Macedonian nationalism (, ), sometimes referred to as Macedonianism and Macedonism, is a general grouping of nationalist ideas and concepts among ethnic Macedonians that were first formed in the second half of the 19th century among separatists seeking the autonomy of the region of Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire. The movement began as a cultural reaction against Greek, Turkish, and Patriarchist influences, and was fueled by the broader political and social changes within the Ottoman Empire. Over time, it grew into a rejection of Bulgarian, Greek, and Serbian nationalist campaigns to assimilate Macedonia, ultimately culminating during World War II with the proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, when the separate Macedonian nation gained formal recognition. Macedonian historiography has since established links between the ethnic Macedonians and various historical events and individual figures that occurred in and originated from Macedonia, which range from the Middle Ages up to the 20th century. Following the independence of the Republic of Macedonia in the late 20th century, the country's neighbours have disputed the existence of the Macedonian national identity. Extreme forms of Macedonian nationalism arose, which hold beliefs such as an unbroken continuity between ancient Macedonians and modern ethnic Macedonians, as well as advocating the irredentist concept of a United Macedonia, which involves large portions of Greece and Bulgaria, alongside smaller portions of Albania, Kosovo and Serbia.
Terminology
During the first half of the second millennium, the concept of Macedonia on the Balkans was associated by the Byzantines with their Macedonian province, centered around Adrianople in modern-day Turkey. After the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the late 14th and early 15th century, the Greek name Macedonia disappeared as a geographical designation for several centuries.John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos M. Veremis, Modern Greece: A History since 1821. A New History of Modern Europe, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, , p. 48.John Breuilly, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism, Oxford University Press, 2013, , p. 192. The central and northern areas of modern Macedonia were often called "Bulgaria" or "Lower Moesia" during Ottoman rule."In the early 19th c. the modern Greeks with their Western-derived obsession with antiquity played a crucial role in reviving the classical name 'Macedonia' in the popular consciousness of the Balkan peoples. For a thousand years before that the name 'Macedonia' had meant different things for Westerners and Balkan Christians: for Westerners it always denoted the territories of the ancient Macedonians, but for the Greeks and all other Balkan Christians the name 'Macedonia' – if at all used – covered the territories of the former Byzantine theme 'Macedonia', situated between Adrianople (Edrine) and the river Nestos (Mesta) in classical and present-day Thrace. The central and northern parts of present-day 'geographic Macedonia' were traditionally called either 'Bulgaria' and 'Lower Moesia', but within a generation after Greek independence (gained in 1830) these names were replaced by 'Macedonia' in the minds of both Greeks and non-Greeks." Drezov K. (1999) Macedonian identity: an overview of the major claims. In: Pettifer J. (eds) The New Macedonian Question. St Antony's Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London, , pp. 50–51. The name "Macedonia" was rediscovered during the Renaissance by western researchers, who introduced ancient Greek geographical names in their work, although used in a rather loose manner.Robin J. Fox, Robin Lane Fox, Brill's Companion to Ancient Macedon: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Macedon, 650 BC – 300 AD, BRILL, 2011, , p. 35. After the Greek War of Independence, these names were gradually replaced by "Macedonia". The name gained popularity parallel to the ascendance of rival nationalism in the Ottoman Empire.Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, , p. 89. The background of the modern designation Macedonian can be found in the 19th century, as well as the myth of "ancient Macedonian descent" among the Orthodox Slavs in the area, adopted mainly due to Greek cultural inputs. However, Greek education was not the only engine for such ideas. During the early modern era, some Dalmatian pan-Slavic ideologists like Mavro Orbini believed the ancient Macedonians were Slavs. Under these influences in the 19th century some intellectuals in the region developed the idea on direct link between the local Slavs, the early Slavs and the ancient Balkan populations.
