Macedonia (), also called Greek Macedonia or Makedonia, is a geographic and former administrative region of Greece, in the southern Balkans. Macedonia is the largest and geographic region of Greece, with a population of 2.36 million (as of 2020). Part of Northern Greece, it is highly mountainous, with major urban centres such as Thessaloniki, Katerini and Kavala being concentrated on its southern coastline. Greek Macedonia encompasses entirely the southern part of the wider region of Macedonia,Roy E. H. Mellor, Eastern Europe: A Geography of the Comecon Countries, Macmillan International Higher Education, 1975, , p. 62. making up 51% of the total area of that region. Additionally, it widely constitutes Greece's borders with three countries: Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia to the north, and Bulgaria to the northeast.
Greek Macedonia incorporates most of the territories of Macedon, a Greek kingdom ruled by the Argeads, whose most celebrated members were Alexander the Great and his father Philip II. Before the expansion of Macedonia under Philip in the 4th centuryBC, the kingdom of the Macedonians covered an area corresponding roughly to the administrative regions of Western and Central Macedonia in modern Greece. The name Macedonia was later applied to a number of widely-differing administrative areas in the Roman and Byzantine empires. With the gradual conquest of south-eastern 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."What is often overlooked is how Bulgarians and Greeks collaborated unknowingly from the middle decades of the 19th century onward in breathing new life into the geographical name Macedonia, which was all but forgotten during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. In the late Ottoman period, Macedonia as such did not exist as an administrative unit in the empire... Greek nationalism, fixated on the continuity between ancient and modern Hellenes, was keen to project the name Macedonia as a way to assert the Greek historical character of the area. In 1845, for instance, the story of Alexander was published in a Slavo-Macedonian dialect scripted in Greek characters... For their part, Bulgarian nationalists readily accepted Macedonia as a regional denomination... Macedonia had become one of the historic Bulgarian lands... and Macedonian Bulgarian turned into a standard phrase." Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Scarecrow Press, 2009, , Introduction, p. VII."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."In 1813 Macedonia did not exist. A century later, it had become a hotly contested nationalist cause, a battlefield, and an obsession. What led to this dramatic transformation was modernity: a chilly wind of West European provenance that propelled to the Balkans concepts that few in the region understood, wanted or cared about. Among these, the idea of nationalism was the most potent, and the most lethal. Before the 1850s, Macedonia was a poverty-stricken province of the Ottoman Empire, where an Orthodox Christian and mostly peasant population speaking a variety of Slavonic idioms, Greek, or Vlach, was trying to eke out a modest living, and protect it from rapacious brigands and a decaying Ottoman administrative system. Religion was the only collective identity that most of them could make sense of, for ethnicity and language played little role in shaping their loyalties. But the winds of change quickly gathered momentum, and eventually shattered that multi-ethnic community, producing a 'Greek', or a 'Bulgarian', out of a 'Christian'." D. Livanios' "review of Vemund Aarbakke, Ethnic Rivalry and the Quest for Macedonia, 1870–1913" in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan. 2005), pp. 141–142 With the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, the name Macedonia was revived in the nineteenth century as a geographical term, and for educated Greeks it corresponded to the ancient historical land.The ancient name "Macedonia" disappeared during the period of Ottoman rule and was only restored in the nineteenth century originally as geographical term. John Breuilly, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism, Oxford University Press, 2013, , p. 192.The region was not called "Macedonia" by the Ottomans, and the name "Macedonia" gained currency together with the ascendance of rival nationalism. Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, , p. 89.The Greeks were among the first to define these lands since the beginning of the 19th century. For educated Greeks, Macedonia was the historical Greek land of kings Philip and Alexander the Great. John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos M. Veremis, Modern Greece: A History since 1821. A New History of Modern Europe, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, , p. 48. The economic ascent of Thessaloniki and of the other urban centres of Macedonia coincided with the cultural and political renaissance of the Greeks. The leader and coordinator of the Greek Revolution in Macedonia was Emmanouel Pappas, today considered a Greek hero along with the unnamed Macedonians that fought with him.
