589

IMAGINING MACEDONIA IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE: STATE POLICIES,
NETWORKS AND VIOLENCE (1878-1912)
The thesis is focusing on the complexity of the Macedonian Question(s) at the turn to the 20th
century, which entailed multiple aspects: various local committees, the Balkan countries, the
Great Powers, and the Ottomans. At that time, these actors imagined variously one part of the
Ottoman territories that was becoming popular under the name of Macedonia. Many states
and intelligentsia developed contested strategies to include these Ottoman provinces as part
of their meta-narratives and greater state projects. In this respect, the thesis aims to analyse
these various actors in the time framework between the Congress of Berlin (1878) and the
Balkan Wars (1912/13). By using different regional sources from the Ottoman, Bulgarian,
Macedonian, Serbian and Albanian languages, and European reports in English, French,
German, Italian and Russian, the scope of this work is to bring into discussion the
multiplicities entailed at the international, regional and trans-regional levels. Apart from it,
the thesis includes local level as well, in order to avoid the use of ’monolithic ethno-national
identities’ as a given, and rather to reflect the complexity of events on the ground. At that time
and even today, some politicians, statesmen and intellectuals tried to implement various
national narratives and worldviews according to the primordial ethnoreligious containers
without reflecting that the imposed identification are ambiguous and problematic with the
situation at the local level. Nevertheless, the dissertation does not aim to discard such works
(and picture) of the locals that help to deconstruct the meta-narratives produced by the
policies of the nation-state(s).
7

İMPARATORLUK ÇAĞINDA MAKEDONYA'NIN TASAVVURU: DEVLET
POLİTİKALARI, AĞLAR VE ŞİDDET (1878-1912)
Tezin odak noktasını, yerel komiteler, Balkan ülkeleri, Büyük Güçler ve Osmanlı
Devleti gibi farklı aktörleri içeren Makedonya Sorunu oluşturmaktadır. Bu aktörler 19. ve 20.
yüzyıl boyunca Osmanlı topraklarında Makedonya olarak bilinen üç vilayeti bölüşme
amacıyla mücadele etmişlerdir. Her bir Balkan devletinde entelektüeller ve devlet adamları,
kendi büyük devlet projelerine Makedonya’yı dâhil etmek için tartışmalı stratejiler
geliştirmişlerdir. Bu bağlamda, çalışma adı geçen bu farklı aktörleri, Berlin Kongresi (1878)
ile Balkan Savaşları (1912/13) arasındaki zaman diliminde incelemiştir. Tezde, Osmanlıca,
Bulgarca, Makedonca, Sırpça ve Arnavutça kaynaklarından istifade edilmiştir. Buna ek
olarak, İngilizce, Fransızca, Almanca, İtalyanca ve Rusça raporlar da incelenmiştir. Bu yolla,
çalışmada Makedonya Sorunu, uluslararası ve bölgesel aktörler üzerinden tartışmaya
açılmıştır. Yanı sıra, tezde etnik kimlik tartışmalarının ötesine geçilerek, yereldeki çok
katmanlı faktörlerin etkisi ortaya çıkartılmıştır. Bu açıdan, tezin ana düşüncesini, olayların
bölgesel ve uluslararası düzeyde anlamlandırılabilmesi için yerelin öneminin vurgulanması
ve öne çıkartılması oluşturmaktadır. Diğer bir deyişle, çalışma ulus-devletin ve devlet
adamlarının geliştirdiği meta anlatılara karşı çıkarak, yerel düzeye odaklanmayı ve bu
düzeydeki aktörlerin iç içe geçmiş ve çok katmanlı yapısını incelemeyi vurgulamaktadır.
8
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The present dissertation is the result of my study at Marmara and Bologna Universities, my
work at Justus-Liebig University and research visit at Central State Historical Archive in St.
Petersburg (TsGIA SPb). This journey between three Universities and forth countries
(Turkey, Italy, Germany and Russia) was a never-ending learning experience collected
through my various conversations with remarkable people. First of all, I express sincere
gratitude to my thesis supervisors Prof. Dr. Nuray Bozbora and Prof. Dr. Stefan Rohdewald. I
was lucky enough that in academic life I have an academic “mother“ (in German:
Doktormutter) Prof. Bozbora and academic “father” (in German: Doktovater) Prof.
Rohdewald. This thesis would not be finished without the support of the thesis mentoring
committee: Prof. Dr. Birsen Hekimoğlu, Prof. Dr. Nurcan Özgür-Baklacıoğlu and Prof. Dr.
Nurşen Gürboğa. I am also fortunate to have remarkable institutional support by Justus-Liebig
University and by LOEWE-Project Konfliktregionen im östlichen Europa. Here I thank to all
my friends, colleagues and professors who were part of this amazing project. However, this
dissertation would have not been successful without support of my friends in Istanbul,
precisely my abla Derya Ayten, my ağabeylerim Emre Kurt and Sadık Müfit Bilge, my kanka
Amer Maraqa, my brat Alen Zeković and vlla Naim Gjokaj. I am also grateful to my friends
in Gießen and Berlin: Mario Šain, Mustafa Aslan, Johanna Munzel, Pia and Glen, Aleksandar
Talović and Jovo Miladinović.
I am also thankful to my friends from Bologna: Eduart Uzeir and Besar Kolce; my sestre from
Montenegro: Danira Abdović and Denisa Mahmutović; my relatives, and family – to whom
this dissertation is dedicated: my mum Lirija, my father Šabo, brother’s family Damir, Dijana
and my little love Dario.
