Last updated Ethnic map of the Balkans from 1880 by E.G. Ravenstein. Bulgarians are marked with orange.Territories under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870–1913).Map of European Turkey after the Treaty of Berlin. Macedonia and Adrianople areas, which were given back from Bulgaria to the Ottomans are shown with green frontiers.
The semi-official term Bulgarian Millet, was used by the Sultan for the first time in 1847, and was his tacit consent to a more ethno-linguistic definition of the Bulgarians as a nation. This resulted in the rise of a Bulgarian St. Stephen Church in the Ottoman capital Constantinople in 1851. Officially as a separate Millet in 1860 were recognized the Bulgarian Uniates, and then in 1870 the Bulgarian Orthodox Christians (Eksarhhâne-i Millet i Bulgar).[1] At that time the classical Ottoman Millet-system began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic identity and the term millet was used as a synonym of nation.[2]
The establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, meant in practice official recognition of a separate Bulgarian nationality,[3][4] and in this case the religious affiliation became a consequence of national allegiance.[5] The founding of an independent church, along with the revival of Bulgarian language and education, were the crucial factors that strengthened the national consciousness and revolutionary struggle, that led to the creation of a Bulgarian nation-state in 1878.[6] The ideas of Bulgarian nationalism grew up in significance, following the Congress of Berlin which took back the regions of Macedonia and Thrace under Ottoman control. So the Bulgarian nationalist movement proclaimed as its aim the inclusion of most of Macedonia and Thrace under Greater Bulgaria.
At the eve of the 20th century a series of conflicts arose into Ottoman regions outside the Bulgarian principality between Greeks and Serbs from one side and Bulgarian Exarchists from another. The local Slavic villages became divided into followers of the Bulgarian national movement and the so-called grecomans and serbomans. After the Balkan Wars the Bulgarian millet was limited finally to the boundaries of the Bulgarian state, despite the nominally much larger previous territory of the Bulgarian Exarchate.[7]
History
Background
All Orthodox Christians, including Bulgarians, in the Ottoman Empire were subordinated to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was dominated by Greek Phanariotes by the end of the 19th century. The Orthodox Christians were included into the Rum Millet. Belonging to this Orthodox community grew more important to the common people than their ethnic origins and the Balkan Orthodox people identified themselves simply as Christians. Nevertheless, ethnonymes never disappeared and some form of ethnic identification was preserved as evident from a Sultan's Firman from 1680, which lists the ethnic groups in the Balkan lands as follows: Greeks (Rum), Albanians (Arnaut), Serbs (Sirf), Vlachs (Eflak or Ullah) and Bulgarians (Bulgar).[8]
During the late 18th century, the Enlightenment in Western Europe provided influence for the initiation of the National awakening of the Bulgarian people. The awakening process met opposition with the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century. According to the proponents of Bulgarian national awakening, Bulgarians were oppressed as an ethnic community not only by the Turks, but also by the Greeks. They considered the Greek Patriarchal clergy to be the main oppressor. forced Bulgarians to educate their children in Greek schools and imposed Church services exclusively in Greek in order to Hellenize the Bulgarian population.
School and Church struggle
During the early nineteenth century, national elites used ethno-linguistic principles to differentiate between "Bulgarian" and "Greek" identity into the Rum millet. Bulgarians wanted to create their own schools in a common modern literary standard.[9] In the Balkans, Bulgarian education stimulated nationalist sentiments in the middle of the 19th century. Most wealthy Bulgarian merchants sent their children for a secular education, turning some of them into Bulgarian national activists. At that time secular Bulgarian schools were spreading throughout Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia, aided by modern classroom methods. This expanding set of Bulgarian schools began to come into contact with Greek schools setting the stage for nationalist conflict.[10]
By the middle of the century, Bulgarian activists shifted their attention from language to religion and started debate on the establishment of a separate Bulgarian church.[11] As a consequence, until the 1870s, the focus of the Bulgarian National Revival switched to the struggle for a Bulgarian Church, independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Cultural, administrative and even political independence from the Patriarchate could only be obtained through the establishment of a separate millet or nation. The coordinated actions aimed at the recognition of a separate millet constitute the so-called "Church Struggle". The actions were carried out by Bulgarian national leaders and supported by the majority of the Slavic population in modern-day Bulgaria, Eastern Serbia, North Macedonia and Northern Greece.
