Macedonia

Etymology

Both proper nouns Makedṓn and Makednós are morphologically derived from the Ancient Greek adjective makednós meaning "tall, slim", and are related to the term Macedonia.

Boundaries and Terminology

Prior to its expansion under Philip II, the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, to which the modern region owes its name, lay within the central and western parts of the current Greek province of Macedonia.

The Roman province of Macedonia consisted of what is today northern and central Greece, much of the geographical area of the Republic of North Macedonia and southeast Albania. In late Roman times, the provincial boundaries were reorganized to form the Diocese of Macedonia, consisting of most of modern mainland Greece, Crete, southern Albania, southwest Bulgaria, and most of Republic of North Macedonia.

In the Byzantine Empire, a province under the name of Macedonia was carved out of the original Theme of Thrace, which was well east of the Struma River. This thema variously included parts of Thrace and gave its name to the Macedonian dynasty. Hence, Byzantine documents of this era that mention Macedonia are most probably referring to the Macedonian theme. The parts of Macedonia, on the other hand, which were ruled by the First Bulgarian Empire throughout the 9th and the 10th century, were incorporated into the Byzantine Empire in 1018 as the Themе of Bulgaria.

With the gradual conquest of southeastern Europe by the Ottomans in the late 14th century, the name of Macedonia disappeared as an administrative designation for several centuries and was rarely displayed on maps.

The name was again revived to mean a distinct geographical region in the 19th century, defining the region bounded by Mount Olympus, the Pindus range, mounts Shar and Osogovo, the western Rhodopes, the lower course of the river Mesta (Greek Nestos) and the Aegean Sea, developing roughly the same borders that it has today.

History

Neolithic period

While Macedonia shows signs of human habitation as old as the Paleolithic period (among which is the Petralona cave with the oldest European humanoid), the earliest known settlements, such as Nea Nikomedeia in Imathia (today's Greek Macedonia), date back 9,000 years. The houses at Nea Nikomedeia were constructed—as were most structures throughout the Neolithic in northern Greece—of wattle and daub on a timber frame. The cultural assemblage includes well-made pottery in simple shapes with occasional decoration in white on a red background, clay female figurines of the 'rod-headed' type known from Thessaly to the Danube Valley, stone axes and adzes, chert blades, and ornaments of stone including curious 'nose plugs' of uncertain function. The assemblage of associated objects differs from one house to the next, suggesting some degree of craft specialisation had already been established from the beginning of the site's history. The farming economy was based on the cultivation of cereal crops such as wheat and barley and pulses and on the herding of sheep and goats, with some cattle and pigs. Hunting played a relatively minor role in the economy. Surviving from 7000 to 5500 BCE, this Early Neolithic settlement was occupied for over a thousand years.

The Middle Neolithic period (c. 5500 to 4500 BCE) is at present best represented at Servia in the Haliacmon Valley in western Macedonia, where the typical red-on-cream pottery in the Sesklo style emphasises the settlement's southern orientation. Pottery of this date has been found at a number of sites in Central and Eastern Macedonia but so far none has been extensively excavated.

The Late Neolithic period (c. 4500 to 3500 BCE) is well represented by both excavated and unexcavated sites throughout the region (though in Eastern Macedonia levels of this period are still called Middle Neolithic according to the terminology used in the Balkans). Rapid changes in pottery styles, and the discovery of fragments of pottery showing trade with quite distant regions, indicate that society, economy and technology were all changing rapidly. Among the most important of these changes were the start of copper working, convincingly demonstrated by Renfrew to have been learnt from the cultural groups of Bulgaria and Roumania to the North. Principal excavated settlements of this period include Makryialos and Paliambela near the western shore of the Thermaic gulf, Thermi to the south of Thessaloniki and Sitagroi and Dikili Tas in the Drama plain. Some of these sites were densely occupied and formed large mounds (known to the local inhabitants of the region today as 'toumbas'). Others were much less densely occupied and spread for as much as a kilometer (Makryialos). Both types are found at the same time in the same districts and it is presumed that differences in social organisation are reflected by these differences in settlement organisation. Some communities were clearly concerned to protect themselves with different kinds of defensive arrangements: ditches at Makryialos and concentric walls at Paliambela. The best preserved buildings were discovered at Dikili Tas, where long timber-framed structures had been organised in rows and some had been decorated with bulls' skulls fastened to the outside of the walls and plastered over with clay.