9
10
Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………….……………..12
A) A Theoretical Framing……………………………………………………………..…………….15
a) The Great Powers and the Balkans…………………………..…..………………..……….……..19
b) The Great Powers and the Ottomans…………...……………...………………………………....25
c) Borrowed Colonialism of Ottoman State………………………………..............................…….27
B). Historiography and Methodological Design …………………………………….……………..32
C). What do we know about Contentious Imaginations of Ottoman
Macedonia…………………………………………………………………………….…….……....46
D) Structural Rationale………………………………………………..………………..…………..55
1. Imagined Geographies and Imagined Communities: The Great Powers and Ottoman
Rumelia ……………………………………………………………………………….…….58
1. Imagination and Intervention……………………………………………………………..……...62
1.1. European Intervention(s) in Ottoman Greece………………………………..………..……….64
1.2. Imagined Geographies and Cartography…………………………………….………………...70
1.2.1. Inventing Balkans, Imagining Macedonia…………………………………………………...72
1.2.2. Mapping Macedonia……………………………………………………….………………..78
1.3. The Balkan Intelligentsia and Surrogate Hegemony………………………………………….88
1.3.1. Towards Liberation and the Nation-State…………………………………………………...93
1.3.2. Russia’s Forcible Intervention and Macedonian Question.………………………………...101
1.4. The Ottoman “Borrowed Colonization” toward Rumelia……………………………………104
2. State Policies and Mobile Intellectuals as Agents of Nationalism and Imperialism: Between the
Congress of Berlin and the Ilinden Uprising (1878-1903)…………………………………….113
2.1 The Ottoman Consolidation of the Three Vilayets in Macedonia……………………………114
2.2. From Unity of Islam to Albanian Nationalism in the Three Vilayets of Macedonia………..120
2.2.1. Albanianism in Istanbul: Against Pan-Slavism and Pan-Hellenism………………………121
2.2.2. Albanianism in Diaspora: How the Albanian Intelligentsia imagined Albania and
Macedonia………………………………………………………………………………..………130
2.3. Balkan State Competitions and Agents of Nationalism and
Imperialism……………………………………………………………………………….……...135
2.3.1. Greek Creation of National Space………………………………………………….……..136
11
2.3.2. The Bulgarian National Revival and the Macedonian Question………………….…….....138
2.3.3. The Serbian National Movement and the Macedonian Question…………………..……...150
3. Networks on the Ground: A Perspective from Below in Ottoman Macedonia (1903-1908)
……………………………………………………………………………..………………..........162
3.1. International Intervention(s) and Local Organizations in Ottoman Macedonia……………..163
3.1.1. The Great Powers and the Ottoman Administration in the Three Vilayets………………..166
3.1.2. The Ottoman Administration and the Local Actors in Macedonia………………………..169
3.2. The Networks of Local Organisations in Ottoman Macedonia………………………..........171
3.2.1. Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (IMARO)………………..172
3.2.1.1. IMARO – its „Left“ and „Right“ Wings……………………………………………......178
3.2.1.2. Networks with Anarchist Organisations……………………………………………......182
3.2.2. Greek Organisations: „Conquering the Souls“ in Ottoman Macedonia………………….186
3.2.3. Chetnik Movement………………………………………………………………..….......192
3.2.3.1. Private Initiative: Interaction of Individuals with the State…………………..……......193
3.2.3.2. Organisation of Chetas on the Ground………………………………………...……….196
3.2.4. Albanian Kachaks………………………………………………………………………..205
4. Entangled Trajectories: From the Macedonian Reforms to the Balkan Wars …….......220
4.1. Hamidian Reforms in Ottoman Macedonia: Center in the Periphery – Periphery in the
Center……………………………………………………………………………………….......221
4.2. The Young Turks and Albanian Intelligentsia in Ottoman Macedonia…………...…….....228
4.2.1. The Young Turks and Networks in Europe: From Ideology to Political Movement….....230
4.2.2. The Young Turks and Networks in Macedonia: From Political Movement to
Revolution………………………………………………………………………………………236
4.3. The Young Turks and Albanians after the Revolution………………………………….....246
4.4. Entangled Imperialisms: The Great Powers and the Balkans States on the Road to the Balkan
Wars (1912-1913) ……………………………………………………………….………..…....252
4.4.1. „Small-State Imperialism“ – A Road Towards the Balkan Wars (1912-1913)…...…….254
4.4.2. Montenegro and the Idea of a Greater State: Towards Macedonia………………..…….266
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….……….277
References…………………………………………………………………….………….……293
12
INTRODUCTION
During one snowy day in early 2015 in Emirgān, the Sariyer district of Istanbul, a friend (of
mine) and I visited Joan Miró’s exhibition at Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi “Atlı Köşk,” a mansion
that for 30 years around the turn of the 20th century served as a royal residence and embassy
of Montenegro. This latter fact aroused my interest in the presence of people from the Balkans
in Istanbul, as well as in the Ottoman heritage in the Balkans, a region that at that time was
known as Rumeli. Due to meta-narrative historiographies produced by nation-state(s), those
connections between the different parts of the Balkans with Istanbul and entangled stories of
people with the former capital of the Ottoman Empire and vice versa, were not widely part of
widespread knowledge. This incongruity between historical connections and almost total
absence of such entanglements from contemporary knowledge began to puzzle me. In the
time that followed, I formulated my research interest in Ottoman history with regard to the
Balkans as a product of these entanglements, placing a focus not only on the state
perspective(s), rather encompassing the human agencies that also connected these regions.
During my stay in Bologna in late 2016, I got the opportunity to work with my second
supervisor Prof. Dr. Stefan Rohdewald on Southeastern European history within the subproject
“Macedonia as an International Intervention and (Dis)Integration Landspace: Global
and Local Actors (1890-2015)” at the University “Justus Liebig” of Gießen (Germany). This
new opportunity to work at Historical Institute in Geißen helped me to formulate the future
research topic, questions, aims, and scope of the thesis. My primary goal here was to view
from a local perspective, at the very least, the forgotten and overlooked entanglements of
various actors who were active in the Ottoman Macedonian context. However, I did not wish
to exclude the state and international perspectives that were very important for understanding
the complexities of the situation that was known as the Macedonian Question, or found in the
Ottoman scripts as vilayet-i selase meselesi (“three vilayets”). To better understand these
complexities of Ottoman Macedonia, I aimed to use a wide range of Balkan and Ottoman, as
well as European and Russian sources, focusing on four different levels (local, regional, transnational
and international or global).
These levels intend to understand and interpret the escalation of the conflicts, the reasons
behind the contestation of the region known as Macedonia, and the dynamics of the
interlacing of actors on the ground and in the inhabitants’ everyday life. Therefore, these
different levels (international, transnational, national, regional, and local) help us to find out
13
the complexity of the Macedonian Questions, which entailed multiple aspects: various local
committees, the Balkan countries, the Great Powers, and the Ottomans.
I intentionally employ the plural form of the term, Macedonian Questions, because I will
argue that there has not been one uniform Macedonian Question as a whole, but it rather
comprised many questions. By aiming to focus on these different levels and questions, I
developed several research questions: why did the Macedonian Questions become contested
among the Great Powers at that time and regional Balkan states in the Age of Empire? How
was Macedonia imagined? How did this imagination result in an escalation of violence, in
symbolic and physical forms, among various actors (states, intelligentsia, guerrillas)? What
was the role and involvement of the local population in these contested imaginaries?
In order to reveal the answers to examine these questions, I start with challenging the ideas of
primordial understandings of the nation and the ethnonational metanarratives made by the
modern nation-states in the Balkans and Turkey (as well as in the Western Europe). This
challenge to “conventional wisdom” can offer new perspectives (for example subaltern) that
tell the stories not only of the larger region, but also much of modern era and its perception by
“ordinary” social actors.
Starting with a moyenne duree analysis (also Konjunkturzyklen) from the beginning of the
XIX century1 and covering in detail the period between 1878 and 1912, I reconsider how
imagination and cartography, the competing interests of the Great Powers, Balkan states, and
Ottoman Empire directly affected the experiences of the people living in Ottoman Macedonia
or vilayet-i selase (“three vilayets”). Furthermore, I am driven by an initial hypothesis that the
elite’s imaginations and state policies cannot be explained only through their meta-narratives,
which are based on national and religious fervour. In this respect, I aim to deconstruct these
state-centric views, and I argue that one should pay more attention to the role played by the
locals. Accordingly, my intention is to understand the Macedonian problematics, Ottoman
mechanisms, the Great Powers and Balkan interventions, their inter-relations and
collaborations by trying to create an entirely new approach by including the real-life situation
on the ground. Although this was a period of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire into
discrete nation-state projects, the local level was far more complex than presented by the
state’s imaginations. More precisely, I will argue that the differences among the people living
1 Nikolaus Buschmann and Horst Carl, "Zugänge zur Erfahrungsgeschichte des Krieges: Forschung, Theorie,
Fragestellung," in Die Erfahrung des Krieges: Erfahrungsgeschichtliche Perspektiven von der Französischen
Revolution bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Nikolaus Buschmann and Horst Carl (Padaborn: Ferdinand Schöningh,
2001), pp. 11-26.
