“Makedonski” – A Loch Ness Monster style spotting

Nationalists from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M) along with their diaspora cohorts constantly inundate internet forums and blogs with obscure references to “Macedonians” in historical texts with the implication that the authors of the texts were referring to ‘ethnic Macedonians’ akin to those who currently self describe as such. Prior to the mid [...]

Stefov vs The Carnegie Commission

In 1914 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a report regarding the conduct of the nations that participated in the Balkan Wars. The report was written by an international commission that was dispatched to the region in order to investigate the actions of the Balkan armies as well as to investigate the causes of [...]

Maps and Politics

A fascinating book regarding the demographics of late Ottoman era Macedonia is “Maps and Politics: A Review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia” by Henry Robert Wilkinson. In his book, which was published in 1951, Wilkinson exhaustively summarized dozens of ethnographic maps put forth by European scholars, ethnographers and cartographers which depicted the demographics of [...]