History from the 7th century BC to Roman conquest

In classical times, the modern region of Macedonia comprised parts of what at the time was known as Lower Macedonia, Upper Macedonia, Paionia, Illyria and Thrace. Among others, in its lands were located the kingdom of Macedon, the kingdom of Paeonia and historical tribes like the Agrianes, Pelagonia and part of Dardania, the Chalcidian League and other Greek colonies like Amphipolis. Prior to the Macedonian ascendancy, parts of southern Macedonia were populated by the Bryges, while western, (i. e., Upper) Macedonia, was inhabited by Macedonian and Illyrian tribes. Whilst numerous wars are later recorded between the Illyrian and Macedonian Kingdoms, the Bryges might have co-existed peacefully with the Macedonians. In the time of Archaic Greece, Paeonia, whose exact boundaries are obscure, originally included the whole Axius river valley and the surrounding areas, in what is now the northern part of the Greek region of Macedonia, most of the Republic of North Macedonia, and a small part of western Bulgaria.

Prior to its expansion under Philip II, the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, to which the modern region owes its name, lay entirely within the central and western parts of the current Greek province of Macedonia.

By 500 BCE, the ancient kingdom of Macedon was centered somewhere between the southern slopes of Lower Olympus and the lowest reach of the Haliakmon river. Since 512/511 BCE, the kingdom of Macedonia was subject to the Persians, but after the battle of Plataia it regained its independence. Under Philip II and Alexander the Great, Macedon forcefully expanded in the wider region.

Alexander's conquests produced a lasting extension of Hellenistic culture and thought across the ancient Near East, but his empire broke up on his death. His generals divided the empire between them, founding their own states and dynasties. The kingdom of Macedon was taken by Cassander, who ruled it until his death in 297 BC. At the time, Macedonian control over the Thracian and Illyrian states of the region slowly waned, although the kingdom of Macedonia remained the most potent regional power. This period also saw several Celtic invasions into the Balkans. However, the Celts were successfully repelled by Antigonus Gonatas, leaving little overall influence on the region.

Expansion of Kingdom of Macedon:

Roman province of Macedonia (146 BC–395 AD)

Macedonian sovereignty in the region was brought to an end at the hands of the rising power of Rome in the 2nd century BC. Philip V of Macedon took his kingdom to war against the Romans in two wars during his reign (221–179 BC). The First Macedonian War (215–205 BC) was fairly successful for the Macedonians but Philip was decisively defeated in the Second Macedonian War in (200–197 BC). Although he survived war with Rome, his successor Perseus of Macedon (reigned 179–168 BC) did not; having taken Macedon into the Third Macedonian War in (171–168 BC), he lost his kingdom when he was defeated. Macedonia was initially divided into four districts subject to Rome before finally being annexed in 146 BC as a Roman province. Around this time, vulgar Latin was introduced in the Balkans by Latin-speaking colonists and military personnel. With the division of the Roman Empire into west and east in 298 AD, Macedonia came under the rule of Rome's Byzantine successors. The population of the entire region was, however, depleted by destructive invasions of various Gothic and Hun tribes c. 300 – 5th century AD. Despite this, other parts of the Byzantine empire continued to flourish, in particular some coastal cities such as Thessaloniki became important trade and cultural centres.