The Slavs in Rumelia self-identified as "Bulgarian" on account of their language and socioeconomic status, thus the word Bulgarian had the connotation of poor, Slav-speaking peasant."Until the late 19th century both outside observers and those Bulgaro-Macedonians who had an ethnic consciousness believed that their group, which is now two separate nationalities, comprised a single people, the Bulgarians. Thus the reader should ignore references to ethnic Macedonians in the Middle ages which appear in some modern works. In the Middle Ages and into the 19th century, the term 'Macedonian' was used entirely in reference to a geographical region. Anyone who lived within its confines, regardless of nationality could be called a Macedonian...Nevertheless, the absence of a national consciousness in the past is no grounds to reject the Macedonians as a nationality today." "The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century," John Van Antwerp Fine, University of Michigan Press, 1991, , pp. 36–37. Also, the local Slavs considered themselves as "Rum", i.e. members of the community of Orthodox Christians. This community was a source of identity for all the ethnic groups inside it and most people identified mostly with it. At that time, the Orthodox Christian community began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic identity,Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity, Andreas Wimmer, Cambridge University Press, 2002, , pp. 171–172. while Bulgarian national activists started a debate on the establishment of their separate Orthodox church. Until the middle of the 19th century, the Greeks also called the Slavs in Macedonia "Bulgarians", and regarded them predominantly as Orthodox brethren, but the rise of Bulgarian nationalism changed the Greek position.Modern Greece: John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos M. Veremis, A History since 1821, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, , p. 48. As a result, massive Greek religious and school propaganda occurred, and a process of Hellenization was implemented among the Slavic-speaking population of the area.Richard Clogg, Minorities in Greece: Aspects of a Plural Society. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2002, , p. 160.Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Scarecrow Press, 2009, , Introduction, pp. VII–VIII. The very name Macedonia, revived during the early 19th century after the foundation of the modern Greek state, with its Western Europe-derived obsession with Ancient Greece, was applied to the local Slavs,Jelavich Barbara, History of the Balkans, Vol. 2: Twentieth Century, 1983, Cambridge University Press, , p. 91. which led to some "Macedonization" among Slavic-speaking population of the area.J. Pettifer, The New Macedonian Question, St Antony's group, Springer, 1999, , pp. 49–51.Anastas Vangeli, Nation-building ancient Macedonian style: the origins and the effects of the so-called antiquization in Macedonia. Nationalities Papers, the Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, Volume 39, 2011 pp. 13–32. In 1845, the Alexander Romance was published in the Slavic Macedonian dialect typed with Greek letters.Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Scarecrow Press, 2009, , Introduction, p. VII. At the same time, the Russian ethnographer Victor Grigorovich described a recent change in the title of the Greek Patriarchist bishop of Bitola: from Exarch of all Bulgaria to Exarch of all Macedonia. He also noted the unusual popularity of Alexander the Great and that it appeared to be something that was recently instilled on the local Slavs.Kyril Drezov, “Macedonian identity: an overview of the major claims,” in The New Macedonian Question, ed. James Pettifer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 47–59. Macedonian Slavic intellectuals, such as Konstantin Miladinov, continued to call their land Western Bulgaria and worried that use of the new Macedonian name would imply identification with the Greek nation.On 8 January 1861, K. Miladinov wrote to the Bulgarian wakener G. Rakovski to explain his use of the term ‘‘Bulgarian’’ in the title of his and his brother’s collection of Macedonian folk songs: ‘‘In the announcement I called Macedonia West Bulgaria (as it should be called) because in Vienna the Greeks treat us like sheep. They consider Macedonia a Greek land and cannot understand that [Macedonia] is not Greek.’’ Miladinov and other educated Macedonians worried that use of the Macedonian name would imply attachment to or identification with the Greek nation For more see: Andrew Rossos Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History. Hoover Institution Press, 2008, , p. 84.Miladinov suggested that Macedonia should be called “Western Bulgaria”. Obviously, he was aware that the classical designation was received via Greek schooling and culture. As the Macedonian historian Taskovski claims, the Macedonian Slavs initially rejected the Macedonian designation as Greek. For more see: Tchavdar Marinov, Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian identity at the crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian nationalism, p. 285; in Entangled Histories of the Balkans – Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies with Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov as ed., BRILL, 2013, , pp. 273–330.Dimitar Miladinov's most famous literary achievement was the publishing of a large collection of Bulgarian folk songs in Zagreb in 1861 under the title Bulgarian Folk Songs. He published the volume with his brother Konstantin (1830–1862) and even though most of the songs were from Macedonia, the authors disliked this term as too Hellenic and preferred to refer to Macedonia as the "Western Bulgarian lands". For more see: Chris Kostov, Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, Peter Lang, 2010, , p. 72.The struggle over the historical legacy of the name "Macedonia" was already underway in the nineteenth century, as the Greeks contested its appropriation by the Slavs. This is reflected in a letter from Konstantin Miladinov, who published Bulgarian folk songs from Macedonia, to Georgi Rakovski, dated 31 January 1861:On my order form I have called Macedonia “Western Bulgaria”, as it should be called, because the Greeks in Vienna are ordering us around like sheep. They want Macedonia to be Greek territory and still do not realize that it cannot be Greek. But what are we to do with the more than two million Bulgarians there? Shall the Bulgarians still be sheep and a few Greeks the shepherds? Those days are gone and the Greeks shall be left with no more than their sweet dream. I believe the songs will be distributed among the Bulgarians, and have therefore set a low price for them. For more see: Spyridon Sfetas, The image of the Greeks in the work of the Bulgarian revolutionary and intellectual Georgi Rakovski. Balkan Studies, [S.l.], v. 42, n. 1, p. 89-107, Jan. 2001. ISSN 2241-1674. Available at: <https://ojs.lib.uom.gr/index.php/BalkanStudies/article/view/3313/3338 >.