History of Macedonia in Ottoman Times

  The Ottoman Empire originated in a small emirate established in the second half of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia. By 1354 it had gained a toehold in Europe, and by 1362 Adrianopole (modern Edirne, Tur.) had fallen. From this base the power of this Turkic-speaking and Islamic state was steadily expanded. From a military point of view, the most significant defeat of the Serbian states took place in the Battle of the Maritsa River at Chernomen in 1371, but it is the defeat in 1389 of a combined army of Serbs, Albanians, and Hungarians under Lazar at Kosovo Polje that has been preserved in legend as symbolizing the subordination of the Balkan Slavs to the "Ottoman yoke." Constantinople itself did not fall to the Turks until 1453; but by the end of the 14th century Macedonia had been incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. Thus began what was in many respects the most stable period of Macedonian history, lasting until the Turks were ejected from Macedonia in 1913.

      Half a millennium of contact with Turkey had a profound impact on language, food habits, and many aspects of daily living in Macedonia. Within the empire, administrators, soldiers, merchants, and artisans moved in pursuit of their professions. Where war, famine, or disease left regions underpopulated, settlers were moved in from elsewhere with no regard for any link between ethnicity and territory. By the system known as devŠirme (the notorious "blood tax"), numbers of Christian children were periodically recruited into the Turkish army and administration, where they were Islamite and assigned to wherever their services were required. For all these reasons many Balkan towns acquired a cosmopolitan atmosphere. This was particularly the case in Macedonia during the 19th century, when, as the Serbian, Greek, and Bulgarian states began to assert their independence, many who had become associated with Turkish rule moved into lands still held by the Sublime Porte. Whatever distinctive characteristics Macedonians may or may not have had before the coming of the Turks, it is undoubtedly the case that, by the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, they (along with the Muslims of Bosnia) were the European people most closely tied to Ottoman culture.

      The economic legacy of Turkish rule is also important. During the expansionist phase of the empire, Turkish feudalism consisted principally of the timar system of "tax farming," whereby local officeholders raised revenue or supported troops in the sultan's name but were not landowners. As the distinctively military aspects of the Ottoman order declined after the 18th century, these privileges were gradually transformed in some areas into the çiftlik system, which more closely resembled proprietorship over land. This process involved the severing of the peasantry from their traditional rights on the land and a corresponding creation of large estates farmed on a commercial basis. The çiftlik thus yielded the paradox of a population that was heavily influenced by Ottoman culture yet bound into an increasingly oppressive economic subordination to Turkish landlords.

The independence movement
The closing decades of the 19th century saw deepening conflict and confusion in Macedonia. As the Turkish Empire decayed, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria all looked to benefit territorially from the approaching carve-up of Macedonia. At the same time, these indigenous states all became in different ways stalking horses for the aspirations of the European Great Powers. The weapons employed in this conflict ranged widely; they included the opening of schools in an attempt to inculcate a particular linguistic and confessional identity, the control of ecclesiastical office, influence over the course of railway building, diplomatic attempts to secure the ear of the Sublime Porte, and even the financing of guerrilla bands.

      Partly in response to the intensity of these campaigns of pressure and even terror, a movement called the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) was founded in 1893, at Resana (Resen) near Ohrid. The aim of IMRO was "Macedonia for the Macedonians," and on Aug. 2, 1903 (July 20, 1903, Old Style), it raised the banner of revolt against the Turks at Kruševo and declared Macedonian independence. The Ilinden, or St. Elijah's Day, Uprising was brutally crushed, but the Macedonian Question thereafter aroused intense international concern. The Great Powers made several attempts to impose reform on the Porte, including the sending of their own officers to supervise the gendarmerie-in effect, the first international peacekeeping force.

      In spite of their conflicting interests, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria in 1912 concluded a series of secret bilateral treaties that had as their explicit intention the ejection of the Turks from Europe. They took advantage of an uprising by the Albanian population to intervene in October 1912 and, following their defeat of the sultan's armies, partitioned the remaining Turkish possessions (including Macedonia) between them. The Treaty of London (May 1913), which concluded this First Balkan War, left Bulgaria dissatisfied; but, after this country's attempt to enforce a new partition in a Second Balkan War, the Treaty of Bucharest (August 1913) confirmed a pattern of boundaries that (with small variations) has remained in force ever since. Although the region was again engulfed in war in 1914 and Bulgaria occupied large parts of Macedonia, the end of World War I in 1918 saw the partition of 1913 reconfirmed.

      During the interwar years, intensive campaigning took place in all areas of Macedonia to impose identities upon the population that suited the interests of the controlling states. In an attempt to secure its status as South Serbia, "Vardar Macedonia" was subjected to an active program of colonization under land-reform legislation. Following the forcible ejection of Greeks from Turkey during the 1920s, thousands of Greek settlers were given land in "Aegean Macedonia." Both Serbia and Greece took advantage of the displacement by war or expulsion of many former Turkish landowners.

      During this period a link was consolidated between politicized agricultural labourers (especially tobacco workers) on the large Macedonian estates and the nascent Communist Party-a link that survived the proscription of the party in Yugoslavia after 1921. Partly because of its communist associations, the movement for Macedonian independence was then sustained largely underground until the outbreak of World War II.