Macedonia contested between Byzantine, Bulgarian, Latin and Serbian Empires

Despite the Byzantine empire's power, from the beginning of the 6th century the Byzantine dominions were subject to frequent raids by various Slavic tribes which, in the course of centuries, eventually resulted in drastic demographic and cultural changes in the Empire's Balkan provinces. Although traditional scholarship attributes these changes to large-scale colonizations by Slavic-speaking groups, it has been proposed that a generalized dissipation of Roman identity might have commenced in the 3rd century, especially among rural provincials who were crippled by harsh taxation and famines. Given this background, penetrations carried by successive waves of relatively small numbers of Slavic warriors and their families might have been capable of assimilating large numbers of indigenes into their cultural model, which was sometimes seen as a more attractive alternative. In this way and in the course of time, great parts of Macedonia came to be controlled by Slavic-speaking communities. Despite numerous attacks on Thessaloniki, the city held out, and Byzantine-Roman culture continued to flourish, although Slavic cultural influence steadily increased.

The Slavic settlements organized themselves along tribal and territorially based lines which were referred to by Byzantine Greek historians as "Sklaviniai". The Sklaviniai continued to intermittently assault the Byzantine Empire, either independently, or aided by Bulgar or Avar contingents. Around 680 AD a "Bulgar" group (which was largely composed of the descendants of former Roman Christians taken captive by the Avars), led by Khan Kuber (theorized to have belonged to the same clan as the Danubian Bulgarian khan Asparukh), settled in the Pelagonian plain, and launched campaigns to the region of Thessaloniki. When the Empire could spare imperial troops, it attempted to regain control of its lost Balkan territories. By the time of Constans II a significant number of the Slavs of Macedonia were captured and transferred to central Asia Minor where they were forced to recognize the authority of the Byzantine emperor and serve in his ranks. In the late 7th century, Justinian II again organized a massive expedition against the Sklaviniai and Bulgars of Macedonia. Launching from Constantinople, he subdued many Slavic tribes and established the Theme of Thrace in the hinterland of the Great City, and pushed on into Thessaloniki. However, on his return he was ambushed by the Slavo-Bulgars of Kuber, losing a great part of his army, booty, and subsequently his throne. Despite these temporary successes, rule in the region was far from stable since not all of the Sklaviniae were pacified, and those that were often rebelled. The emperors rather resorted to withdrawing their defensive line south along the Aegean coast, until the late 8th century. Although a new theme—that of "Macedonia"—was subsequently created, it did not correspond to today's geographic territory, but one farther east (centred on Adrianople), carved out of the already existing Thracian and Helladic themes.

Macedonia under the Ottoman Empire

Since the middle of the 14th century, the Ottoman threat was looming in the Balkans, as the Ottomans defeated the various Christian principalities, whether Serb, Bulgarian or Greek. After the Ottoman victory in the Battle of Maritsa in 1371, most of Macedonia accepted vassalage to the Ottomans and by the end of the 14th century the Ottoman Empire gradually annexed the region. The final Ottoman capture of Thessalonica (1430) was seen as the prelude to the fall of Constantinople itself. Macedonia remained a part of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 500 years, during which time it gained a substantial Turkish minority. Thessaloniki later become the home of a large Sephardi Jewish population following the expulsions of Jews after 1492 from Spain.

Over the centuries Macedonia had become a multicultural region. The historical references mention Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, Albanians, Gypsies, Jews, Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians. It is often claimed that macédoine, the fruit or vegetable salad, was named after the area's very mixed population, as it could be witnessed at the end of the 19th century. From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century the Slavic-speaking population in Macedonia was identified mostly as Bulgarian.

Macedonian identities and Rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire

During the period of Bulgarian National Revival many Bulgarians from these regions supported the struggle for creation of Bulgarian cultural educational and religious institutions, including Bulgarian Exarchate. Eventually, in the 20th century, 'Bulgarians' came to be understood as synonymous with 'Macedonian Slavs' and, eventually, 'ethnic Macedonians'. Krste Misirkov, a philologist and publicist, wrote his work "On the Macedonian Matters" (1903), for which he is heralded by Macedonians as one of the founders of the Macedonian nation.

