Greek Macedonians - History - Early 20th Century

Early 20th Century

Further information: Macedonian Struggle and Balkan Wars

On the eve of the 20th century, Macedonians were a Greek minority population in a number of areas inside the multiethnic region of Macedonia, more so away from the coast. They lived alongside Slavic-speaking populations, most of whom had come to be identified as Bulgarians, and other ethnicities such as Jews, Turks, Vlachs and Albanians. However, the ethnic Greeks were the predominant population in the southern zone of the region which comprised the best part of modern Greek Macedonia. Bulgarian actions to exploit the Bulgarian population of Macedonia with the foundation of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the influence of the Bulgarian Exarchate on the region, led to the Ilinden Uprising which was shut down by Ottoman forces; these events provoked Greece to help the Macedonians to resist both Ottoman and Bulgarian forces, by sending military officers who formed bands made up of Macedonians and other Greek volunteers, something that resulted in the Macedonian Struggle from 1904–1908, which ended with the Young Turk Revolution. According to the 1904 census, conducted by Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha for the Ottoman authorities, the Greeks were the predominant population in the vilayets of Thessaloniki and Monastir, outnumbered in the vilayet of Kosovo by the Bulgarians who formed the majority.

During the Balkan Wars, Thessaloniki became the prize city for the struggling parties, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. Greece claimed the southern region which corresponded to that of ancient Macedonia, attributed as part of Greek history, and had a strong Greek presence. Following the Balkan Wars, Greece obtained most of the vilayets of Thessaloniki and Monastir, what is now Greek Macedonia, from the dissolving Ottoman Empire. After World War I and the agreement between Greece and Bulgaria on a mutual population exchange in 1919, the Greek element was reinforced in the region of Greek Macedonia, which acquired a high degree of ethnic homogeneity. During the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, there was a mass departure of Muslims and some pro-Bulgarian element from Macedonia, with the simultaneous arrival of Greek refugees from Asia Minor and east Thrace, mainly Pontic Greeks. According to the statistics of the League of Nations in 1926, the Greeks comprised 88.8% of the total population, the Slavic-speakers 5.1%, while the remainder was mostly made up of Muslims and Jews.

The Macedonians fought alongside the regular Greek army during the struggle for Macedonia, with many victims from the local population, to resist to the Bulgarian expansionism and pan-Slavic danger. There are monuments in Macedonia commemorating the Makedonomachi, the local Macedonian and other Greek fighters, who took part in the wars and died to liberate Macedonia from the Ottoman rule, officially memorialized as heroes. Several of the Macedonian revolutionaries that were instrumental in the war later became politicians of the modern Greek state. The most notable of them were writer and diplomat Ion Dragoumis and his father Stephanos Dragoumis, a judge who became Prime Minister of Greece in 1910. The Dragoumis family, originating from Vogatsiko, in the Kastoria region, had a long history of participation in the Greek revolutions with Markos Dragoumis being a member of Filiki Eteria. Heroic stories from the Macedonian struggle were transcribed in many of the novels of Greek writer Penelope Delta, from narratives collected in 1932–1935 by her secretary Antigone Bellou-Threpsiadi, who was herself a daughter of a Macedonian fighter. Ion Dragoumis also wrote about his personal recollections of the Macedonian struggle in his books.