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This article is about modern Macedonian nation; for the Ancient Macedonians, see Ancient Macedonians. For other meanings, see Macedonian.

The Macedonians (Македонци, Makedonci) - also referred to as Macedonian Slavs - are a South Slavic ethnic group who live in the southern Balkans region of Europe. They speak the Macedonian language, a South Slavic language, and most of them are part of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. The majority of Macedonians today inhabit parts of the geographical region of Macedonia along with other ethnic groups, mainly Greeks, Albanians and Bulgarians, the largest single population of Macedonians inhabiting the Republic of Macedonia. The modern Macedonian language is closely related to all languages belonging to the Eastern group of South Slavic languages.

Areas of settlement

The vast majority of Macedonians live in the valley of the river Vardar, the central region of the Republic of Macedonia, where they form about 64.18% of the total population. Smaller numbers live in eastern Albania, south-western Bulgaria, northern Greece, and southern Serbia and Montenegro, mostly abutting the border areas of the Republic of Macedonia. A large number of Macedonians have immigrated overseas to Australia, USA, Canada and in many European countries: Germany, UK, Italy, Austria, etc.

Major Populations of Macedonians by country

See also:The present situation of Macedonians in neighbouring countries

• Republic of Macedonia: 1,297,981 (2002 census)
• Serbia and Montenegro: 25,847 (2002 census)
• Bulgaria: 5,071 (2001 census). Krassimir Kanev, chairman of the NGO Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, claimed 15,000 - 25,000 in 1998 . In the same report Macedonian nationalists (Popov et al, 1989) claim that 200,000 Macedonians live in Bulgaria.
• Albania: 5,000 (1989 census) - external estimates vary from 10,000 to 30,000 . Macedonian sources have claimed that there are 120,000 - 350,000 Macedonians in Albania .
• Greece: Unknown - The Hutchinson Encyclopedia estimates the number of the Macedonian speakers living in Greece between 100,000 - 200,000 (1994). Also Ethnologue lists 180,180 speakers of Slavic in Greece, mentioning that the language is also called Macedonian or Macedonian Slavic. The government of the Republic of Macedonia in 1993 claimed that there are between 230,000 and 270,000 Macedonians living in northern Greece (page 13). Greece has not conducted a census on the question of mother tongue since 1951, when 41,017 speakers of the Slavic languages were recorded. It should be noted that "Slavic" in this context refers collectively to all Slavic languages spoken in Greece, not just Macedonian. The Greek government claims that at present there is no ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece .

Significant Macedonian communities can also be found in the traditional immigrant overseas countries, as well as in western European countries. It should be noted that Census data in European countries often does not take into account what ethnicity immigrates from the Republic of Macedonia, as is the case with Italy and Germany:

• Australia: The official number of Macedonians in Australia by ancestry of birthplace of parents is 82,000 (2001). Macedonians are mainly inhabited in the following Australian cities: Melbourne, Sydney, Wollongong, Canberra and Perth.
• Canada: The Canadian census in 2001 records 31,265 individuals claimed wholly- or partly- Macedonian heritage in Canada (2001), although community spokesmen have claimed that there are actually 100,000 - 150,000 Macedonians in Canada (see also Macedonian Canadians).
• USA: A significant Macedonian community can be found in the United States of America. The official number of Macedonians in the USA is 43,000 (2002). Macedonians are mainly inhabited in the following American states: Michigan, New York, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey .
• Germany: There are 61,000 citizens of the Republic of Macedonia in Germany (2001)
• Italy: There are 58,460 citizens of the Republic of Macedonia in Italy (2004)

Other significant Macedonian communities can also be found in the other western European countries such as Austria, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, etc.

Symbols

• Sun: The official flag of the Republic of Macedonia, adopted in 1995, is a yellow sun with eight broadening rays extending to the edges of the red field.
• Coat of Arms: After independence in 1992, the Republic of Macedonia retained the coat of arms adopted in 1946 by the People's Assembly of the People's Republic of Macedonia on its second extraordinary session held on July 27, 1946, later on altered by article 8 of the Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Macedonia. The coat-of-arms is composed by a double bent garland of ears of wheat, tobacco and poppy, tied by a ribbon with the embroidery of a traditional folk costume. In the centre of such a circular room there are mountains, rivers, lakes and the sun; where the ears join there is a red five-pointed star, a traditional symbol of Communism. All this is said to represent "the richness of our country, our struggle, and our freedom".
• Lion: The lion first appears in 1595 in the Korenich-Neorich coat of arms, where the coat of arms of Macedonia is included among with those of eleven other countries. On the coat of arms is a crown, inside a yellow crowned lion is depicted standing rampant, on a red background. On the bottom enclosed in a red and yellow border is written "Macedonia". Later versions of these coat of arms include a more detailed crown and lion with the word "Macedonia" written in a scroll like style. These coat of arms have also been adopted as the official emblem of VMRO-DPMNE, a Macedonian political party. Initially, it was adopted as a state symbol by Bulgaria.