14
side-by-side at the local level ‘were not a given’ but predominantly constructed during the
period of increased violence in the region (1903-1912) and later during the Balkan wars
(1912-13), as well as after the Great War. The practices of the locals, the entanglements
created “from the bottom up” were not (only) based on national or religious affiliations, but
very often on the local, village or city, family or tribal identifications. This approach opposes
the state-centric views that tried to impose a national identity on an enormous percentage of
the population. In this way, this conceptualisation allows me to critically examine all state
actions based on imaginations that produced imperialist policies and monoethnic greater state
projects in relation to the Macedonian space. In this respect, I will analyse how those
imaginations were produced, but also how they were opposed by populace or how they did
not match their daily realities.2 Moreover, I focus on the locals’ subjective understandings of
their contentious practices: in this dissertation, I conceptualise and examine how locals who
were engaged in unconventional participation often viewed their actions as a national, nonnational,
or even anti-national, and I adopt the important insider perspective on how they
“imagined” Macedonia.
This introductory section is organised in four sections. In the first part, I provide the
theoretical approaches of the thesis by situating it in the broader context of transfer of
knowledge from the “West” to other “peripheries”3 such as the Balkans and Ottoman Empire.
This divergence into “centre” and “periphery,” I argue, was also based on the Zeitgeist of
“civilised” versus “barbarian” discourses. Here, I intentionally use the terms “centre” and
“periphery” in order to deconstruct this Eurocentric approach and to show that such
distinction was in fact made by the modern colonial world model. In this respect, I hold that
we need to “provincialise” the centre-periphery metaphor, to borrow Chakrabarty’s famous
term, and to make the agency of local actors more relevant to our understanding of political
dynamics in Ottoman Macedonia. Accordingly, I also discuss the cases from below “with
2 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit: Eine Theorie der
Wissenssoziologie (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2003), p. 20. Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History (London /
New York: Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, 2006).
3 „Center and Periphery are probably two most contested terms in postcolonial studies, as they represent the
biaristic geography of colonialism but at the same, if used uncritically, also tend to normalize this view of
colonialism in which the European powers constitute the center while the colonies are seen as the
periphery.“ See: https://postcolonial.net/glossary/center-periphery/ (Accessed 21.02.2021). In other words, I do
not use this concept as static and something „given,“ but rather as a tool to deconstruct this dichotomy and show
that „periphery“ also has its‘ agency and it can influence its‘ „center.“ Rather, my aim is here to consolidate
“global design” of European history and the silenced critical voices of “peripheral” actors (local histories) into
fluidity. See: Jens, Hanssen, Practices of Integration: Center–Periphery Relations in the Ottoman Empire, in The
Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire, edited by Jens Hanssen, Thomas
Philipp, and Stefan Weber (Würzburg: Ergon, 2002), pp. 49–74.
15
native principles of life”4 which have to be worked out without the exclusive influence of
Western Europe.
The second section is devoted to the historiographic discussions and methodological
frameworks. The historiographic works aim to combine various approaches on this topic,
while in the methodological part I show which approaches I employed by collecting various
archive documents, files, newspapers, diaries, and memoirs. Furthermore, these documents
will be used and elaborated on throughout four chapters of the thesis. The third part shows the
general knowledge about contentious imaginations of Ottoman Macedonia and it brings into
discussion different perspectives. Finally, I outline the dissertation structure. In this way,
before I begin discussing my archival material, the reader can become familiar with the
political and historical context in which this material is situated.
A) THEORETICAL FRAMING
In many ways, this reading has been reproduced and developed in the context of recent
postcolonial studies. The current and available production under the name of “postcolonial”
studies or theories emerged as a “versions of social constructivism that focus on one particular
issue that influences on the intersubjective knowledge creation.” 5 In the discipline of
International Relations, the origins of postcolonial theory appeared with the dissatisfaction of
the explanatory manner of theories such as Realism and Liberalism and their positivist
approach, which focused on power politics and rivalry among states.6 Postcolonial theory
criticizes these state-centric views of international relations and attempts rather to have a
focus on human beings and their agency. As such, it is important to emphasise that a
postcolonial researcher takes an interdisciplinary approach and critically analyses the
production of knowledge forged to serve to the imperialist state policies.7 The spread of
modern European “knowledge” is no longer interpreted as a contribution to the modernization
of historical thought, but rather as an imposition of European “values” in order to provide an
4 Gerrit W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (New York: Clarendon Press/ Oxford
University Press, 1984), p. 106.
5 Andrzej Polus, Postcolonialism as an International Relations Theory. Desperately Seeking for a Paradigm in
the Post-Cold War Era, p. 6; See:
https://www.academia.edu/21222275/Postcolonialism_as_an_International_Relations_Theory._Desperately_See
king_for_a_Paradigm_in_the_Post-Cold_War_Era (Access: 10.05.2017)
6 Steve Smith and Patricia Owens, Alternative approaches to international theory, in: The Globalization of World
Politics. An introduction to international relations, ed. John Baylis, Steve Smith, Patricia Owens (New York:
Oxford University Press 2006); R. Abrahamsen, Postcolonialism, in: International Relations Theory for Twenty-
First Century, ed. M. Griffiths, (Routledge, Oxon 2007), pp. 111-122.
7 Here it does not suffice to say „Wissen ist Macht” (knowledge is power), but rather “Macht is Wissen” (power
is knowledge).
16
imperial hegemony. Thus, for many postcolonial scholars, the analytical divergences of
“West” and “East”, “center” and “periphery”, “civilised” and “barbarian” are products of a
Western epistemology tied to imperial power, which do little but obfuscate the site of “real”
politics.8
In this respect, Postcolonial theory can help me here to understand/comprehend (verstehen)9
constructed meta-narratives, the consequences of imperialistic projects, as well as issues of
nation creation, nationalism, and self-perception of societies and nations created by
imperialistic discourses.10 Its arguments are that from the 16th century through the period of
the Enlightenment in Western imaginations (based on prejudices and stereotypes) constructed
“the East with Gramscian understanding of hegemony, and Foucault’s notions about relations
between power and knowledge.”11 The determination of its historical origins, the roots of
contemporary empowerment of the civilisation are often traced spatially to Western Europe,
temporally to the 18th century, and culturally to the Enlightenment.12 Moreover, writers in the
Enlightenment period started to develop an interest in the concept of “civilisation” by
producing “civilised” and “uncivilised” discourses. According to Jean-Louis Carra (1742-
1793) ‘Enlightened Europe’ was limited to England, France, Italy, and the Germanic
countries, while in the eyes of the Enlightened, the South-East especially the Ottoman Empire
became “uncivilised”.13 These constructed European meta-narratives legitimated the violence
of imperialism upon these ”impure” and ”other” peoples by applying la mission civilizatrice.