After the revival of Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian statehood in the 19th century, the Ottoman lands in Europe that became identified as "Macedonia", were contested by all three governments, leading to the creation in the 1890s and 1900s of rival armed groups who divided their efforts between fighting the Turks and one another. The most important of these was the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which organized the so-called Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising in 1903, fighting for an autonomous or independent Macedonian state, and the Greek efforts from 1904 until 1908 (Greek Struggle for Macedonia). Diplomatic intervention by the European powers led to plans for an autonomous Macedonia under Ottoman rule.

The restricted borders of the modern Greek state at its inception in 1830 disappointed the inhabitants of northern Greece (Epirus and Macedonia). Addressing these concerns in 1844, the Greek Prime Minister Kolettis addressed the constitutional assembly in Athens that "the Kingdom of Greece is not Greece; it is only a part, the smallest and poorest, of Greece. The Greek is not only he who inhabits the kingdom, but also he who lives in Ioannina, or Thessaloniki, or Serres, or Odrin" . He mentions cities and islands that were under Ottoman possession as composing the Great Idea (Greek: Μεγάλη Ιδέα, Megáli Idéa) which meant the reconstruction of the classical Greek world or the revival of the Byzantine Empire. The important idea here is that for Greece, Macedonia was a region with large Greek populations expecting annexation to the new Greek state.

The 1878 Congress of Berlin changed the Balkan map again. The treaty restored Macedonia and Thrace to the Ottoman Empire. Serbia, Romania and Montenegro were granted full independence, and some territorial expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. Russia would maintain military advisors in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia until May 1879. Austria-Hungary was permitted to occupy Bosnia, Herzegovina and the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. The Congress of Berlin also forced Bulgaria, newly given autonomy by the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano, to return over half of its newly gained territory to the Ottoman Empire. This included Macedonia, a large part of which was given to Bulgaria, due to Russian pressure and the presence of significant numbers of Bulgarians and adherents to the Bulgarian Exarchate. The territorial losses dissatisfied Bulgaria; this fuelled the ambitions of many Bulgarian politicians for the following seventy years, who wanted to review the treaty – by peaceful or military means and to reunite all lands which they claimed had a Bulgarian majority. Besides, Serbia was now interested in the Macedonian lands, until then only Greece was Bulgaria's main contender, which after the addition of Thessaly to Greece in (1881) was bordering Macedonia. Thus, the Berlin Congress renewed the struggle for Turkey in Europe, including the so-called Macedonia region, rather than setting up a permanent regime. In the following years, all of the neighboring states struggled over Turkey in Europe; they were only kept at bay by their own restraints, the Ottoman Army and the territorial ambitions of the Great Powers in the region.

Balkan Wars and World War I

The imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire was welcomed by the Balkan states, as it promised to restore their European territory. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 proved a nationalistic movement thwarting the peoples' expectations of the empire's modernization and hastened the end of the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans. To this end, an alliance was struck among the Balkan states in Spring 1913. The First Balkan War, which lasted six weeks, commenced in August 1912, when Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, whose forces ultimately engaged four different wars in Thrace, Macedonia, Northern and Southern Albania and Kosovo. The Macedonian campaign was fought in atrocious conditions. The retreat of the Ottoman army from Macedonia succeeded the desperate effort of the Greek and Bulgarian forces to reach the city of Thessalonica, the "single prize of the first Balkan War" for whose status no prior agreements were done. In this case possession would be equal to acquisition. The Greek forces entered the city first liberating officially, a progress only positive for them. Glenny says: "for the Greeks it was a good war".

