Macedonians (),South Slavic immigration in America, George J. Prpic, John Carroll University, Twayne Publishers. A division of G. K. Hall & Co., Boston., 1978, , p. 212. or Macedonian Bulgarians (),Harvard encyclopedia of American ethnic groups, Stephan Thernstrom, Ann Orlov, Oscar Handlin Edition: 2, Published by Harvard University Press, 1980 , p. 691. sometimes also referred to as Macedono-Bulgarians,Minderheiten und Sprachkontakt, Ulrich Ammon, Peter H Nelde, Klaus J Mattheier, Published by Niemeyer, 1990, , p. 143. Macedo-Bulgarians,The Cambridge history of Turkey: Turkey in the modern world, Reşat Kasaba, Cambridge University Press, 2008, , p. 107. or Bulgaro-Macedonians, are a regional, ethnographic group of ethnic Bulgarians,Етнография на Македония (Извори и материали в два тома), Автор: Колектив под редакцията на доц. Маргарита Василева, Обем: 853 стр. Издател: Българска Академия на Науките, Година: 1992.Sources of Bulgarian Ethnography. Volume 3. Ethnography of Macedonia. Materials from the Archive Heritage. Sofia, 1998; Publication: Ethnologia Bulgarica. Yearbook of Bulgarian Ethnology and Folklore (2/2001) Author Name: Nikolova, Vanya; Language: English, Subject: Anthropology, Issue: 2/2001, Page Range: 143-144Groups of Bulgarian population and ethnographic groups, Publication: Bulgarian Ethnology (3/1987ч Author: Simeonova, Gatya; Language: Bulgarian, Subject: Anthropology, Issue: 3/1987, Page Range: 55-63 inhabiting or originating from the region of Macedonia. This is how the majority of Slavic-speaking population of Macedonia had been referred to by most of the national conscious minority among them and by outside observers, from the 10th until the early 20th century in a sense of a demonym at first, and later as a social class synonym mainly, and as an ethnonym.Most of the Balkans were settled by Slavs of one of the two types. (excluding the smaller groups of Slavic Slovenes and Turkic Avars in the western Balkans). Each one of these two main Slavic groups was to be named for a second conquering group who appeared later in the seventh century. The first of these two groups was the Bulgaro-Macedonians, whose Slavic component the Bulgarian historian Zlatarski derives from the Antes. They were conquered in the late 7th century by the Turkic Bulgars. The Slavs eventually assimilated them, but the Bulgars' name survived. It denoted this Slavic group from the 9th century through the rest of the medieval period into modern days. Until the late nineteenth 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 nineteenth 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. For more see: John Van Antwerp Fine, The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century, University of Michigan Press, 1991, , pp. 36-37.Who are the Macedonians? Hugh Poulton, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2000, , p. 19-20.Откако биле освоени граничните византиски земји, од времето на Симеон е изменета и воената концепција. Извршена е симбиоза помеѓу малубројните азиски Прабугари и бројните словенски племиња кои на широкиот простор од Дунав на север, до Егеја на југ и од Јадран на запад, до Црното Море на исток го прифатиле заедничкиот етникон „Бугари”. Словенскиот јазик станал заеднички за сите жители на тој простор. Протобугарите се претопиле и исчезнале во словенските маси, а со нив и моделот на номадските воени хорди кои што живеат во аули., For more see: Средновековни градови и тврдини во Македонија, Иван Микулчиќ, Македонска академија на науките и уметностите – Скопје, 1996, стр. 72.Formation of the Bulgarian Nation, Academician Dimitŭr Simeonov Angelov, Summary, Sofia-Press, 1978, pp. 413–415. Since 1913, the Macedonian Bulgarian population is largely concentrated in Pirin Macedonia but much is spread across the whole of Bulgaria and the diaspora.
History First Bulgarian empire
Byzantine empire
Second Bulgarian empire
Ottoman period
Per Apostolos Vacalopoulos, from the beginning of the 18th century, there is mention only of Bulgarians by the travellers in the area, which reveals they formed the largest Slavic community and gradually absorbed the sparse Serbian element here. In the 19th, during rise of nationalism in the Ottoman empire, the Slavs in Ottoman Macedonia began to acquire a mainly Bulgarian national identity, since until then, despite being known as Bulgarian by name, they were an amorphous mass in terms of modern nationalism.Vakalopoulos, Apostolos. History of Macedonia, 1354-1833. Salonica: Institute of Balkan Studies, 1973, p. 266. Until then, the word Bulgarian, generally had a social connotation of poor, Slav-speaking peasant, since most of the Slavic population lived in the rural parts of Macedonia and were mainly chiflik labourers.
