Macedonia

Alternate meanings: Places named Macedonia

Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in south-eastern Europe, with an area of around 67,000 square kilometres and a population of 4.65 million. The territory corresponds to the basins of (from west to east) the Aliakmon, Vardar/Axios and Strymon rivers (of which the Vardar drains by far the largest area) and the plains around Thessaloniki and Serrai.

The name "Macedonia" derives from the Ancient Greek word "makos" (the Doric form of "mekos") meaning "length" or "height": "makedos" or "makednos" is a term for a tall man. Legend has it that the ancient Macedonians were so tall that if they fell they could not stand up without help.

The region is divided between Greece, with roughly half of the area and population, split between the three provinces of Macedonia Central, Macedonia West, and Macedonia East; the Republic of Macedonia, with around 40%; and Bulgaria, with less than a tenth, in Blagoevgrad province. The Greek part is sometimes referred to as Greek Macedonia or "Aegean Macedonia," the Republic of Macedonia as Vardar Macedonia (or Vadarska Banovina) and the Bulgarian part as Pirin Macedonia.

History of Macedonia

Ancient and medieval Macedonia

In the 7th century BC the kingdom of Macedon emerged in what is now the Greek part of Macedonia and the neighbouring Bitola district in the south of today's Republic of Macedonia. Under its king Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, Macedon extended its power in the 4th century BC over not only over the rest of the Greek states, but also in the Persian Empire, including Egypt and lands as far east as the fringes of India.

Alexander's conquests produced a lasting extension of Greek culture and thought, but his empire broke up on his death, and Macedonian independence came to an end with defeat at the hands of the rising power of Rome (197 and 168 BC), The deposition of the Macedonian dynasty was deposed, and Macedon was annexed as a Roman province in 146 BC.

With the division of the Roman Empire into west and east in 395 AD, Macedonia came under the rule of Rome's Byzantine successors. While the Byzantine state's prevailing Greek culture flourished in the south, however, northern Macedonia was settled from around 600 AD by Slavs from the north-east.

In the 13th and 14th century Byzantine control was punctuated by periods of Bulgarian and Serbian rule in the north. Conquered by the Ottoman army in the first half of the 15th century, Macedonia remained a part of the Ottoman Empire for nearly half a millennium, during which it gained a substantial Turkish minority. Thessaloniki became the home of a large Jewish population following Spain's expulsions of Jews after 1492.

Modern Macedonia

After the revival of Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian statehood in the 19th century, Macedonia became a focus of the national ambitions of 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 Bulgarian-sponsored Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO). Diplomatic intervention by the European powers led to plans for an autonomous Macedonia under Ottoman rule.

However, burying their differences for a short time in 1912-13, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria divided Macedonia among themselves during the First Balkan War. Bulgaria's agreed share was reduced by her allies on the grounds that they had conquered the territory while the Bulgarian army was invading neighbouring Thrace. The subsequent Second Balkan War left Bulgaria only with the Struma valley. Vardar Macedonia was incorporated into Serbia and referred to as South Serbia.

World War I and its aftermath led in the 1920s to the exchange between Greece and Turkey of most of Macedonia's Turkish minority and the Greek inhabitants of Thrace and Anatolia, as a result of which Aegean Macedonia experienced a large addition to its population and became overwhelmingly Greek in ethnic composition. Serbian-ruled Macedonia was incorporated with the rest of Serbia into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) in 1918.

Subjected to an intense process of "Serbianization" during the 1920s and 1930s, this part of Macedonia became a republic of Communist Yugoslavia (as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia) in 1946, with its capital at Skopje. After Yugoslavia's break with the Soviet Union in 1948, the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito promoted the concept of a Macedonian nation as a means of severing the ties of the Slav population of Yugoslav Macedonia with (pro-Soviet) Bulgaria.

Independence and controversy

In 1991, Yugoslav Macedonia seceded from Yugoslavia, declaring its independence as the Republic of Macedonia. The issue of Macedonia became a heated political issue in Greece, where huge demonstrations took place in Athens and Thessaloniki in 1992 against the new state, under the slogan "Macedonia is Greece." The Greek government objected to the use of the name Macedonia, and also to the use of symbols such as the Star of Vergina. Greece imposed an economic blockade on the new state and also blocked European Union recognition and economic aid.

As a result of the dispute, the new state was admitted into the United Nations in 1993 under the temporary name "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (or FYROM for short) while it continued to use Republic of Macedonia as its constitutional name. Outside Greece, the country is usually simply called "Macedonia". A number of countries have recognised it by its constitutional name.

In 1995 Greece and Macedonia came to an agreement whereby Macedonia agreed to remove any implied territorial claims to the greater Macedonia region from its constitution and to drop the Star of Vergina from its flag. Discussions continue over the country's name, but without any resolution so far.

Many Greeks also object to the use of the term "ethnic Macedonians" to describe the Slav minority in northern Greece. Greece argues that this usage is inaccurate as Macedonia is in fact inhabited by a number of different peoples - Slavs, Greeks, Vlachs and Albanians, none of whom has a historically exclusive claim to the term. The term is, however, widely used outside Greece to mean the Slav inhabitants of the northern Greece.