In the First Balkan War, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro occupied almost all Ottoman-held territories in Europe. Bulgaria bore the brunt of the war fighting on the Thracian front against the main Ottoman forces. Both her war expenditures and casualties in the First Balkan War were higher than those of Serbia, Greece and Montenegro combined. Macedonia itself was occupied by Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian forces. The Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of London in May 1913 assigned the whole of Macedonia to the Balkan League, without, specifying the division of the region, to promote problems between the allies. Dissatisfied with the creation of an autonomous Albanian state, which denied her access to the Adriatic, Serbia asked for the suspension of the pre-war division treaty and demanded from Bulgaria greater territorial concessions in Macedonia. Later in May the same year, Greece and Serbia signed a secret treaty in Thessaloniki stipulating the division of Macedonia according to the existing lines of control. Both Serbia and Greece, as well as Bulgaria, started to prepare for a final war of partition.

In June 1913, Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand, without consulting the government, and without any declaration of war, ordered Bulgarian troops to attack the Greek and Serbian troops in Macedonia, initiating the Second Balkan War. The Bulgarian army was in full retreat in all fronts. The Serbian army chose to stop its operations when achieved all its territorial goals and only then the Bulgarian army took a breath. During the last two days the Bulgarians managed to achieve a defensive victory against the advancing Greek army in the Kresna Gorge. However at the same time the Romanian army crossed the undefended northern border and easily advanced towards Sofia. Romania interfered in the war, in order to satisfy its territorial claims against Bulgaria. The Ottoman Empire also interfered, easily reassuming control of Eastern Thrace with Edirne. The Second Balkan War, also known as Inter-Ally War, left Bulgaria only with the Struma valley and a small part of Thrace with minor ports at the Aegean sea. Vardar Macedonia was incorporated into Serbia and thereafter referred to as South Serbia. Southern (Aegean) Macedonia was incorporated into Greece and thereafter was referred to as northern Greece. The region suffered heavily during the Second Balkan War. During its advance at the end of June, the Greek army set fire to the Bulgarian quarter of the town of Kilkis and over 160 villages around Kilkis and Serres driving some 50,000 refugees into Bulgaria proper. The Bulgarian army retaliated by burning the Greek quarter of Serres and by arming Muslims from the region of Drama which led to a massacre of Greek civilians.

World War II

During World War II the boundaries of the region shifted yet again. When the Nazi German forces occupied the area, most of Yugoslav Macedonia and part of Greek Macedonia were transferred for administration to Bulgaria. During the Bulgarian administration of Eastern Greek Macedonia, some 100,000 Bulgarian refugees from the region were resettled there and perhaps as many Greeks were deported or fled to other parts of Greece. Western Aegean Macedonia was occupied by Italy, with the western parts of Yugoslav Macedonia being annexed to Italian-occupied Albania. The remainder of Greek Macedonia (including all of the coast) was occupied by Nazi Germany. One of the worst episodes of the Holocaust happened here when 60,000 Jews from Thessaloniki were deported to extermination camps in occupied Poland. Only a few thousand survived.

Bulgaria joined the Axis powers in 1941, when German troops prepared to invade Greece from Romania reached the Bulgarian borders and demanded permission to pass through Bulgarian territory. Threatened by direct military confrontation, Tsar Boris III had no choice but to join the Tripartite Pact, which officially happened on 1 March 1941. There was little popular opposition, since the Soviet Union was in a non-aggression pact with Germany.

On 6 April 1941, despite having officially joined the Axis Powers, the Bulgarian government maintained a course of military passivity during the initial stages of the invasion of Yugoslavia and the Battle of Greece. As German, Italian, and Hungarian troops crushed Yugoslavia and Greece, the Bulgarians remained on the sidelines. The Yugoslav government surrendered on 17 April. The Greek government was to hold out until 30 April. On 20 April, the period of Bulgarian passivity ended. The Bulgarian Army entered the Aegean region. The goal was to gain an Aegean Sea outlet in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace and much of eastern Serbia. The so-called Vardar Banovina was divided between Bulgaria and Italians which occupied West Macedonia. The Bulgarian occupation of Macedonia was technically viewed as interim administration in anticipation of a conclusive internationally recognized settlement of the legal status of the so-called "New Lands" after the end of the Second World War. Bulgarian administration greatly contributed to economic rebirth of the region – the poorest one in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia – through introducing measures such as allotment of arable lands to local landless peasantry and by establishing plenty of new elementary and secondary schools. Local population with Bulgarian ethnic origins was given full Bulgarian citizenship. In general, Bulgarians themselves regarded the incorporation of former Yugoslav Vardar Banovina as a way to achieve national unity. Two new oblasts (provinces) were formed and most public vacancies were filled up with representatives of the local population.