Accordingly, the historical context of the European Enlightenment privileged progress,
rationality and scientific developments in order to establish and legitimate Western hegemony
8 This approach focuses primarily on the adverse impact of the 18th and 19th centuries on the Western European
transformation relative to the rest of the world, which often employs a cultural (study) lens to destabilise the
power-knowledge connection. As a critic to this focus on 18th century, Mignolo argues that “the current and
available production under the name of ‘postcolonial’ studies leave aside the crucial and constitutive moment of
modernity/coloniality that was the sixteenth century.” See: Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs:
Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledge, And Border Thinking, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 37.
9 The term understanding/comprehending (verstehen) was introduced by historian Johann Gustav Droysen and
closely associated with the work of sociologist Max Weber.
10 Andrzej Polus, op.cit., p. 4;
11 Sankaran Krishna, Globalization and Postcolonialism. Hegemony and Resistance in the Twenty-first Century,
(Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009).
12 Postcolonialism might appear as a version of social constructivism with epistemological guidelines about the
structures of knowledge and power, consisted in the works of Karl Marx’s power inequalities, the Gramscian
understanding of hegemony and the subaltern perspective, as well as Hannah Arendt’s conceptions of power and
violence, and the Saidian criticism of the Western production of the Orient.
13 Many educated Austrians shared Metternich’s belief that “Asia begins where the eastern highway leaves
Vienna.” In this context Claude-Charles de Peyssonnel and Voltaire considered the South Slavs (including
Dalmatia) as barbarians, like their ancestors who settled in VII century. See: Wojiciech Sajkowski, From Vinko
Pribojevic to the French Encyclopaedia – The History of the South Slavs and the Historiography of the French
Enlightenment, in Macedonia: Land, Region, Borderland, edited by Jolanta Sujecka (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo
DiG, 2013), pp. 331-348.
17
over the marginalised rest of the world by employing, exploiting, and intending to establish
dominance over others (using the categories of race, ethnicity, tradition, and religion.).14 In
the words of Kenneth Pomeranz this “great divergence” between “East” and “West” means
that the Western Weltanschauung is dominant, the most powerful and wealthiest world
civilisation of all time.15 In order to deconstruct these claims, it is very important to take into
consideration the above mentioned term understanding (verstehen), especially understanding
the “imperialist discourse of domination” and “imperialist incursions into local life-worlds.”16
Postcolonial theory helps us to understand this transformation through a fundamental claim:
that the modern world we inhabit is impossible to understand except in relationship to the
history of imperialism and colonial rule - especially the period of “age of empire” that I
highlight here in regard to the Macedonian Questions. Furthermore, I examine this imperialist
production of knowledge together with knowledge transfer (Wissenszirkulation) and spillover
among recipients in the Balkans and Ottoman Empire, and local actors on the ground.17
Far from being irrelevant, the concepts introduced by postcolonial theory and its
subdisciplines such as subaltern studies, are of important value once they are consulted as the
postcolonial understanding or methodological guideposts.18 This incredulous stance emerged
14 Fatma Müge Göcek, Parameters of Postcolonial Sociology of the Ottoman Empire, in Julian Go (ed.)
Decentering Social Theory, edited by Julian Go (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013) p. 77.
15 Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy,
(New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001).
16 Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History?, (Princeton / Oxford: Princeton University Press 2016), p. 53.
17 Stefan Rohdewald, Albrecht Fuess, Florian Riedler, Stephan Conermann, Wissenszirkulation: Perspektiven
und Forschungsstand, in Transottomanica-Osteuropäisch-osmanisch-persische Mobilitätsdynamiken, (Göttingen:
Unipress GmbH 2019), pp. 83-104; Detlef Haberland, Buch- und Wissenstransfer in Ostmittel- und
Südosteuropain der Frühen Neuzeit, (München: Hamadeh, Shirine 2004); Achim Landwehr, Das Sichtbare
sichtbar machen. Annäherungenan›Wissen‹ als Kategorie historischer Forschung, in: Geschichte(n) der
Wirklichkeit: Beiträge zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte des Wissens edited by Achim Landwehr (Augsburg:
Wißner Verlag 2002), pp. 61–89.
Furthermore, in “Southern Theory” Raewyn Connell showed how social theory from the world periphery has
power and relevance for understanding the changing world. See: Raewyn Connell, Southern Theory: The Global
Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science, (London: Allen & Unwin, 2007).
18 In this sense, it is developed in the context of the method and theory of Interpretation (Deutungwissen) and
hermeneutics through the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Martin Heidegger. Therefore,
this work will try to understand/comprehend the historical context (starting from the Enlightenment period) of
the problems, in order to interpret or arrive at an exegesis of the Macedonian Question as a ‘crisis zone,’ the
Great Powers and Balkan states intervention, as well as the Ottoman colonial mechanisms. The works that
helped me to frame these understandings in theoretical approach are listed in:
https://www.unibielefeld.de/einrichtungen/cias/publikationen/wiki/e/entangled-history.xml (Accessed
12.12.2018). Furthermore see: “Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global
Connections and Comparisons (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2004); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A
Global History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf., 2014); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial
Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. 2000).; Leon Fink, (ed.) Workers Across
the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History (New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 2011).; Leela Gandhi,
Postcolonial Theory. A Critical Introduction. (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press. 2008).; Paul Gilroy, The Black
Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. (London: Verso. 1993).; Eliga H. Gould, Entangled Histories,
18
as a criticism to the Eurocentric teleologies and tries to open up a space for new stories in
other parts of the world. Based on these critical approaches to Western domination and
ethnocentric worldview, I aim to contribute to the development of concepts on trans-cultural
interaction, circulation, exchange, and flow of knowledge, ideas, institutions, people and
practices on the ground as well. More important, these interchanges between “West” and
“East”, “center” and “periphery”, “civilised” and “barbarian”, were not uniform; the variation
in experiences at all levels were much more complex and intersectional. Such a perspective
runs contrary to a Eurocentric worldview based on notion that the developments of the
“West” has taken place in isolation from the rest of the world. Rather, I am interested in the
ways which entities and discourses such as “West” and “East”. “civilised” and “barbarians”
were constructed in the context of global circulation between various regions and how it was
reflected into Macedonian context. Taking this trans-cultural perspective, this study also
contributes to a history field named Entangled History. Just like Postcolonial studies,
Entangled History endeavours to come to terms with the connectivities of the past and seeks
to overcome the tunnel vision. Their basic assumptions are that neither empires, nor nations
are developed in a vacuum and that the history of humankind is based on the
interconnectedness of societies, interdependencies of human beings, and the multidirectional
character of transfers. Sanjay Subrahmanyam defined these entanglements with the term
“connected history,”19 while Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria have elaborated a similar
perspective to Histoire Croisée within a postcolonial articulation.20 Before we enter into
Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery, The American Historical Review, Vol.