Bulgarians often relied on the Ottoman authorities as allies in their confrontations with the Patriarchists. The Sultan Firman of 1847 was the first official document was issued, in which the name Bulgarian millet was mentioned.[12] In 1849 the Sultan granted the Bulgarian millet the right to construct its own church in Istanbul,[13] The church subsequently hosted the Easter Sunday of 1860 when the autocephalous Bulgarian Exarchate was first de facto proclaimed.[14]
Recognition of the Bulgarian Millet and Bulgarian schism
In the meantime, some Bulgarian leaders tried to negotiate the establishment of a Bulgarian Uniate Church. The movement for union with Rome led to the initial recognition of a separate Bulgarian Catholic Millet by the Sultan in 1860.[15] The Sultan issued a special decree (irade) for that occasion.[16] Although the movement initially gathered some 60,000 adherents, the subsequent establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate reduced their number with some 75%.
The Bulgarian "Church Struggle" was resolved finally with a Sultan decree in 1870, which established the Bulgarian Exarchate.[17] The act also instituted the Bulgarian Orthodox Millet – an entity combining the modern notion for a nation with the Ottoman principle of Millet.[17] It also turned the Bulgarian Exarch into both a religious leader and an administrative head of the Millet.[17] The new entity enjoyed internal cultural and administrative autonomy.[17] However, it excluded non-Orthodox Bulgarians and, thus, failed to embrace all representatives of the Bulgarian ethnos. Scholars argue that the millet system was instrumental to transforming the Bulgarian Exarchate into an entity that promoted ethnoreligious nationalism amongst Orthodox Bulgarians.[17]
On 11 May 1872 in the Bulgarian St. Stephen Church in Constantinople, which had been closed by the Ecumenical Patriarch's order, the Bulgarian hierarchs, celebrated a liturgy, whereafter the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Church was declared. The decision on the unilateral declaration of autocephaly by the Bulgarian Church was not accepted by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In this way, the term phyletism was coined at the Holy pan-Orthodox Synod that met in Istanbul on 10 August. The Synod issued an official condemnation of ecclesiastical nationalism, and declared on 18 September the Bulgarian Exarchate schismatic.
Independence of Bulgaria
Having achieved religious independence, Bulgarian nationalists focused on gaining political independence as well. Two revolutionary movements started to develop in the beginning of the 1870s: the Internal Revolutionary Organization and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. Their armed struggle reached its peak with the April Uprising which broke out in 1876. It resulted in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, and led to the foundation of the third Bulgarian state after the Treaty of San Stefano. The treaty set up a Principality Bulgaria which territory included the wide area between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains, most of today Eastern Serbia, Northern Thrace, parts of Eastern Thrace and nearly all of Macedonia. At that time the clergy's shifts from the Orthodox to the Catholic Church and vice versa were symptomatic of the foreign powers' game that the clergy got involved after the 1878 Berlin Treaty, that partitioned the stipulated territory of the new Principality. Thus, in the interplay between the Orthodox and the Uniat doctrine, Bulgaria supported the Orthodox Exarchate. Russia supported Bulgaria. The Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople supported the Greek national idea. France and the Habsburg Empire supported the Uniats. The Ottoman Empire's attitude was depending on how it had to balance its own interests in the game with the Great Powers.
