationalism (1878–1912) in: Mishkova Diana ed., 2009, We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, Central European University Press, ISBN9639776289, pp. 117-120.
Victor Roudometof, "Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN0275976483, p. 99.
"The first of its bylaws, written in 1922 and adopted in its final version in 1927, welcomed all descendants of the Macedonian region," regardless of nationality, religion, sex, or convictions, "into the MPO." Only in 1956, when an increasing number of Yugoslav Macedonian immigrants started to use the term 'Macedonian' in ethnic terms, did the MPO decide to distinguish itself from the new ethnic Macedonians and the 1956 bylaws included the following definition: "The terms 'Macedonians' and 'Macedonian immigrants' used in this bylaws [sic] pertain equally to all nationality groups in Macedonia- Bulgarians, Aromanians, Turks, Albanians and others." For more see: Chris Kostov, Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN3034301960, p. 142.
Section 9. Nondiscrimination: The MPO shall in the conduct of its affairs have no restriction or limitation based upon race, color, religion, disability, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, gender identification, or employment status. The terms “Macedonians” and “Macedonian immigrants” used in these bylaws pertain equally to all nationality groups in Macedonia–Bulgarians, Aroumanians, Turks, Albanians, and others. As used in these MPO Bylaws, these terms have only geographic and not ethnographic meaning.
Wilkinson, Henry Robert (1951). Maps and politics: a review of the ethnographic cartography of Macedonia. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 172.
Demeter, Gábor; Bottlik, Zsolt (2021). Maps in the Service of the Nation: The Role of Ethnic Mapping in Nation-Building and Its Influence on Political Decision-Making Across the Balkan Peninsula (1840–1914). Berlin: Frank & Timme. p. 130.
"Until the late 19th century both outside observers and those Bulgaro-Macedonians who had an ethnic consciousness believed that their group, which is now two separate nationalities, comprised a single people, the Bulgarians. Thus the reader should ignore references to ethnic Macedonians in the Middle ages which appear in some modern works. In the Middle Ages and into the 19th century, the term 'Macedonian' was used entirely in reference to a geographical region. Anyone who lived within its confines, regardless of nationality could be called a Macedonian...Nevertheless, the absence of a national consciousness in the past is no grounds to reject the Macedonians as a nationality today." "The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century," John Van Antwerp Fine, University of Michigan Press, 1991, ISBN0472081497, pp. 36–37.
Demeter, Gábor; Bottlik, Zsolt (2021). Maps in the Service of the Nation: The Role of Ethnic Mapping in Nation-Building and Its Influence on Political Decision-Making Across the Balkan Peninsula (1840–1914). Berlin: Frank & Timme, p. 114, ISBN3732906655.
Tchavdar Marinov, Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism. In: Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One, pp: 273–330. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004250765_007
The social reality covered by the same term diverged very quickly. In analogous fashion, the term Macedonian changed status in 1944 and went from being a regional ethnic denomination to a national one within the framework of the Federal Republic of Macedonia. Nevertheless, the word was used to designate extra-territorial populations who did not share the same evolution. For more see: Bernard Lory, The Bulgarian-Macedonian Divergence. An attempted Elucidation. In Raymond Detrez, Pieter Plas, Developing cultural identity in the Balkans: convergence vs divergence, Volume 34 of Multiple Europesq Peter Lang, 2005, ISBN9052012970, p. 173.
Thernstrom, Stephan; Orlov, Ann; Handlin, Oscar, eds. (1980). "Macedonians". Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Harvard University Press. pp.690–694. ISBN0674375122. OCLC1038430174. Immigrants from Macedonia came to the United States in significant numbers during the early years of the 20th century. Until World War II almost all of them thought of themselves as Bulgarians and identified themselves as Bulgarians or Macedonian Bulgarians. Recently, however, for some this has begun to change. Although there are still perhaps 50,000 Macedonians who identify themselves as Bulgarians or Macedonian Bulgarians, a group of Macedonian Americans who identify themselves specifically as Macedonians is beginning to emerge as a result of developments in their Balkan homelands.
George J. Prpic, South Slavic immigration in America, John Carroll University, Twayne Publishers. A division of G. K. Hall & Co., Boston., 1978, ISBN0-8057-8413-6, p. 212: The smallest of the South Slavic ethnic groups in America are the Bulgarians. One branch of them are the Macedonians.
Raska, Jan. Review of Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, 1900-1996, by Chris Kostov. Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol. 46 no. 3, 2014, p. 140-142. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/ces.2014.0037.
Pettifer, J. (2001). The new Macedonian question. In: Pettifer, J. (eds) The New Macedonian Question. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230535794_2
Unirea Basarabiei și a Bucovinei cu România 1917–1918. Documente. Antologie de Ion Calafeteanu și Viorica-Pompilia Moisuc, Chișinău, 1995, pp. 151–154, Harea, Vasile. Basarabia pe drumul unirii, București 1995, pp. 250–251.
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