112, No. 3, 2007, pp. 764-786.; Steven and van der Walt, Lucien Hirsch, Anarchism and Syndicalism in the
Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940. (Leiden; Boston: Brill. 2010).; Klaus Hock, and Gesa
Mackenthun, Entangled Knowledge. Scientific Discourses and Cultural Difference. (Münster: Waxmann. 2012).;
Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past. (New York: Palgrave Mcmillan.
2003).; Matthias Midell, and Katja Naumann, Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area
Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization, In: Journal of Global History 5 (1), 2010, pp 149 -
170.; Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. (Druham,
N.C.: Duke Univ. Pr. 2011); Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.
(New York: Penguin Books. 1986); Jürgen Osterhammel, Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des Nationalstaats:
Studien zu Beziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisationsvergleich. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2011);
Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. (München: Beck. 2009);
Stefan Rinke, and Delia González de Reufels, Expert Knowledge in Latin American History: Local,
Transnational, and Global Perspectives. (Stuttgart: Heinz. 2014); Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social
Politics in a Progressive Age(London: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press. 1998); Immanuel Wallerstein, The
Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the
Sixteenth Century. (New York: Academic Press. 1974); Michael Werner, and Benedicte Zimmermann, Vergleich,
Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen.
Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28 (4) 2002, pp. 607–636.”
19 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,
Modern Asian Studies 31 (3), 1997, pp. 735–762.
20 Sebastian Conrad, Shalini Randeria and Beate utterlüty, Jenseits des Eurozentrismus: postkoloniale
Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main; New York: Campus. 2002).;
19
analysis, one should emphasize that exist distinctions between postcolonial studies and
entangled (and global) history, but there are much more commonalities and areas of overlap.
They are by no means hermetically distinct, and, in fact, influence one another in many ways.
Both of disciplines made major contributions to an understanding of the interactions across
cultural borders and transnational context, what is the scope of this thesis too.
a) THE GREAT POWERS AND THE BALKANS
The Europe’s commercial and scientific as well as political revolution affected significantly
the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans as one of its parts. These transformations of “western
civlisation” were actually, as Leften Stavros Stavrianos states, “acceptable, and even desirable
(…) for Orthodox peoples in the Balkans.” 21 On the other hand, the French political
revolution became a symbol of a dramatic turning point spreading the ideas of nationalism,
national independence, nation-state building, and unification that were accepted by the local
intelligentsia in the Balkans. To a significant degree, the intellectual stratum of the Balkan
population turned to the “West” for ideas, institutions, and technology.22 In the Balkans those
ideas did not appear immediately, but passed through several phases, transformations, and
different foreign influences. For example, this process of transformations last almost the
whole century that resulted in state-independency of the Balkans: the Greek independence
(1830), continued with the Serbian, Montenegrin, Romanian (1878), and Bulgarian (1908)
independence, and completed by the Balkan wars with Albania (1912). Therefore, it can be
concluded that the commercial, scientific, and political revolutions that transformed Western
Europe transformed the Ottoman Empire and Balkans too.23 These changes made possible the
replacement of multinational empire with the nation-state ideas and projections. Together
with idea of the independent nation-state, as L. S. Stavrianos argues, the concept of greater
state was also developed with the new type of imperialism that originated in Europe.24 In the
Macedonian context, the Balkan states developed strategies and policies, constructed this
space as integral and imagined territory of greater state projects among the Balkan elites.
Kemal Karpat states that these ideas “destroyed the pluralist (Ottoman) order and the newly
Shalini Randeria, Geteilte Geschichte und verwobene Moderne. In Zukunftsentwürfe: Ideen für eine Kultur der
Veränderung, edited by Jörn Rüsen, Hanna Leitgeb and Norbert Jegelka. (Frankfurt; New York: Campus, 1999),
pp. 87–96.
21 Leften Stavros Stavrianos, The influence of the West on the Balkans, in The Balkans in Transition eds.
Charles and Barbara Jelavich, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), pp. 188.
22 Cyril E. Black, Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans, in The Balkans in Transition eds. Charles and
Barbara Jelavich, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), pp. 147.
23 L. S. Stavrianos, op.cit., 1963, p. 195.
24 Ibid. p. 197.
20
independent Balkan states adopted the idea of a single ethnic linguistic nation based on
European models.”25
The transformations that happened in the Balkans represent a microcosm and local
manifestation of a worldwide effect. The ideas from the “West” brought electricity, industry,
protection from different kinds of illness, but they also brought a constant change in values,
institutions, and practices which were incorporated inside the countries’ own political and
ideological agendas. This was realised through a wide-ranging process of knowledge transfer,
interconnectedness, and interactions between elites in the West and Southeastern Europe. In
this context, Vesna Goldsworthy’s “Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination”
suggests that expanding the parameters of imperialism, despite the absence of a
“conventional” European colonial presence in the Balkans, is nevertheless applicable to this
region.26 Accordingly, the Balkans underwent the process of “colonisation of the mind,”27 and
their intelligentsia constructed imperialist narratives and ideological formulations in
Macedonia, as a part of the “small state imperialism” projects. 28 Such “colonisation of the
mind,” according to Maria Todorova, “was imposed as the hegemonic paradigm in Europe, as
the gold standard of ‘civilised’ political organization.”29 The uncertain Balkan elites tried to
imitate this European model of civilised West.30 Therefore, the relationship between the
Balkans and Western Europe can be grasped as substitution of an “colonisation of mind”;
accepting ideas of the West in order to define and create one’s own space of expansion that
became Macedonia. 31 In this respect, the Balkans case did not undergo administrative
colonialization by the “West”, but rather an imaginative colonisation, involving a dual
perception: on the one hand as a part of Europe and on the other as an opposition, the ‘darker
25 Kemal Karpat, The Social and Political Foundations of Nationalism in South East Europe after 1878: A
Reinterpretation, in Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History, in Selected Essays and Articles, ed. Kemal
Karpat, (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 357.
26Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012), p. 15.
27 Artemis Leontis, Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland (New York: Ithaca, 1995), p, 68;
Charles Stewart, Colonizing the Greek Mind? The Reception of Western Psychotherapeutics in Greece, (Athens:
DEREE – The American College of Greece. 2014).; Sally Matthews, Colonised minds? Post-development theory
and the desirability of development in Africa, Third World Quarterly, Volume 38, 2017 - Issue 12.
28 These various influences were a trigger to the Macedonia’s own imagination as a socio-spatial consciousness
and political/ideological agenda of the Balkan nations. See: Marharyta Fabrykant and Renee Buhr, Small State
Imperialism: The Place of Empire in Contemporary Nationalist Discourse, Nations and Nationalism, Volume 22,
Issue 1, 2015.
29 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 167.
30K. E. Fleming, Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography, The American Historical Review, Vol.
105, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), p. 1221.