Thrace and Macedonia
The ideas of Bulgarian nationalism grew up in significance, following the Congress of Berlin which took back the regions of Macedonia and Southern Thrace, returning them under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Also an autonomous Ottoman province, called Eastern Rumelia was created in Northern Thrace. As a consequence, the Bulgarian nationalist movement proclaimed as its aim the inclusion of most of Macedonia and Thrace under Greater Bulgaria. Eastern Rumelia was annexed to Bulgaria in 1885 through bloodless revolution. The Christian population of the kazas currently falling within the borders of North Macedonia for example, were divided into the following ethnoreligious communities in the Ottoman General Census of 1881/82:
Christian ethnoreligious groups as per 1881-82 Ottoman Census in today North Macedonia[18]
Kaza1
Bulgarian Exarchists
Greek Patriarchists (mostly Greek-minded Aromanian, Slavic and Albanian-speakers, incl. so-called Old Serbians)
Population of various ethnoconfessonal communities in the Adianople Vilayet according to the 1906/7 Ottoman census, in thousands, adjusted to round numbers.[19]
Ethnoconfessional groups in the Adrianople Vilayet as per the 1906-07 Ottoman Census
The effect of the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913 was the partition of Ottoman empire territories in Europe, which was followed by an anti-Bulgarian campaign in areas of Macedonia and Thrace, that came under Serbian and Greek administration. The Bulgarian churchmen were expelled, the Bulgarian schools were closed and the Bulgarian language was prohibited there.[22] The Slavic population was proclaimed either as "Southern, i.e. Old Serbs" or as "Slavophone Greeks" there.[23] In the Adrianople region, that the Ottomans managed to keep, the whole Thracian Bulgarian population was put to ethnic cleansing. As a consequence many Bulgarians fled from the territories of present-day Greece, North Macedonia and European Turkey to what is now Bulgaria. Subsequently, the Ottoman Empire lost virtually all of its possessions in the Balkans, which put a de facto end to the community of the Bulgarian Millet.
↑ Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Conflict Praeger Series in Political Communication, Patrick James, David Goetze, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, ISBN0-275-97143-0, pp. 159–160.
↑ Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity, Andreas Wimmer, Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN0-521-01185-X, pp. 171–172.
↑ A Concise History of Bulgaria, R. J. Crampton, Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN0-521-61637-9, p. 74.
↑ The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival, Rumen Daskalov, Central European University Press, 2004, ISBN963-9241-83-0, p. 1.
↑ Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 1870–1895, Duncan M. Perry, Duke University Press, 1993, ISBN0-8223-1313-8, p. 7.
↑ Dale F. Eickelman and Simeon Evstatiev as ed. (2022) Islam, Christianity, and Secularism in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe. Brill; ISBN9789004511569, pp. 5-6.
↑ Tomasz Kamusella (2018) Ethnic Cleansing During the Cold War. The Forgotten 1989 Expulsion of Turks from Communist Bulgaria. Taylor & Francis, ISBN9781351062688, p. 192.
↑ История на българите. Късно средновековие и Възраждане, том 2, Георги Бакалов, TRUD Publishers, 2004, ISBN954-528-467-6, стр. 23. (Bg.)
↑ History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, Marcel Cornis-Pope, John Neubauer, John Benjamins Publishing, 2004, ISBN90-272-3453-1, p. 403.
↑ The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920, Charles Jelavich, Barbara Jelavich, University of Washington Press, 1986, ISBN0-295-80360-6, p. 132.
↑ Ottoman Population, 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics, Kemal H. Karpat, page 91, 1985
↑ During the 20th century, Slavo-Macedonian national feeling has shifted. At the beginning of the 20th century, Slavic patriots in Macedonia felt a strong attachment to Macedonia as a multi-ethnic homeland... Most of these Macedonian Slavs also saw themselves as Bulgarians. By the middle of the 20th. century, however Macedonian patriots began to see Macedonian and Bulgarian loyalties as mutually exclusive. Regional Macedonian nationalism had become ethnic Macedonian nationalism... This transformation shows that the content of collective loyalties can shift.Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe, Ethnologia Balkanica Series, Klaus Roth, Ulf Brunnbauer, LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN3-8258-1387-8, p. 127.