Former official symbols

• The flag of the former Yugoslav Federal Republic of Macedonia (1945-1991)
• Sun: (official flag, 1992-1995) The Vergina Sun is occasionally used to represent the Macedonian people by the diaspora through associations and cultural groups. The Vergina Sun is believed to have been associated with ancient Macedonian kings such as Alexander the Great and Philip II. The symbol was discovered in the Greek region of Macedonia and Greeks regard it as an exclusively Greek symbol, unrelated to Slavic cultures and it is copyrighted under WIPO as a State Emblem of Greece . The Vergina sun on a red field was the first flag of the independent Republic of Macedonia, until it was removed from the state flag under an agreement reached between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece in September 1995. Nevertheless, the Vergina sun is still used unofficially as a national symbol by some groups in the country along with the new state flag.

History

Ancient period

The area where the present Macedonian nation lives is Macedonia, a famous historical region known from ancient times, mostly by Ancient Macedonians. This region, which is now divided between Bulgaria, Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, has been always inhabited by a variety of different people and nations. Although the present Macedonians are primarily the descendants of the Slavic tribes which settled Macedonia during the 6th and 7th century AD, it is presumed by some historians (Kanchov; Weigand) that these Slavic tribes probably absorbed some indigenous populations that they came upon in the area.

Arrival of Slavs

The Slavs are considered to start entering the area of Balkan Peninsula in the VI century, passing the Danube river and attacking the Byzantine settlements, fortresses, towns and villages. Many areas of Balkan Peninsula were gradually populated with the following Slav tribes: Dragovites, Velegezites,Berzites, Sagudates, Rinhines and other. Slavs were organized into many Sclavinaes as organized native-tribal units. This period is also known by very frequent battles between the Slavs and the Byzantines, for example, Slavs tried several times to overtake Salonica, but every time without success. One of those attacks took place in October 584, as Salonica celebrated the feast day of St. Demetrius.

Christianization

Slavic tribes in Macedonia accepted the Christianity as their own religion around the 9th century. The creators of Cyrillic alphabet, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius were promoters of the Christianity and Slavic literacy among the Slavic people. Their work was continued by the St. Clement of Ohrid and St.Naum of Ohrid as founders of the Ohrid Literary School.

Middle ages

From 997 to 1014 big part of the Balkan Peninsula and other areas as well were part of the Tsar Samuil kingdom of the First Bulgarian Empire. Samuil managed to expand his kingdom reaching Danube, Peloponnesus in current day Greece, Epirus and current day Albania, Zeta and Srem, current day Serbia. At the peak of his kingdom, Samuel moved the seat of his kingdom from the island of St. Achilles, Prespa to Ohrid where he was crowned as king. The remains of his castle are still present in the city of Ohrid. Samuil’s empire was destroyed by the Byzantine army headed by the emperor Basil II. The crucial battle was fought at the mountain of Belasica (now situated at the Macedonian-Bulgarian border) in 1014, where more than 50 000 soldiers of the Samuil’s kingdom were killed, whereas 15 000 captives were blinded. The Tsar died several days after this tragic history event. After this period, the region of nowadays Republic of Macedonia was taken by Byzantines.In the 14 century this area was part of the Serbian empire of Tsar Stefan Dušan.

Ottoman rule

This expansion of medieval states on the Balkan Peninsula was discontinued by the occupation of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century. The region of Macedonia remained part of the Ottoman Empire for the next 500 years, i.e. until 1912. During the rule of the Ottomans, the Macedonians organized a number of uprisings: Mariovo uprising (1564), Karposh uprising (1689), Kresna Uprising (1878) etc. Although Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria succeeded to liberate from the Ottoman rule by 1870, according to the decisions made on the Berlin Congress (1878) the territory of present Republic of Macedonia was left under the Ottoman rule.

