The population of Macedonia in the mid-19th century

[akritas]

The Christian population of Macedonia spoke a variety of languages: Greek, Slavonic, Vlach and Albanian. It was this linguistic diversity, no doubt, which created the necessary preconditions for the birth and growth of the various nationalist and other (mainly propagandist) movements. The Bulga­rian movement, however, was the only one which started to develop and acquire a strong popular base in Macedonia in the mid-nineteenth century. The Albanian and Serbian national movements first appeared in a much weaker form when they began their activities in the last quarter of the century. The Romanian, Catholic and Protestant movements, on the other hand, which also sprang to life in Macedonia in that period, can hardly be called national movements. For they only represented a tiny proportion of the Vlach-speakers (in the case of the Romanian movement) and the Slavonic-speakers (in the case of the Catholic and Protestant movements). They lost impetus in any case as time passed, and had faded out altogether by the end of the century.

Although the Muslim population is not our main concern here, note should be taken of its constituents. These were as follows: Yiiriik and "Koniar (or Konyan) Turks, whose ancestors had come to Macedonia as colonists of old; Circassians, who had settled in Macedonia in the mid-1860s; former Christians and Jews who had been converted to Islam (converted Jews were known as Donmes): and Muslim Albanians, chiefly in North-Western Mace­donia [1]. The precise nationality of the various sections of the Christian population was far less simple to identify, since the criteria of religion and culture could not always be applied as absolute standards, at least up to the mid-nineteenth century. It is pointless, however, even now to attempt to produce statistics on the size and make-up of the population of nineteenth-century Macedonia as a whole or of the Christian element in particular. This is true of the whole of the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth-century, owing to the lack of reliable demographic data and to other, more specific reasons (referred to below in the section on the social structure and economics of Macedonia)[2]. The spread of Pan-Slavism and the aggravation of intercommu-nal strife in the period under review did result in the appearance of abundant statistics, it is true, but these figures were always influenced either by the political assumptions of European travellers or by the conflicting political interests of European and Balkan states. Further complications and confusion were caused by the fact that European travellers and cartographers, like Boue, Lejan and Kiepert, classified the Christians on the basis of the language they spoke. They did not take national consciousness as their criterion, whereas this must surely be the basic consideration in determining the ethnic identity of any people [3].

Three linguistic zones may be roughly traced, dividing the main blocks of the Christian population in Macedonia. The northern zone stretched south­wards from the Sar (Skardu) range and Mount Rila as far as a line running from Lake Ohrid to Melnik and Nevrokop (passing north of Monastir and Strumica). This zone was inhabited by Slavonic-speakers, who began to identify themselves with the Bulgarian nationalist movement around the middle of the nineteenth-century; in 1870 they acceded formally to the Exarchate. The dialect spoken by these people was closely related to Bulga­rian. The southern zone extended northwards from the border with Thessaly to include the whole of the Pindus-Kastoria axis. Thence it reached out north­eastwards to embrace Veria, Thessaloniki, Serres, Drama and all points south. The people who lived in this zone spoke Greek for the most part, and were unequivocally Greek in their national consciousness. The third and middle zone of Macedonia was peculiar both in its linguistic stratification and in the ethnic origins of the Christians who dwelt within it. The zone was bounded on the north by an imaginary line starting at Lake Ohrid and running, first north­eastwards to Krusovo, then generally eastwards between Prilep and Monastir as far as the River Nestos (Mesta), so as to include the towns of Strumica, Petrich, Melnik and Nevrokop. In the south the middle zone stretched eastwards from Mount Grammos to cover half the kaza of Kastoria; after that its southern edge ran south of Fiorina and Edessa, and north of Kozani, Thessaloniki, Serres and Drama. The inhabitants of this zone spoke mainly Slavonic, Greek, Vlach and Albanian. The majority of them retained their sense of being Greek, even after 1870 [4], as shown by their fierce struggles for possession of the Greek schools and churches. The Slavonic idiom spoken in this zone contained Bulgarian, Greek, Vlach and Albanian words [5].

Speakers of Albanian lived in villages of their own in the kazas of Anaselitsa, Kastoria and Fiorina. Vlach-speaking communities clustered for the most part in North-Western Macedonia, but were also scattered about Central and Eastern Macedonia. To be specific, there were Vlach-speakers in the kazas of Prilep, Monastir, Grevena, Fiorina, Kastoria, Pieria, Vermion, Pai'kon and Almopia, and the vast majority of them possessed Greek national consciousness [6]. Included in the vilayet of Thessaloniki were the Greco-Vlach communities of the provinces of Veria (above Veria and Naousa), Vodena (Edessa) and Gianitsa, and of the Karadzova Mountains and the Veles district. The Greco-Vlach communities in the Veria region led a pastoral life for the most part, spending the summer in the so-called Kalyvia villages on Mount Vermion (i.e. Seli, Kastania, Doliani, Xirolivado and Ranko Seli). The Vlach-speaking people of the Karadzova district, on the other hand, were arable farmers and dwelt in the villages of Lougoundsa (Langadia), Berislav (Peri-kleia), Kondsiko (Galatini), Huma, Koupa, Ossiani, (Archangeli), Loumnitsa (Skra) and Sermenin. In the same area the small Muslim town of Notia, containing about 900 families that had been converted to Islam in 1759, was also Vlach-speaking, as was neighbouring Foustani. A further 400 Greco-Vlach families summered on the Livadi plateau. Greco-Vlach and Albano-Vlach pastoral families were also scattered over several parts of Eastern and Central Macedonia. Some lived in the hinterland of Katerini, while many others, from Samarina, Avdella, Smixi and Grevena, came down to spend the winters in Katerini[7].