↑ Ivo Banac, "The Macedoine" in The National Question in Yugoslavia. Origins, History, Politics, pp. 307–328, Cornell University Press, 1984.
↑ Nationality on the Balkans. The case of the Macedonians, by F. A. K. Yasamee. (Balkans: A Mirror of the New World Order, Istanbul: EREN, 1995; pp. 121–132.
The Balkan Wars were a series of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan states of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defeated it, in the process stripping the Ottomans of their European provinces, leaving only Eastern Thrace under Ottoman control. In the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria fought against the other four original combatants of the first war. It also faced an attack from Romania from the north. The Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Although not involved as a combatant, Austria-Hungary became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The war set the stage for the July crisis of 1914 and thus served as a prelude to the First World War.
Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time; however, it came to be defined as the modern geographical region by the mid-19th century. Today the region is considered to include parts of six Balkan countries: all of North Macedonia, large parts of Greece and Bulgaria, and smaller parts of Albania, Serbia, and Kosovo. It covers approximately 67,000 square kilometres (25,869 sq mi) and has a population of around five million. Greek Macedonia comprises about half of Macedonia's area and population.
The region of Macedonia is known to have been inhabited since Paleolithic times.
The Balkans and parts of this area may also be placed in Southeastern, Southern, Eastern Europe and Central Europe. The distinct identity and fragmentation of the Balkans owes much to its common and often turbulent history regarding centuries of Ottoman conquest and to its very mountainous geography.
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, legally the Patriarchate of Bulgaria, is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox jurisdiction based in Bulgaria. It is the first medieval recognised patriarchate outside the Pentarchy and the oldest Slavic Orthodox church, with some 6 million members in Bulgaria and between 1.5 and 2 million members in a number of other European countries, Asia, the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. It was recognized as autocephalous in 1945 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The Bulgarian Exarchate was the official name of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church before its autocephaly was recognized by the Ecumenical See in 1945 and the Bulgarian Patriarchate was restored in 1953.
The Archbishopric of Ohrid, also known as the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid, originally called Archbishopric of Justiniana Prima and all Bulgaria, was an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church established following the Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria in 1018 by lowering the rank of the autocephalous Bulgarian Patriarchate due to its subjugation to the Byzantines. In 1767, the Archbishopric's autocephaly was abolished, and the Archbishopric was placed under the tutelage of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Bulgarian irredentism is a term to identify the territory associated with a historical national state and a modern Bulgarian irredentist nationalist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, which would include most of Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia.
The National awakening of Bulgaria refers to the Bulgarian nationalism that emerged in the early 19th century under the influence of western ideas such as liberalism and nationalism, which trickled into the country after the French Revolution, mostly via Greece, although there were stirrings in the 18th century. Russia, as fellow Orthodox Slavs, could appeal to the Bulgarians in a way that Austria could not. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 gave Russia the right to interfere in Ottoman affairs to protect the Sultan's Christian subjects.
The Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church is a sui iuris ("autonomous") Eastern Catholic church based in Bulgaria. As a particular church of the Catholic Church, it is in full communion with the Holy See. The Church's liturgical usage is that of the Byzantine Rite in the Bulgarian language. The Church is organised as a single eparchy — the Bulgarian Greek Catholic Eparchy of Sofia.
The Serbs are one of the constitutional ethnic groups of North Macedonia, numbering about 24,000 inhabitants.