Post–World War II

Greek Macedonia encompasses entirely the southern part of the wider region of Macedonia. Greek Macedonia incorporates most of the territories of Argeads' Macedon, including its capitals Aigai and Pella. Before the expansion of Macedonia under Philip in the 4th century BC, the kingdom of the Macedonians covered an area corresponding roughly to the modern Greek regions of Western and Central Macedonia. Greek Macedonia is the largest by size and the second-largest by population traditional geographic region of Greece, with its largest city Thessaloniki, being Greece's second largest city. The coast was heavily developed for tourism, particularly on the Halkidiki peninsula.

The Slavic speaking minority of Greek Macedonia is not recognised by the Greek state as an ethnic minority. Even as recently as the 1990s Greece has been criticised by international human rights activists for "harassing" ethnic Macedonian political activists, who, nonetheless, are free to maintain their own political party, Rainbow.

Under Georgi Dimitrov, Soviet loyalist and head of the Comintern, Bulgaria initially accepted the existence of a distinct Macedonian national identity. It had been agreed that Pirin Macedonia would join Yugoslav Macedonia and for this reason the population was forced to declare itself "Macedonian" in the 1946 census. This caused resentment and many people were imprisoned or interned in rural areas outside Pirin Macedonia. After Tito's split from the Soviet bloc this position was abandoned and the existence of a Macedonian ethnicity or language was denied.

Yugoslav Macedonia was the only region where Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito had not developed a Partisan movement because of the Bulgarian occupation of a large part of that area. To improve the situation, in 1943 the League of Communists of Macedonia was established in Tetovo with the prospect that it would support the resistance against the Axis. In the meantime, the Bulgarians' violent repression led to loss of moral support from the civilian population. By the end of the war "a Macedonian national consciousness hardly existed beyond a general conviction, gained from bitter experience, that rule from Sofia was as unpalatable as that from Belgrade. But if there were no Macedonian nation there was a Communist Party of Macedonia, around which the People's Republic of Macedonia was built".

Tito thus separated Yugoslav Macedonia from Serbia after the war. It became a republic of the new federal Yugoslavia, as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1946, with its capital at Skopje. Tito also promoted the concept of a separate Macedonian nation, as a means of severing the ties of the Slav population of Yugoslav Macedonia with Bulgaria. A separate Macedonian Orthodox Church was established, splitting off from the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Communist Party sought to deter pro-Bulgarian sentiment, which was punished severely.

Demographics

During medieval and modern times, Macedonia has been known as a Balkan region inhabited by many ethnic groups.

Current Demographics

The current demographics of the region include:

Greek Macedonians self-identify culturally and regionally as "Macedonians" (Greek: Μακεδόνες, Makedónes). They form the majority of the region's population (~51%). They number approximately 2,500,000 and, today, they live almost entirely in Greek Macedonia. The Greek Macedonian population is mixed, with other indigenous groups and with a large influx of Greek refugees descending from Asia Minor, Pontic Greeks, and East Thracian Greeks in the early 20th century. This is due to the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, during which over 1.2 million Anatolian Greek refugees replaced departing Turks and settled in Greece, including 638,000 in the Greek province of Macedonia. Smaller Greek minorities exist in Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia, although their numbers are difficult to ascertain. In official census results, only 86 persons declared themselves Greeks in Bulgarian Macedonia (Blagoevgrad Province) in 2011, out of a total of 1,379 in all of Bulgaria; while only 294 persons described themselves as Greeks in the 2021 census in the Republic of North Macedonia.

