Demographic History of Macedonia - Macedonian Question

Macedonian Question

In Europe, the classic non-national states were the multi-ethnic empires such as the Ottoman Empire, ruled by a Sultan and the population belonged to many ethnic groups, which spoke many languages. The idea of nation state was an increasing emphasis during the 19th century, on the ethnic and racial origins of the nations. The most noticeable characteristic was the degree to which nation states use the state as an instrument of national unity, in economic, social and cultural life. By the 19th century, the Ottomans had fallen well behind the rest of Europe in science, technology, and industry. By that time Bulgarians initiated a purposeful struggle against the Greek clerics. Bulgarian religious leaders had realised that any further struggle for the rights of the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire could not succeed unless they managed to obtain at least some degree of autonomy from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, which included most of Macedonia by a firman of Sultan Abdülaziz was the direct result of the struggle of the Bulgarian Orthodox against the domination of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople in the 1850s and 1860s.

Afterwards in 1876 the Bulgarians revolted in the April uprising. The emergence of Bulgarian national sentiments was closely related to the re-establishment of the independent Bulgarian church. This rise of national awareness became known as the Bulgarian National Revival. However the uprising was crushed by the Ottomans. As result on the Constantinople Conference in 1876 the predominant Bulgarian character of the Slavs in Macedonia reflected in the borders of future autonomous Bulgaria as it was drawn there. The Great Powers eventually gave their consent to variant, which excluded southern Macedonia and Thrace, and denied Bulgaria access to the Aegean sea, but otherwise incorporated all other regions in the Ottoman Empire inhabited by Bulgarians. At the last minute, however, the Ottomans rejected the plan with the secret support of Britain. Having its reputation at stake, Russia had no other choice but to declare war on the Ottomans in April 1877. The Treaty of San Stefano from 1878, which reflected the maximum desired by Russian expansionist policy, gave Bulgaria the whole of Macedonia except Thessaloniki, the Chalcidice peninsula and the valley of the Aliakmon.

The Congress of Berlin in the same year redistributed most Bulgarian territories that the previous treaty had given to the Principality of Bulgaria back to the Ottoman Empire. This included the whole of Macedonia. As result in late 1878, the Kresna-Razlog Uprising - an unsuccessful Bulgarian revolt against the Ottoman rule in the region of Macedonia - broke out. However the decision taken at the Congress of Berlin soon turned the Macedonian Question into "the apple of constant discord" between Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. The Bulgarian national revival in Macedonia was not unopposed. The Greeks and Serbs, too, had national ambitions in the region, and believed that these could be furthered by a policy of cultural and linguistic dissimilation of the Macedonian Slavs, to be achieved through educational and church propaganda. Nonetheless, by the 1870s the Bulgarians were clearly the dominant national party in Macedonia. It was widely anticipated that the Macedonian Slavs would continue to evolve as an integral part of the Bulgarian nation, and that, in the event of the Ottoman Empire's demise, Macedonia would be included in a Bulgarian successor-state. That these anticipations proved false was due not to any intrinsic peculiarities of the Macedonian Slavs, setting them apart from the Bulgarians, but to a series of catastrophic events, which, over a period of seventy years, diverted the course of Macedonian history away from its presumed trend.