Ilinden uprising

The most important uprising in the history of Macedonian people happened on August 2, 1903, on St. Elia’s Day. The rebellions succeeded to free several areas, including the town of Krushevo and its surroundings. Soon they declared the existence of the Krushevo Republic as the first republic on the Balkans with a President and Parliament with representatives of all ethnic communities. This Republic existed only for 10 days, ruined by the strong Turkish forces that demolished the town and surrounding villages. The uprising was leaded by the famous activists of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization organization (formed in Salonica in 1893): Goce Delchev, Jane Sandanski, Nikola Karev, Damjan Gruev, Pitu Guli, Lazo Trpovski etc.

Period after the Balkan wars

After the First Balkan War (1912) and Second Balkan War (1913) according to the Treaty of Bucharest, the region of Macedonia was divided as follows: southern part Aegean Macedonia fell under the Kingdom of Greece, northern part (today’s Republic of Macedonia) under the Kingdom of Serbia (later Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and north-eastern part Pirin Macedonia under the Kingdom of Bulgaria. One small part (1%) went to Albania. The Balkan Wars resulted in drastic changes to Macedonia's demographics after the Ottomans were defeated and forced out of the region. The territory of the present-day Republic of Macedonia came under the direct rule of Serbia (and later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and was sometimes termed "southern Serbia", and, together with a large portion of today's southern Serbia, it belonged officially to the newly formed Vardar banovina (district). An intense programme of "Serbianization" was implemented during the 1920s and 1930s when Belgrade enforced a Serbian cultural assimilation process on the region. Between the world wars in Serbia, Macedonian dialects were treated as a Serbian dialect (UCLA Language Material Sources, ). Only the literary Serbian language was taught, it was the language of government, education, media, and public life; even so Macedonian literature was tolerated as a local dialectal folkloristic form. The Serbian National Theatre in Skopje even performed some of the Macedonian language plays (now the classical drama pieces) (UCLA Language Material Sources, ). Greece adopted strongly repressive policies towards the Slavic population in its northern regions, mainly due to its experiences with Bulgaria's expansionist policy during the Second Balkan War. Many of those inhabiting north eastern Greece fled to Bulgaria or Serbia after the Balkan wars or were exchanged with native Greeks from Bulgaria under a population exchange treaty in the 1920s .

The slavophone Macedonians that stayed in north-western Greece were regarded as a potentially disloyal minority and came under severe pressure, with restrictions on their movements, cultural activities and political rights; many emigrated, for the most part to Canada, Australia, USA and eastern European countries like Bulgaria. A number of Slavic and Turkish place names and Slavic personal surnames were renamed during this period either by seeing their Greek pronunciation become official (eg. Lerin becoming Florina, or adopting new names, Nachev becoming Natsulis. A similar procedure was applied to Greek names in Bulgaria and Serbian Macedonia (eg. Nevrokopi becoming Goce Delchev). ) In Greece, there was a government sponsored process of Hellenization. Many of the border villages were closed to outsiders, ostensibly for security reasons. The Greek government and people have never recognized the existence of a distinct "Macedonian" ethnic group, as the term "Macedonian" is already reserved for the ethnic Greek population that has traditionally inhabited Greece's northern-most region (Macedonia (Greece)).

On August 10, 1920, upon signing the Treaty of Sèvres that "measures were being taken towards the opening of schools with instruction in the Slav language in the following school year of 1925/26". Thus, the primer intended for the "Slav-speaking minority" children in Greek Macedonia to learn their native language in school, entitled "ABECEDAR" , was offered as an argument in support of this statement. This primer, prepared by a special government commissioner was published by the Greek government in Athens in 1925, but was printed in a specially adapted Latin alphabet instead of the traditional Cyrillic, since Cyrillic was the official alphabet of neighbouring Bulgaria and Serbia. The book was to be held up as proof that a Macedonian Slavic tongue existed and that it was neither Bulgarian nor Serbian, but a distinct language protected and encouraged by the State . This would mean that the Greek government officially recognized for the first time a separate national entity of the Macedonians within Greece . But after fears from Serbia and Bulgaria that the Macedonians in their borders might demand the same rights, the Abecedar school books were confiscated and destroyed before they got into the reach of the children. HRW pg.42.