The fall and massacre of Naoussa marked the end of the Greek Revolution in Macedonia, and the region remained in the Ottoman Empire. In the early 20th century the region was already a national cause, contested among the states of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The southern part of the region of Macedonia became part of the Greek state, in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and the Treaty of Bucharest (1913). It continued as an administrative division of Greece until the reform of 1987, when it was split into the second-level administrative divisions of Western Macedonia and Central Macedonia; while the eastern part, into the Drama-Kavala-Xanthi Super-prefecture until 2010, and part of the Eastern Macedonia and Thrace division after 2010.Π.Δ. 51/87 "Καθορισμός των Περιφερειών της Χώρας για το σχεδιασμό κ.λ.π. της Περιφερειακής Ανάπτυξης" ("Determination of the Regions of the Country for the planning etc. of the development of the regions", Efimeris tis Kyverniseos ΦΕΚ A 26/06.03.1987 The region is further divided between the third-level administrative divisions of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace, and the Decentralized Administration of Epirus and Western Macedonia. It also includes the autonomous monastic community of Mount Athos, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (through the civil administrator of Mount Athos) in its political aspect, and of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in its religious aspect.
The region remains an important economic centre for Greece. Macedonia accounts for the majority of Greece's agricultural production and is also a major contributor to the country's industrial and tourism sectors. The metropolis of the region, Thessaloniki is the second-largest city and a major economic, industrial, cultural, commercial and political centre of Greece. Central Macedonia is Greece's tourist region and the most popular destination that is not an island. It is home to four UNESCO World Heritage sites, including Aigai (modern-day Vergina, about 12 km (7 mi) from Veria), the first Macedonian capital, where Philip II was assassinated and Alexander the Great was crowned king of Macedon. Pella (about from modern town of Pella and about from Giannitsa), which replaced Aigai as the capital of Macedon in the fourth century BC and was the birthplace of Alexander the Great, is also located in the region. Stagira, which was the birthplace of Aristotle, is also located in the region.
Etymology
The name Macedonia derives from the ( ), a kingdom (later, region) named after the ancient Macedonians, who were the descendants of a Bronze-Age Greek tribe. Their name, (), is cognate to the Ancient Greek adjective (), meaning 'tall, slim'. It is traditionally derived from the Indo-European root , meaning 'long' or 'slender'. Linguist Robert S. P. Beekes supports the idea that both terms are of Pre-Greek substrate origin and cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European morphology. However, Beekes' views are not mainstream and De Decker argues that his arguments are insufficient. The region has historically also been known as in Bulgarian and the local South Slavic dialects, in Turkish, and in Aromanian. is also the name for the region in Megleno-Romanian.
The term "Aegean Macedonia" arose after the Balkan Wars in reference to the region. Yugoslavs and Bulgarians have used the term "Aegean Macedonia" instead of "Greek Macedonia". Macedonian textbooks with maps depicting an enlarged Macedonia (including Greek and Bulgarian Macedonia) were used in the Yugoslav period and after North Macedonia's independence in 1991. Ethnic Macedonians have envisioned Greek Macedonia (referred to as "Aegean Macedonia") as part of a "Greater Macedonia". They have circulated maps depicting this concept. Aegean Refugee Associations have also promoted the irredentist concept United Macedonia.Jane Cowan, ed. Macedonia: The Politics of Identity, Pluto Press, 2000, pp. xiii, 78–79. It appears that the name "Aegean Macedonia" sometimes challenges the legitimacy of Greek sovereignty over the area. The name has not been recognized in Greece. Macedonian members of the Joint Macedonian–Greek Committee agreed with the removal of the term from textbooks.
History
Prehistory
Macedonia lies at the crossroads of human development between the Aegean and the Balkans. The earliest signs of human habitation date back to the palaeolithic period, notably with the Petralona cave in which was found the oldest yet known European humanoid, Archanthropus europaeus petraloniensis. The Ouranopithecus macedoniensis is perhaps the oldest, dating to 9.6–8.7 million years ago. During the early Neolithic period, the settlement of Nea Nikomedeia was developed. In the Late Neolithic period (), trade took place with quite distant regions, indicating rapid socio-economic changes. One of the most important innovations was the start of copper working.
Early history of Argead Macedonia