31Katherine Elizabeth Fleming notes: ”There is a big difference between ‘metaphoric colonialism,’ ‘surrogate
colonialism,’ ‘colonialism of the mind,’ and colonialism of the sort with which Said is concerned.”K. E. Fleming,
op.cit. (Oct., 2000), p. 1223.
21
side’ of Europe. This ambivalent oscillation between ‘Europeanness’ and ‘oriental difference’
enabled to the Balkan states to imagine themselves as part of civilised West and consequently
to construct their’s own ‘Orient.’ This perpetual process was defined by Milica Bakic-Hayden
as “Nesting Orientalism.”32 This concept explains “a tendency of each region to view the
cultures and religions to its South and East as more conservative and primitive.”33 It explains
how a group that creates the ‘orientalised other’ can also be the subject of ‘orientalisation’ by
another group. According to the concept of nasting orientalism, the Ottoman space was more
“east” or “other” than Greece, Bulgaria or Serbia, and the ‘asiatic Ottomans’ needed to
abandon Macedonia, which had been “the heart of Slavic empires for centuries.”34 It is in the
context of these interactions and influences of the political and ideological projects that th the
Great Powers and Balkan states discursive formulations in the framework of the Macedonian
crisis can be analysed.
Additionally, an important role played the religious context of “anti-Islamic/anti-Turkish
discourses” and ”sacralisation of the heroes,” which also belonged to part of the invented
medieval tradition. On the one hand, the Balkan states interventions in Macedonia during the
Balkan wars were described as: “Holy war to free our brethren” (Montenegrin context), “a
war of the Cross against the Crescent” (Bulgarian context), a struggle against a “medieval
system of feudal exploitation” (Serbian context), and a “crusade of progress, civilization, and
liberty against Asian conquerors” (Greek context). 35 On the other hand, the policy of
secularisation of the heroes in the 19th century helped the promotion of a sacred “chosen”
nation in the context of Svetoslavlje or Prince Nikola’s myth of “Montenegrins as the
best/purest Serbs,” that was to be a motive for liberation from the Ottomans, portrayed as
‘Asiatic barbarians.’ In this context, the religion became nationalised, nations sacralised, and
32 Milica Bakic-Hayden, Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia, Slavic Review, Vol. 54, No. 2,
1995, pp. 917-931; Tanja Petrovic, ’Nesting Colonialism‘: New and Old Patterns of Exclusion in the European
Periphery, See: http://www.mirovni-institut.si/data/tinymce/Projekti/EE-vklju%C4%8Devanje/tanjapetrovic.pdf,
p. 1 (Access: 2 May 2017)
33 Ibid.
34 The second influence can be traced in the concept of the “invention of tradition.” This concept was coined in
the book „The Invention of Tradition“ in 1983 that was edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger.
Hobsbawm's introduction argues that many “traditions“ which “appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in
origin and sometimes invented.“
See: Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger, ed. The Invention of Tradition. (Cambridge University Press. 1983).
This invented tradition was promoted among the Balkan elite and its promoters of nationalism who were
influenced by European ideas of the nation-state and imperialism through the process of knowledge transfer. In
the Bulgarian case, Ohrid, Skopje, and Bitola had for a while been capitals of the Bulgarian First Empire, while
Prizren and Skopje were capitals of the Serbian Empire.
35Fikret Adanir, Ethnonationalism, Irredentism and Empire, in The Balkan Wars from Contemporary Perception
to Historic Memory ed. By Katrin Boeck and Sabine Rutar (London: Palgrave Macmillian, 2016), p. 13; Andreas
Hemberger, Illustrierte Geschichte des Balkan Krieges 1912/13, vol. I, (Wien, Leipzig: Hartleben, 1914), pp. 42-
48.
22
national heroes perceived as secular saints. According to Stefan Rohdewald, “especially in the
territorial rivalry between Bulgaria and Serbia over Macedonia, one may observe a
competition over the national identity of local groups, in which religious figures of memory
played a decisive role.”36 Macedonia became a struggle area of veneration of saints such as
Saint Sava, Cyril and Methodius. The foundation of the Saint Sava Association in Belgrade,
which was active in Macedonia, aimed particularly at the “direct competition with the
national projects of neighbours”37 and generally “praised (Saint Sava) as the ‘Sun of Serbian
heaven’ (…) representing and reproducing powerful images of the national golden age,
national reconciliation and unification and/or martyrdom for the Church and the nation.”38 In
its agenda, the Orthodox Church hurried to stress the crusade character of the struggle “for the
realization of God’s justice’ by ‘the sword brought by Christ the Savior’ against ‘the infidels’
crescent of oppression and blood,’ in the name of ‘the triumph of justice, peace and the lifegiving
cross’ and ‘raising the cross in the place of the crescent.’”39 As Fikret Adanir points
out, “the Balkan War thus was conceived and propagated as a crusade both in the sense of a
Christian remedial enterprise and of an effort to demonstrate the superiority of European
civilization.”40
As part of the broader interactions and connectivities, the role of Russia should not be
neglected either, because some members of the Balkan intelligentsia were often in
cooperation with imperial Russian statesmen in order to keep connections with “spiritual
brothers” and to realise these “greater state projects.”41 As meter of these cooperations, the
Pan-Slavist ideas were developed 42 - a movement in which nationalist elements were mingled
with supra-national and often imperialist trends.43 The word was first used in 1826 by Slovak
writer Jan Herkelin in a Latin treatise on Slav philology. It should be emphasised here that
‘Slavs (ethnical) self-awareness’ was to some extent present among the intellectuals, even
36 Stefan Rohdewald, Figures of (Trans-)National Religious Memory of the Orthodox Southern Slavs before
1945: An Outline on the Examples of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Trames, 2008, 12(62/57), 3, p. 290.
37Ibid, p. 293.
38Bojan Aleksov, Nationalism in Construction, The Memorial Church of St. Sava on Vracar Hill in Belgrade,
Balkanologie Revue d’ etudes pluridisciplinaries, Vo. VII, No 2, 2013, p. 47.
39Yura Konstantinova, Political Propaganda in Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars, Institut za balkanistika s Centar
po trakologiya – Balgarska akademiya na naukite, No.2-3-, 2011, pp. 79-116, here pp. 83-84
40Fikret Adanir, op.cit., in The Balkan Wars from Contemporary Perception to Historic Memory, (London:
Palgrave Macmillian, 2016), p. 14.
41Cyril E. Black, Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans, in Balkans in Transition, (University of
California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), p. 147.
42 Supporters of Pan-Slavism: Josef Dobrowsky (1753-1829), Jan Kollar (1793-1852), Pavel Josef Safarik (1795-
1861), Ludovik Stur (1815-1856), Frantisek Palacky (1798-1876), Stanko Vraz (1810-51), Taras Shevchenko
(1814-61), Adam Mickiewicz (1789-1855), Zygmunt Krasinski (1812-1859), Juliusz Slowacki, Adam
Czartoryski, Jernej Kopitar (1780-1844), Vuk Karadzic (1787-1864), Petar II Petrovic Njegos etc.