Second World War

During Second World War (1941-1945), Macedonians took part in the anti-fascist coalition. The uprising began in 1941 in the cities of Prilep and Kumanovo. There were anti-fascist movements in the Aegean Macedonia (in the towns of Florina/Lerin and Kastoria/Kostur headed by Lazo Trpovski and in the Pirin Macedonia (in Dupnica) headed by Parapunov. After the Second Word War, within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was created the People’s Republic of Macedonia. The Macedonians in the Pirin Macedonia were granted autonomy and certain cultural and ethnic rights in 1946, but these rights were revoked at the end of the decade at the height of the cold war. In the Aegean part of Macedonia there was a civil war in which the Macedonians took part hoping to acquire certain ethnic and cultural right; however at the end of the civil war many Macedonians were exiled.

After the Second World War

The Republic of Macedonia was proclaimed at the first session of the Antifascist Assembly for the People’s Liberation of Macedonia (on St. Elia’s Day – August 2, 1944). Later, by special Act, it became a constitutive part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In the next 50 years Republic of Macedonia was part of the Yugoslav federation. The first multi-party elections for representatives in the Parliament of the Republic of Macedonia were held on November 11th, 1990, establishing parliamentary democracy in Macedonia. In accordance with the Charter of the United Nations concerning self-determination and equal rights, the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia adopted the Declaration for International Recognition of the Republic of Macedonia on September 17th, 1991, which confirmed the will of the citizens to live in a sovereign and independent state. According to the Constitution adopted November 17th, 1991, the Republic of Macedonia is a sovereign, independent, democratic and social state. April 8, 1993, Macedonia becomes a UN member state.

Different views on the separate Macedonian identity

Historians generally date the arrival of the Slavs in Macedonia and the Balkans to the 6th or 7th centuries AD. The Macedonians had little or no political national identity of their own until the 20th century. Any Macedonian identity during the Byzantine centuries is mostly expressed through the Greek medium. Medieval sources traditionally describe them as Bulgarians, a definition which survived well into the period of Ottoman rule as attested by the Ottoman archives and by descriptions of historians and travellers, for example Evliya Celebi and his Book of Travels.

During the Ottoman rule, there is no documentation attesting to a specific Macedonian national identity, be it Slav, Greek or otherwise, until the 20th century. From the 17th century, authors who declared themselves 'Macedonian' did so in the context of publishing Greek books and belonging to the Greek nation. 19th century ethnographers and travellers were generally united in identifying the Slavic speakers as Bulgarians, at least until the period between 1878 and 1912 when the rival propaganda of Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria succeeded in engaging the Slavophone population of Macedonia into three distinct parties, the pro-Serbian, the pro-Greek or the pro-Bulgarian (Henry Brailsford).

In the late 19th century and the beginning of 20th century, there were many clashes between Serbophile Chetniks (originating from Macedonia) and Bulgarophile Komitas from all over Slavic-speaking Macedonia, which shows the lack of a distinctive urge to form a Macedonian nation state.

The key events in the formation of a distinctive "Macedonian" identity thus emerged during the first half of the 20th century in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and especially following the Second World War.

Tito and the Macedonians

Following the Second World War, Tito separated Yugoslav Macedonia from Serbia, making it a republic of the new federal Yugoslavia (as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia) in 1946. He also supported the concept of a separate Macedonian nation, as a means of severing the ties of the Slav population of Yugoslav Macedonia with Bulgaria. Although the Macedonian language is close to and mutually intelligible with Bulgarian, the differences were emphasized and the region's historical figures were promoted as being uniquely Macedonian (rather than Serbian or Bulgarian). A separate Macedonian Orthodox Church was established, splitting off from the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1967 (only partly successfully, because the church has not been recognised by any other Orthodox Church).

Tito had a number of reasons for doing this. First, he wanted to reduce Serbia's dominance in Yugoslavia; establishing a territory formerly considered Serbian as an equal to Serbia within Yugoslavia achieved this effect. Secondly, he wanted to sever the ties of the Macedonian population with Bulgaria as recognition of that population as Bulgarian could have undermined the unity of the Yugoslav federation. Thirdly, Tito sought to justify future Yugoslav claims towards the rest of geographical Macedonia; in August 1944, he claimed that his goal was to reunify "all parts of Macedonia, divided in 1915 and 1918 by Balkan imperialists." To this end, he opened negotiations with Bulgaria for a new federal state, which would also probably have included Albania, and supported the Greek Communists in the Greek Civil War. The idea of reunification of all of Macedonia under Communist rule was abandoned in 1948 when the Greek Communists lost and Tito fell out with the Soviet Union and pro-Soviet Bulgaria.