There is no doubt, however, that the largest and wealthiest Vlach-speaking communities of the Macedonian region were located in its north-west section. This was the area which was most densely populated by Greco-Vlachs, and where the urban centres, both large and small, had the most highly developed economic and commercial activity. It included towns like Neveska (Nymfaio), Klisoura, Chroupista (Argos Orestiko), Monastir, Nizopole, Megarovo, Tirnovo, Milovista, Gopes, Resen, Krusovo, Ohrid, Struga, Prilep, Jankovec, Pogradec, Ano and Kato Beala, Koritsa (Korce) and, much further north, Skopje. The Greco-Vlachs of Macedonia spoke a dialect which contained a mixture of Greek, Italian, Turkish, Bulgarian and Albanian words. It should not be supposed that Vlach-speakers could understand Romanian, for it bore no relation to their own dialect. The Vlach spoken in the Karadzova district, on the other hand, was so strongly influenced by Bulgarian that whole villages, like Kornitselovo, Krova (Kriva) and Tserna Reka, became entirely slavicized. In general, the Vlach-speaking Greeks of Turkish-ruled Greece preferred to read and write in Greek. This fact is attested in the following letter, written in the educated Greek idiom of the time, from the people of Tirnovo and Megarovo to the Patriarch and the Greek consular authorities in Macedonia:

It is true that a corrupt language, called Vlach, which is a mixture of different dialects, is still spoken by us; but this is the language of babyhood, and is abandoned as time passes, since all our children, both boys and girls, devote themselves to learning Greek. All of us here are civilized by the Greek language and use it in our commercial dealings. So our zeal on its behalf grows all the more as foreign powers increase their endeavours to bring about our political and religious disintegration. The efforts of the foreigners who have been sent to us from Wallachia will never achieve their object... .[9].

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[1]. AYE, Macedonian Consulates, Serres, 12 May 1904, No 6, report by K. Tsorbadzo-glou to A. Romanos, in which the Muslim population of Macedonia is divided into: Albanian Muslims (in the northernmost sections of Western Macedonia); Pomak Muslims (in the northernmost areas of Eastern Macedonia); Konyars (in the environs of Lake Dojran and Avret Chisar); Muslims settled in the Karadzova region (Slavonic-speaking to the east and Vlach-speaking to the west), who were genuine Greeks who had embraced the Muslim faith at the beginning of the nineteenth century; Turks descended from Evrenos Bey living on the Gianitsa-Vodena plain; and finally Greek-speaking Turks from Veria. For further details of the make-up of the population of Macedonia, see A. Vacalopoulos, Ιστορία της Μακεδονίας (1354-1833), pp. 49-55, 235-7.
[2]. Evangelos Kofos, Ό υπόδουλος ελληνισμός από το 1833 ως το 1881 (Μακεδονία)', Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, (Athens, 1977), vol. 13, pp. 379-80; idem, Αγώνες για την απελευθέρωση 1830-1912, pp. 451-2; Stefanos I. Papadopoulos, Εκπαιδευτική και κοινωνική δραστηριότητα του ελληνισμού της Μακεδονίας κατά τον τελευταίο αιώνα της τουρκοκρατίας, pp. 10-11; Κ. Vakalopoulos, Ο Βόρειος ελληνισμός κατά την πρώιμη φάση του μακεδόνικου αγώνα (1878-1894), ρ. 262. Concerning Macedonia's demographic and ethnological development after the second half of the nineteenth century, see Dr J. Cvijic, Remarks on the Ethnography of the Macedonian Slavs, pp. 19-34; J. Ivanoff, La Region de Cavalla (Berne, 1918), pp. 61-6; idem, La Question Macedonienne aupoint de vue historique, ethnographique et statistique (Paris, 1920), pp. 163-87, for Russian, Turkish, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Greek statistics; F. Adanir, Die Makedonische Frage, pp. 4f.
[3.] Giovanni Amadori-Virgilj, La Questione Rumeliota (Macedonia-Vecchia Serbia-Albania - Epiro) e la politico italiana (Bitonto, 1908), vol. 1, p. 24.
[4]. E. Kofos, op. cit., Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, vol. 13, p. 381; idem, Αγώνες για την απελευθέρωση (1830-1912), ρ. 452; Κ. Vakalopoulos, Ο Βόρειος ελληνισμός κατά την πρώιμη φάση του μακεδόνικου αγώνα (1878-1894), ρ. 20.
[5]. Ε. Kofos, op. cit., Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, ρ. 381.
[6]. Edward Stanford, Carte ethnologique de la Turquie d'Europe et de la Grece (Paris, 1877), pp. 18-19.
[7]. K. Vakalopoulos, op. cit., pp. 92-3, 94-5, including bibliography.
[8]. Op. cit., pp. 102-3.
[9]. Op. cit., pp. 93, 62.


for fair use only

source:
Kostandinos A. Vakalopoulos, Modern History of Macedonia 1830-1912, Barbounakis 1987, pages 47-49