43 Hans Kohn ‘Pan-Slavism, its History and Ideology, (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1953). p. 1.
23
before the French Revolution. A number of studies demonstrate convincingly that Slavs had,
in Pierre Nora’s words, a collective remembrance of memory space (lieux de memoire).44
These memory spaces were also featured among the early modern Dalmatian humanists who
in the 16th century had invented the classical name of ‘Illyrian’ for the Slav-speaking
inhabitants of these provinces and called for the unification of the all Slavs in one Tsardom. It
may be that the first germs of these thoughts emerged as a result of the influence of the Italian
philosopher Machiavelli, who called for Italian unity, because it is known that the Dubrovnik
merchants were linked to the Italian city-states and wrote about the unity of the Slavs in the
same period. One of them was Ivan Gundulić, who wrote the poem “Osman” (1626), in which
he calls for Slav unity under the Polish king after the siege of Hotin (1621). Furthermore,
priest Juraj Križanić (1616-1683) put forward the idea of unification and liberation under the
leadership of the Russian emperor and the Catholic Church. Therefore, Turkish and Balkan
historiography overestimate the role of Russia in the national resurrection of the Balkan
Slavs.45 However, the Russian role grew in importance after Küçük Kaynarca (1774) and
especially after the Congress of Paris (1856), but we should not consider Russia as the only
determining factor in the national consciousness of the Balkan Slavs.46 The agency of the
Balkan intelligentsia should be taken also into consideration as determining factor and equal
contributors to the Pan-Slavist formulations. According to Hans Kohn, the national awakening
did not emanate from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the French Revolution, romantic
poetry, and German idealist philosophy,47 spreading primarily through Vienna, where the
Balkan Slav intellectuals and merchants met with nationalism as an ideology and orientalism
as a new construction against the Ottomans. By means of this knowledge transfer the Balkan
elite accepted the ideas of the West and adopted their political/ideological agenda against the
Ottoman Empire. Therefore, it is indeed highly important to ascertain that Pan-Slavism did
not originate only as an imperialist movement with the Russians, but with the interaction of
non-Russian Slav world in the Balkans, as it felt the need of closer cooperation in order to
succeed in the liberation from the ‘backward Asiatic Turks.’ Indeed, this was the message that
44 Pierre Nora, The Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. (New York: Columbia University Press,
1997).
45 Ilber Ortayli, Najduzi vek imperije, (Beograd: Srpska knjizevna zadruga, 2004), p. 60.
46 As can be seen from Krizanic’s example, the Balkan Slavs went ahead of Russia. This idea spread in Russia
thanks to the Greeks and South Slavs who translated documents from Greek and Church Slavonic. The liturgy of
the Russian Orthodox Church was merged with the Byzantine in the mid-seventeenth century. The Russian
Church benefited greatly from the Balkan priests and manuscripts from Balkan monasteries. Thus/This
demonstrates that the relationship between Russia and the Balkan Slavs was established through the church, not
as a trade through the West.
47 Hans Kohn, op.cit. p. 4.
24
prince-bishop (‘vladika’) Petar I Petrovic Njegoš conveyed in his letter to Tsar Alexander
(8/20 May 1817):
“My Highness Lord! Think about our relationship which binds us (Montenegrins) to your
Tsardom, and because of this common love, we need a better rapprochement of relations;
therefore, do not support what is against the Slavism (Slovenstvo).”48
In 1838, Ljudevit Gaj too sent a memorandum to the Russian Tsar stating it necessary that the
Russian mission unify the Slavs of the three cities of Villach, Varna, and Skutari (including
the Bulgarians), and to liberate the Slavs from the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires.49 We can
thus conclude that, in the first half of the 19th century, Pan-Slavism was a movement of the
Southern and Western Slavs, while in the second half was transformed and negotiated that it
became a predominantly Russian movement, rooted in a feeling of spirituality and grandeur,
and in a consciousness of a historical destiny.50 When the second Pan-Slav Congress met in
Moscow (1867)51, the Slavs in attendance were told that a Slav unity required a unity of faith,
of alphabet, and of language, the acceptance by all Slavs of Orthodoxy, of the Cyrillic
alphabet, and of the Russian language. 52 In the “Letter from Moscow to the Serbs”
Khomyakov wrote that “a Slav cannot be truly Slav outside Orthodoxy.”53 According to this
ideology, there was no place for ‘Others,’ but the time was “right” for formulations of the
imperialistic projects against the Ottoman Empire. These projects were directed at Ottoman
territories and especially Macedonia, which became a contested region among various Balkan
nations as well as Great Powers.54
48 Vladan Djordjevic, Crna Gora i Austrija 1814-1894, (Begrad: stamparija Rodoljub, 1924), p. 9.
49 Hans Kohn, op. cit. pp. 54-55.
50 Ibid., p. 99.
51 The Moscow Pan-Slav Congress was not initiated by the government. It was organised by the Slav Committee
of Slavophiles (Pogodin, Aksakov, Khomyakov, Tyutchev). Therefore, the movement was not immediately
supported by the government, while later Danilevsky had none of the religious interests of these Slavophiles. For
him the idea of Slavdom (slavyanstvo) was the highest idea of uniting the Russians, Czech, Serb, Croat, Slovene,
Slovak, Bulgar, and Pole. His Pan-Slavism was an answer to the powerful centralised German state. This idea
exploded/spread widely in Russia after the unification of Germany. Therefore, Alexander III was the first
Russian nationalist to inherit/come to the throne. The Emperor and his mentor Konstantin Pobedonostsev wished
to subject the Russian Empire to an integral Russian nationalism based upon the Orthodox Church. This marked
the beginning of Russification. See: Hans Kohn, op.cit. pp. 172-173
52 Ibid., p. 139.
53 Ibid., p. 138.
54Benjamin C. Fortna, Education for the Empire: Ottoman State Secondary Schools during the Reign of Sultan
Abdulhamid II (1876-1909), Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1997.
25
b) THE GREAT POWERS AND THE OTTOMANS
The European “civilisation” formulated by the Enlightenment writers and reflected in the
international system and international law of the 19th century (through legitimation of
humanitarian intervention, will be discussed in further chapters), was founded on a dialectical
opposition in the historical developments of the “East” and the “West,”55 or European and
non-European based on the superiority of the European civilization. The Ottomans were not
members of the club of civilised nations; at best, theirs was a half-civilized state whose
sovereignty the Europeans neither recognised nor respected. 56 As Isa Blumi states, the
perceptions, typical of the Zeitgeist, that the West was developed and dynamic, while the East
was unchangeable, non-privileged, and ahistorical, had created two different Western oriental
factions. The first advocated for occupying the Ottoman Empire or empowering various
‘ethnic minorities’ or ‘Christians,’ while the second championed stronger relations with
‘noble savages’ through a system of Capitulations, which resulted in calls from Britain for
better relations with the Ottomans as they battled a common enemy, Imperial Russia.57
However, the system of Capitulations empowered the penetration of European imperialist
policy which aimed to promote and sustain great-power interests in the Ottoman Empire by
emphasising religious and ethno-national affinities. Subsequently, this European expansion
caused the world to be divided by how developed and developing nations were portrayed by
the postcolonial theory.58 These are structural changes that emerged under the impact of
Western European penetration which reproduced the area as economically ‘underdeveloped’
and politically ‘peripheralised.’59 In this way, the Ottoman Empire as ‘undeveloped’ and
‘peripheralised’ became a place of expansionist European imperialism and the Balkans’
greater state project mechanism. Once the Empire had been attenuated in the international
power balance, it became possible for the Great Powers and Balkan states alike to usurp its
peripheral areas.