Ethnic Macedonians self-identify as "Macedonians" (Macedonian: Македонци, Makedonci) in an ethnic sense as well as in the regional sense. They are the second largest ethnic group in the region. They form the majority of the population in the Republic of North Macedonia where according to the 2021 census, approximately 1,100,000 people declared themselves as Macedonians. Being a South Slavic ethnic group, they are also referred to as "Macedonian Slavs". In 1999, the Greek Helsinki Monitor estimated a significant minority of ethnic Macedonians ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 that exist among the Slavic-speakers of Greek Macedonia. There has not been a census in Greece on the question of mother tongue since 1951, when the census recorded 41,017 Slavic-speakers, mostly in the West Macedonia periphery of Greece. The linguistic classification of the Slavic dialects spoken by these people are nowadays typically classified as Macedonian, with the exception of some eastern dialects which can also be classified as Bulgarian, although the people themselves call their native language a variety of terms, including makedonski, makedoniski ("Macedonian"), slaviká (Greek: σλαβικά, "Slavic"), dópia or entópia (Greek: εντόπια, "local/indigenous [language]"), balgàrtzki, bògartski ("Bulgarian") along with naši ("our own") and stariski ("old"). The term "Slavomacedonian", though originally acceptable, can be viewed as derogatory by ethnic Macedonians in Greek Macedonia. Most Slavic-speakers declare themselves as ethnic Greeks (Slavophone Greeks), although there are small groups espousing ethnic Macedonian and Bulgarian national identities, however some groups reject all these ethnic designations and prefer terms such as "natives" instead. The Macedonian minority in Albania are an officially recognised minority in Albania and are primarily concentrated around the Prespa region and Golo Brdo and are primarily Eastern Orthodox Christian with the exception of the later region where Macedonians are predominantly Muslim. In the 2011 Albanian census, 5,870 Albanian citizens declared themselves Macedonians. According to the latest Bulgarian census held in 2011, there are 561 people declaring themselves ethnic Macedonians in the Blagoevgrad Province of Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonia). The official number of ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria is 1,654.

Religion

Most present-day inhabitants of the region are Eastern Orthodox Christians, principally of the Bulgarian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Macedonian Orthodox and Serbian Orthodox Churches. Notable Muslim minorities are present among the Albanian, Bulgarian (Pomaks), Macedonian (Torbeš), Bosniak, and Turkish populations.

During the period of classical antiquity, main religion in the region of Macedonia was the Ancient Greek religion. After the Roman conquest of Macedonia, the Ancient Roman religion was also introduced. Many ancient religious monuments, dedicated to Greek and Roman deities are preserved in this region. During the period of Early Christianity, ecclesiastical structure was established in the region of Macedonia, and the see of Thessaloniki became the metropolitan diocese of the Roman province of Macedonia. The archbishop of Thessaloniki also became the senior ecclesiastical primate of the entire Eastern Illyricum, and in 535 his jurisdiction was reduced to the administrative territory of the Diocese of Macedonia. Later it came under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

During the Middle Ages and up to 1767, western and northern regions of Macedonia were under the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Ohrid. Northern fringes of the region (areas surrounding Skopje and Tetovo) had temporary jurisdiction under the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć. Both the Archbishopric of Ohrid and the Patriarchate of Peć became abolished and absorbed into the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in the middle of the 18th century. During the period of Ottoman rule, a partial islamization was also recorded. In spite of that, the Eastern Orthodox Christianity remained the dominant religion of local population.

During the 19th century, religious life in the region was strongly influenced by rising national movements. Several major ethnoreligious disputes arose in the region of Macedonia, main of them being schisms between the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and the newly created Bulgarian Exarchate (1872), and later between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the newly created Macedonian Orthodox Church (1967).