Tito's actions had a number of important consequences for the Macedonians. The most important was, obviously, the promotion of a distinctive Macedonian identity as a part of the multiethnic society of Yugoslavia. The process of ethno genesis gained momentum, and a distinct national Macedonian identity was formed. There have been numerous accounts from northern Macedonia from the late 1940s that the policy of Bulgarisation during the Bulgarian occupation (1941–1944) was as abhorrent for the ordinary Macedonian as the policy of Serbisation until then. IMRO's leader in exile, Ivan Mihailov, and the renewed Bulgarian IMRO after 1990 have, on the other hand, repeatedly argued that between 120,000 and 130,000 people went through the concentration camps of Idrizovo and Goli Otok for pro-Bulgarian sympathies or ideas for independent Macedonia in the late 1940s., which has also been confirmed by former prime minister Ljubčo Georgievski . The critics of these claims question the number as it would implied roughly a third of the male Christian population at that time; and the reasons of imprisonment, they argue, were multiple as there were Macedonian nationalists, Stalinists, Middle class members, Albanian nationalists and everybody else who was either against the post war regime or denounced as one for whatever reasons. Unlike the time before WWII, when Macedonia was hotbed for unrest and terror and about 60% of the entire royal Yugoslav police force was stationed there , after the war there were no signs of disturbances comparable with pre-war times or post war times in other parts of former Yugoslavia, such as Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. . Whatever the truth, it was certainly the case that most Macedonians embraced their official recognition as a separate nationality. Even so, some pro-Bulgarian or pro-Serbian sentiment persisted despite government suppression; even as late as 1991, convictions were still being handed down for pro-Bulgarian statements.

Macedonians in the neighbouring countries

• Albania continues to recognise the Macedonians as a legitimate minority and delivers primary education in the Macedonian language in the border regions where most Macedonians live. However, Macedonian organizations claim that the government undercounts the number of Macedonians in Albania and that they are politically underrepresented - there are no ethnic Macedonians in the Albanian parliament.

The Macedonians in Albania faced restrictions under the Stalinist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, though ordinary Albanians were little better off. Their existence as a separate minority group was recognised as early as 1945 and a degree of cultural expression was permitted.

• Bulgaria maintains generally cordial relations with the Macedonians, recognizing them as a distinct ethnic group and last counting them in the 2001 census. However, Macedonian groups in the country have reported official harassment, with the Bulgarian Constitutional Court banning a small Macedonian political party in 2000 as separatist and Bulgarian local authorities banning political rallies. The 5000-strong Macedonian population in Bulgaria claims to have experienced a period of intensive assimilation and repression.

In Bulgaria, and to some extent in Greece, the question of whether the Macedonians constitute a distinct ethnic group is controversial - the popular and the academic consensus in these countries regards them as a branch of the Bulgarians. The majority of international organizations consider modern ethnic Macedonians to be a distinct cultural, if not ethnic group. As ethnographers and linguists tended to identify the population of the Bulgarian part of Macedonia as Bulgarian in the interwar period, the issue of a Macedonian minority in the country came up as late as the 1940s. In 1946, the population of Blagoevgrad Province was declared Macedonian and teachers were brought in from Yugoslavia to teach the Macedonian language. The census of 1946 was accompanied by mass repressions, the result of which was the complete destruction of the local organisations of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and mass internments of people at the Belene concentration camp. The policy was reverted at the end of the 1950s and later Bulgarian governments argued that the two censuses of 1946 and 1956 which recorded up to 187,789 Macedonians (of whom over 95% were said to live in Blagoevgrad Province, also called Pirin Macedonia) were the result of pressure from Moscow. Western governments, however, continued to list the population of Blagoevgrad Province as Macedonian until the beginning of the 1990s despite the 1965 census which put Macedonians in the country at 9,000. The two latest censuses after the fall of Communism (in 1992 and 2001) have, however, confirmed the results from previous censuses with some 3,000 people declaring themselves as "Macedonians" in Blagoevgrad Province in 2001 (<1.0% of the population of the region) out of 5,000 in the whole of Bulgaria. During this period, ethnic Macedonians living in the region continue to complain of official harassment. This was confirmed in 2005 by the European Court of Human Rights with a judgement whereby Bulgaria was sentenced to pay damages amounting to 6800 euros for a violation of Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association) of the European Convention on Human Rights for its refusal to give court registration to "UMO Ilinden" and "UMO Ilinden-Pirin", the two Macedonian political parties in Bulgaria.