Macedonian nationalism is a general grouping of nationalist ideas and concepts among ethnic Macedonians that were first formed in the late 19th century among separatists seeking the autonomy of the region of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. The idea evolved during the early 20th century alongside the first expressions of ethnic nationalism among the Slavs of Macedonia. The separate Macedonian nation gained recognition during World War II when the Socialist Republic of Macedonia was created as part of Yugoslavia. Macedonian historiography has since established links between the ethnic Macedonians and various historical events and individual figures that occurred in and originated from Macedonia, which range from the Middle Ages up to the 20th century. Following the independence of the Republic of Macedonia in the late 20th century, issues of Macedonian national identity have become contested by the country's neighbours, as some adherents to aggressive Macedonian nationalism, called Macedonism, hold more extreme beliefs such as an unbroken continuity between ancient Macedonians, and modern ethnic Macedonians, and views connected to the irredentist concept of a United Macedonia, which involves territorial claims on a large portion of Greece and Bulgaria, along with smaller regions of Albania, Kosovo and Serbia.
Moschochori was a small village in the community of Krystallopigi, Greece. Its population was 488 at the 1940 census and it spoke the Dolna Korèshcha variant of the Kostur dialect.
The history of Macedonians has been shaped by population shifts and political developments in the southern Balkans, especially within the region of Macedonia. The ideas of separate Macedonian identity grew in significance after the First World War, both in Vardar and among the left-leaning diaspora in Bulgaria, and were endorsed by the Comintern. During the Second World War, these ideas were supported by the Communist Partisans, but the decisive point in the ethnogenesis of these South Slavic people was the creation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia after World War II, as a new state in the framework of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Ottoman Greeks were ethnic Greeks who lived in the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922), much of which is in modern Turkey. Ottoman Greeks were Greek Orthodox Christians who belonged to the Rum Millet. They were concentrated in eastern Thrace, and western, central, and northeastern Anatolia. There were also sizeable Greek communities elsewhere in the Ottoman Balkans, Ottoman Armenia, Ottoman Syria and the Ottoman Caucasus, including in what, between 1878 and 1917, made up the Russian Caucasus province of Kars Oblast, in which Pontic Greeks, northeastern Anatolian Greeks, and Caucasus Greeks who had collaborated with the Russian Imperial Army in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829 were settled in over 70 villages, as part of official Russian policy to re-populate with Orthodox Christians an area that was traditionally made up of Ottoman Muslims and Armenians.
In AD 1453, the city of Constantinople, the capital and last stronghold of the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Ottoman Empire. By this time Egypt had been under Muslim control for some eight centuries. Jerusalem had been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate Muslims in 638, won back by Rome in 1099 under the First Crusade and then reconquered by Saladin's forces during the siege of Jerusalem in 1187. Later in the seventh Crusade, it was briefly taken back by the Catholics once again. It was conquered by the Ottomans in 1517. Orthodoxy, however, was very strong in Russia which had recently acquired an autocephalous status; and thus Moscow called itself the Third Rome, as the cultural heir of Constantinople. Under Ottoman rule, the Greek Orthodox Church acquired power as an autonomous millet. The ecumenical patriarch was the religious and administrative ruler of the entire "Greek Orthodox nation", which encompassed all the Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Empire.
Rūm millet was the name of the Eastern Orthodox Christian community in the Ottoman Empire. Despite being subordinated within the Ottoman political system, the community maintained a certain internal autonomy.
The Macedonian Apostolic Vicariate of the Bulgarians, informally Macedonia of the Bulgarians, was one of the missionary, pre-diocesan jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church sui iuris.
Slavic-speakers inhabiting the Ottoman-ruled region of Macedonia had settled in the area since the Slavic migrations during the Middle Ages and formed a distinct ethnolinguistic group. While Greek was spoken in the urban centers and in a coastal zone in the south of the region, Slav-speakers were abundant in its rural hinterland and were predominantly occupied in agriculture. Habitually known and identifying as "Bulgarian" on account of their language, they also considered themselves as "Rum", members of the community of Orthodox Christians.
The Ullah millet was a separate millet within the Ottoman Empire. It was established by the Ottoman authorities for the Aromanians in 1905, during the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire. Although the Megleno-Romanians are also sometimes called Vlachs, the Ullah millet was not intended for them.
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