Macedonia History

 An overview map of the Republic of Macedonia by the American Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, from 1994 shows among other details "occupied Macedonian territories". The overview map is entitled "The former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, summary map", the United States Central Intelligence Agency is named as the contributor. The map was published in Washington, D.C. by the Agency in 1994, three years after the independence of the Republic of Macedonia. "Historical Macedonia" On the overview map we find a smaller map on the lower right side, which undoubtedly belongs to the column "Eras of Historical Control" (times of historical control). We see the borders of historical Macedonia drawn with blue markings. The marking covers areas in four countries: The Republic of Macedonia ("Vardar-Macedonia"), Greece (Aegean-Macedonia), Bulgaria (Pirin-Macedonia) and Albania (around Lake Ohrid). As a little legend we discover a remark on the map ...

 Taken from Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine The Macedonian Minority of Northern Greece June 1995, Author: Loring M. Danforth During the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia, world attention has focused quite understandably on the horrors of the killing and the ethnic cleansing which have been taking place in Croatia and Bosnia. By contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to Macedonia; in large part, I suspect, because the situation there has, until now at least, remained so peaceful. Historically, however, Macedonia has often been a major source of conflict and instability in the Balkans. Even now, it lies at the center of a bitter dispute between Greeks and Macedonians over which group has the right to identify itself as Macedonians. This latest phase of the Macedonian Question involves two major issues: the human rights of the Macedonian minority in northern Greece, and the international recognition of the Republic of Macedonia. This controversy, in many ways...

 From the " Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups " a map showing the language area of the Macedonian language. The map was published in 1980 and shows the spread of the Macedonian language, which clearly extends beyond the borders of todays Republic Macedonia. You can see a large part of northern Greece marked as a Macedonian-speaking area. Officially, Greece does not recognize the existence of a Macedonian language (as well as a Macedonian minority or other ethnic minorities in general) in the country. Macedonian-speaking Greek citizens are succinctly (and for political reasons since the 1930s) referred to as "Slavophone Greeks". The Macedonian speakers in Northern Greece also have no opportunities to learn their mother tongue, or to speak it publicly. This was even prohibited earlier.  Macedonian is therefore mostly only spoken in the domestic family circle. In the youthful Macedonian population of Northern Greece, the proportion of Macedonian-speaking p...

  In the New York Times article of November 3, 1895 entitled "Unkown Macedonia", we can discover a description of the borders of Macedonia. As an introduction the autor wrote " that practically nothing is known about Macedonia ", this statement can also be transferred to the present day, some things are known about Macedonia, but a lot is not and some is presented in a distorted way by certain parties according to their own opinion. Macedonia's borders are explained in the article on the basis of geographical conditions, the three rivers Vardar, Struma and Bistrica are listed as well as the important mountains such as mount Olymp, Rhodope and Shar-Planina. Unfortunately, the author left out a list of important locations to shape the borders around, but this is obvious from the geographic information. Macedonia is called one of the " most attractive and picturesque landscapes in Europe " by the author, " with magnificent forests, wild rivers, wonde...

Rome and Macedonia fought for almost 70 years in the "Roman-Macedonian Wars" for supremacy over ancient Greece. The Greeks allied themselves with the Romans to free themselves from the "Macedonian yoke". Together with several Greek city-states, the Romans defeated the Macedonians and Greece itself was declared free by the Roman general Flaminius. The occupying power of Rome then divided the kingdom of Macedonia into four parts. The political stance of Macedonia is also often cited as a dispute between Macedonia and Rome, because Macedonia's King Philip V allied himself in 215 BC. with Rome's big rival Hannibal, and Philip the Fifth went into battle as the first Macedonian king against Rome. Also the fact that with the newly created Roman protectorate "Illyricum" there was a direct threat to Macedonia's king at his national borders, so that the alliance between Philip V and Hannibal seems understandable to the geo-political situation at the time...

The New World: Problems in Political Geography The new world; problems in political geography by Bowman, Isaiah, 1878-1950 Published: 1921 Topics: World politics, World War, 1914-1918 -- Territorial questions, Boundaries Raed full Book here:

Throughout its history, Macedonia has always been the subject of conquering by its neighboring countries. However, the neighbors, aspiring to expand their territory into Macedonia, were aware they would not succeed if not for the support from the big forces. There are two British documents, dating back to the 1880s, which are a testament to Greece’s efforts to receive the support of some of the big forces in order to expand its territory into Macedonia. The first one refers to an article published in the pro­government newspaper “Ora”, which reflect the views of the government, led by Trikoupis , immediately before the visit of the Austro­Hungarian crown prince of Athens in March 1885. Greece wanted to win over Wien’s support in order to get Thessaloniki in exchange for Greek guarantees about Austro­Hungary’s trading interests in the Aegean Sea. The second document, dating back to 1888, refers to the possibility of an alliance between Greece and Russia and an agreement betw...

The Untamed Balkans by Frederic W. L. Kovacs Published: 1941 Publisher: Modern Age Books Pages 263 Language: English Call number: 9125 Book contributor: Universal Digital Library Collection: universallibrary View Full Book on archive.org HERE

The Hellenic army is burning all slavophonic villages and kills all slavophones it captures! It can be seen from the letters by Greek soldiers sent from the front the horror that the Macedonian population in the towns and villages under Greek occupation faced. The bloody collection of about hundred letters should have been delivered to the addresses through the Greek Army’s military post office, but after it was captured by the Bulgarian Army in Razlog on 14 July 1913, the letters were made public. It is a fearsome collection of authentic testimonies that were taken to the State Archives in Sofia in 1913, as Ljubomir Miletic PhD claims. In those letters, the Greek soldiers bragged to their relatives and friends that they hadn’t left a single Slavophone alive wherever they went, that they had raped all the Slavic Macedonian women and that they had burned all the Slavophonic villages. One hundred years ago After the Ottoman army left Macedonia, Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks wante...

"...Greece wanted the rest of European Turkey; so did Bulgaria. Both Greece and Yugoslavia contemplated a division of Albania. ... Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria all wanted more of Macedonia. There was fine talk of saving civilization and fighting for right and honor; undermeath were calculations of realpolitic.  In the hayday atmosphere of 1919, it was madness not to grab as much as possible . Balkan statesmen claimed to admire Wilson; they talked the language of self-setermination, justice and international cooperation, and they produced petitions, said to represent the voice of the people, to bolster their old-style land grabbing .  They showed beautifully drawn maps. 'It would take a huge monograph,' wrote an American expert, ' to contain an analysis of all the types of map forgeries that the war and the peace conference called for .  ...It was in the Balkans that the use of this process reached its most brilliant climax.' ...." ( Margaret...