With the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire the classical Ottoman millet system 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. In this way, in the struggle for recognition of a separate national Church, the modern Bulgarian nation was created,A Concise History of Bulgaria, R. J. Crampton, Cambridge University Press, 2005, , p. 74.The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival, Rumen Daskalov, Central European University Press, 2004, , p. 1. and the religious affiliation became a consequence of national allegiance.Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 1870–1895, Duncan M. Perry, Duke University Press, 1993, , p. 7. The semi-official term Bulgarian Millet, was used by the Ottoman Sultan for the first time in 1847, and was his tacit consent to a more ethno-linguistic definition of the Bulgarians as a separate ethnic group.Boyko Penchev, Tsarigrad/Istanbul/Constantinople and the Spatial Construction of Bulgarian National Identity in the Nineteenth Century in: History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and disjunctures in the 19th and 20th centuries. Volume II, , 2006, John Benjamins, pp. 390–413. Officially as a separate Millet were recognized the Bulgarian Uniates in 1860, and then in 1870 the Bulgarian Exarchists.Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Conflict Praeger Series in Political Communication, Patrick James, David Goetze, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, , pp. 159–160.
In the second half of the 19th century, rival Bulgarian, Greek and Serb nationalism used religious and educational institutions to "persuade" Macedonia's population that they are part of their respective nation. The establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 indicated a period of intense antagonism in Macedonia, mainly seen as expression of "national" consciousness of Macedonian Bulgarians. Unsurprisingly the majority of the Slavic population affiliated with the Slavic (Bulgarian) Church over the non-Slavic Greek one.Igot Despot, The Balkan Wars in the Eyes of the Warring Parties: Perceptions and Interpretations, 2012, iUniverse, , p. 11. Furthermore, opting for the Exarchate was far from being defined as nationally motivated, and with that as allegiance to the Bulgarian national cause.Dimitris Livanios (2008). The Macedonian Question: Britain and the Southern Balkans 1939-1949, Oxford University Press, , pp. 9-10. After the Russo-Turkish War, with the Treaty of San Stefano a Greater Bulgaria was created, including most of Macedonia in it. This decision was protested by Greece and Serbia, supported by Austro-Hungary and the United Kingdom, who were fearful of Russian influence spreading in the region through Bulgaria. Therefore, a new Treaty of Berlin was created and Macedonia was returned to the Ottomans. As a result, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia in order to validate the territorial claims, started to compete for the allegiance of the Christian population of Macedonia, most of whom was without national consciousness, by implanting in them the "proper" national sense through the churches and schools. The absence of collective ethnic identity amongst the Macedonian Slavs meant that the different national movements were able to manipulate data and information in order to pursue their nationalist agendas.James Horncastle, The Macedonian Slavs in the Greek Civil War, 1944–1949; Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, , p. 28. The functioning of the Bulgarian Exarchate then aimed specifically at differentiating the Bulgarian from the Greek and Serbian populations on an ethnic and linguistic basis, providing the open assertion of a Bulgarian national identity.Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14.2 (1996) 253-301 Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Balkans: Greece and the Macedonian Question by Victor Roudometof. However one basic distinction between the political agendas of local intelligentsias was clear. The Macedonian Greeks and Serbs followed, in general, the directives coming from their respective centers of national agitation, while by the Bulgarians the term Macedonian was acquiring the significance of a certain political loyalty, that progressively constructed a particular spirit of regional identity.We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, Diana Mishkova, Central European University Press, 2008, , p. 108.
Contemporary travellers, ethnographers and linguists, including Slovak philologist Pavel Jozef Šafárik (1842), French geologist Ami Boué (1847, 1854), French ethnographer Guillaume Lejean (1861), English travel writers Georgina Muir Mackenzie and Paulina Irby (1867), Russian ethnographer Mikhail Mirkovich (1867), Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben (1868), German cartographer August Heinrich Petermann (1869), German geographer Heinrich Kiepert (1876), Austrian diplomat Karl Sax (1877), etc. clearly identified the Slavs living in the part of Rumelia currently known as Kosovo as Serbs and only referred to the Slavs living in the Macedonia as Bulgarians. All of them also established the ethnographic boundary between Serbs and Bulgarians along the Šar Mountains. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, at the beginning of the 20th century the Macedonian Bulgarians constituted the majority of the population in the whole region of Macedonia, then part of the Ottoman Empire.Bulgarians (described in encyclopaedia as "Slavs, the bulk of which is regarded by almost all independent sources as Bulgarians"): 1,150,000, whereof, 1,000,000 Orthodox and 150,000 Muslims (the so-called Pomaks); Turks: c. 500,000 (Muslims); Greeks: c. 250,000, whereof c. 240,000 Orthodox and 14,000 Muslims; Albanians: c. 120,000, whereof 10,000 Orthodox and 110,000 Muslims; Vlachs: c. 90,000 Orthodox and 3,000 Muslims; Jews: c. 75,000; Roma: c. 50,000, whereof 35,000 Orthodox and 15,000 Muslims; In total 1,300,000 Christians (almost exclusively Orthodox), 800,000 Muslims, 75,000 Jews, a total population of c. 2,200,000 for the whole of Macedonia.