A similar judgement was passed against Greece for also violating Article 11 in regards of the members of the Rainbow, the registered political party of the slavophone Macedonians living in Greece.

• Greece does not recognise the Macedonians as an ethnic minority and opposes the use of the term "Macedonians" to refer to all or the Macedonian identifying part of the country's Slavophone minority, which is believed to be mainly located in the northern Greek prefectures of Florina and Kastoria. The term "Macedonian Slavs" or "Slavophones" is sometimes used instead, to distinguish them from the Greek-speaking inhabitants of Macedonia, who traditionally also use the term "Macedonians" to refer to themselves.

Macedonians in Greece faced considerably tighter restrictions as its government saw them as a potentially disloyal minority. Greeks were resettled in the region in two occasions, firstly following the Bulgarian loss of the Second Balkan War when Bulgaria and Greece mutually exchanged their populations (1913), and secondly in 1923 as a result of the population exchange with the new Turkish republic that followed the Greek military defeat in Asia minor. After the Second World War many of the slavophone Macedonians who lived in Greece either chose to emigrate to Communist countries (especially Yugoslavia) to avoid prosecution for fighting on the side of the Greek communists (see: Greek Civil War), or were forced to do so . Although there was some liberalization between 1959 and 1967, the Greek military dictatorship re-imposed harsh restrictions. The situation gradually eased after Greece's return to democracy, but Greece still receives criticism for its treatment of some slavophone Macedonian political organizations. Greece, however, recognises the Rainbow political party of the slavophone Macedonians who canvas during elections. Nowadays there is a slavophone Macedonian political party in Greece, the Rainbow: their last (2004) election tally amounted to 6,176 votes (or 0.1%) nationwide (2,955 in the region of Macedonia - out of which 1,200 in the Prefecture of Florina - and the rest 3,221, were from other parts of Greece). The majority of the Slavophones in Greece proclaim a Greek national identity, as a result of either conscientious choice or coercion of their ancestors in the first half of the twentieth century . An additional group of Slavophones is made up of those who seem to reject any national identity but have a distinct ethnic identity, which they may call "indigenous" or "native" (Greek: dopia) . According to the Greek Helsinki Monitor, an estimated 10,000 - 30,000 Slavophones have a clear Macedonian national identity . An unknown number of the Slavophones in Greece self-identify as Bulgarians .

• Serbia and Montenegro recognizes the Macedonian minority on its territory as a distinct ethnic group and counts them in its annual census.

See also

• A list of prominent ethnic Macedonians
• Macedonian Canadians
• Rainbow, a Macedonian party in Greece
• UMO Ilinden-Pirin, a Macedonian organisation in Bulgaria
• Ethnogenesis

References

• Keith Brown, The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation, Princeton University Press, 2003. ISBN 0691099952.
• Jane K. Cowan (ed.), Macedonia: The Politics of Identity and Difference, Pluto Press, 2000. A collection of articles.
• Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, Princeton University Press, 1995. ISBN 0691043566.
• Anastasia N. Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990, University Of Chicago Press, 1997, ISBN 0226424944. Reviewed in Journal of Modern Greek Studies 18:2 (2000), p465.
• Peter Mackridge, Eleni Yannakakis (eds.), Ourselves and Others : The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912, Berg Publishers, 1997, ISBN 1859731384.
• Hugh Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians?, Indiana University Press, 2nd ed., 2000. ISBN 0253213592.
• Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Praeger Publishers, 2002. ISBN 0275976483.

External links

• macedonia.org, a site representing the views of the Macedonians
• Online Journal on Macedonian History and Culture, including relevant sources, documents and texts, pro-Macedonian
• faq.macedonia.org Macedonians In Greece
• History of Macedonia according to Macedonians
• New Balkan Politics - Journal of Politics

• Ethnic groups in Albania
• Ethnic groups in Bulgaria
• Ethnic groups in Europe
• Ethnic groups in Greece
• Ethnic groups in Macedonia
• Ethnic groups in Serbia
• Ethnic groups in Vojvodina
• Slavic nations