55Huri Islamoglu-Inan, Oriental Despotism in World-System Perspective, in The Ottoman Empire and World-
Economy, edited by Huri Islamoglu-Inan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 1. and 13.
56 David Rodogno, Against Massacre – Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire (1815-1914),
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 24.
57Isa Blumi, Reorientating European Imperialism: How Ottomanism Went Global, Die Welt des Islams, 56,
2016, pp. 295-302.
58Huri Islamoglu-Inan, op.cit. p. 8; As Huri Islamoglu-Inan states, “given the specific nature of the worldcapitalist
development characterized by the unequal development of different regions, one cannot talk about the
beneficial effects of Western penetration (colonial or commercial) on non-Western regions.”
59 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Ottoman Empire and Capitalist World-Economy, Review (Fernand Braudel
Center), Vol. 2, No. 3 (Winter, 1979), p. 392; According to Immanuel Wallerstein “at this latter point (XIX
century), the Ottoman Empire was no longer a world-empire but simply one more state located within the
boundaries of the capitalist world-economy.”
26
Focusing on the position of the Ottoman state in the global order, Maurus Reinkowski
emphasises that as the “Ottoman Empire faced with expansionist Europe from the 18th
century onwards, Ottoman history must therefore be studied in the context of the wider
European power system. For the last one hundred and fifty years of its existence, the Empire
cannot be understood without taking into account both its manifold attempts to emulate
Europe, and, at the same time, its struggle against West.”60 As a matter of fact, in order to
survive and preserve territorial integrity, the Ottoman Empire implemented its own colonial
policy,61 defined as “borrowed colonialism.”62
In the Macedonian case I will demonstrate the Ottoman state “borrowed colonialism”
operational in Macedonia as an Ottoman periphery and governmental attempts to ‘civilise’ its
population in vilayet-i selase, or ‘three vilayets.’ This name was given to Ottoman Macedonia
due to the Ottoman administrative division of the Macedonian territory into the vilayets of
Selanik, Manastir, and Kosovo. However, before delving into the case, I will present several
approaches which could be useful for further analysis.
60Maurus Reinkowski, Hapless Imperialists and Resentful Natioalists: Trajectories of Radicalization in the Late
Ottoman Empire, in Helpless Imperialists: Imperial Failure, Fear and Radicalization, ed. by Maurus
Reinkowski and Gregor Thum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), p. 50.
61 Terminologically, (the term) “colonialism” is often conflated with “imperialism,” yet many scholars have
argued that each have their own distinct definition. Therefore, due attention should be paid to terminology in
order to distinguish the Western imperialism and Ottoman “borrowed colonialism.” Furthermore, “Imperialism
and colonialism have been used with similar meanings in order to describe state’s superiority (in this case
European), domination, and influence upon a person or group of people.” Robert Young writes that while
“imperialism operates from the center, is a state policy and is developed for ideological as well as financial
reasons (…), colonialism is simply the development for settlement by individual communities or for commercial
purposes by a trading company.”; Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, (New Jeresey:
Blackwell Publishers, 2001), p. 16.; According to the Russian leader Lenin, “imperialism was the highest form
of capitalism.” Moreover, “imperialism developed after colonialism, and was distinguished from colonialism by
monopoly capitalism.” See: Mary Gilmartin, Colonialism/Imperialism, Key Concepts in Political Geography,
(London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2009), p. 116; Furthermore, Edward Said highlights the difference between
imperialism and colonialism by stating that imperialism involved “the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a
dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory”, while colonialism refers to the “implanting of
settlements on a distant territory.” See: Edward Said, Orientalism. (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
62 Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire,
1876–1909, (London/New York: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1999); Accordingly, “Imperialism includes some form
of colonialism, but colonialism itself does not automatically imply imperialism, as it lacks a political focus.”
Therefore, in order to probe the Ottoman case, it might be useful to gain an insight into the “internal colonialism”
model, defined by Michael Hechter, who analyses the relationships between England as the ‘national center,’
and its ‘periphery,’ the Celtic fringe. See: Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British
National Development, (New Jeresey: Transaction Publishers, 1999); A similar study has been done by Nicola
Zitara where he states that after the Unification of Italy, the regions which belonged to the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies were transformed into an internal colony of Piedmont. See: Nicola Zitara, L'unità d'Italia. Nascita di una
colonia, (Milan: Jaca Book, 1971).
27
c) BORROWED COLONIALISM OF THE OTTOMAN STATE
The term “borrowed colonialism,” often used as “internal colonialism” as well, defines the
relations between ‘metropole’ and ‘colony’ to describe the “blurred” lines between
geographically close locations that are clearly different in terms of culture, language, religion,
physical appearance, uneven development etc. According to a handful of postmodernist
authors (Thomas Nicholas, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard etc.) the whole of
modernity can be understood as a colonialist project, which is as much a cultural, as it is an
economic and political process.63 More specifically, in the era of modernisation the Ottoman
Empire passed through a transition from Tanzimat to Abdulhamid II and the Young Turks,
viewed as “representing the transformation, respectively, from Ottomanism (understood as a
civic nationalism based on common Ottoman identity), to Islamism (often glossed as Unity of
Islam) to Turkism (sometimes framed as Pan-Turkism).” 64 These mechanisms of state
centralisation were the Ottoman response to the imperialism in the form of countercolonialism.
Therefore, the Ottoman Empire tried to define itself as a player on a equal
footing, especially after the Treaty of Paris (1856) which afforded it entry into the Concert of
Europe. The Ottoman administrative elite gradually adopted the Western ideas of modernity
and colonialism in order to implement, in the ‘periphery,’ its policy known as “borrowed
colonialism.”65 However, taking on board the aforementioned definitions of imperialism and
colonialism, for the Ottoman case and the framework of the Macedonian Questions, I will use
the term “borrowed colonialism” as an Ottoman strategy to keep Macedonia closer to its’
63 Thomas Nicholas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press,1994).
64 Howard Eissenstat, Modernization, Imperial Nationalism, and the Ethnicization of Confessional Identity in the
Late Ottoman Empire, in Nationalizing empires, ed. by Stefan Berger and Alexei Miller, (Budapest: Central
European University Press, 2015), p. 430.
65 Apart from “borrowed colonialism” several authors of the Ottoman studies used the terms such as
“Orientalism allaturca,” “Ottoman civilizing mission,” “Ottoman Orientalism,” “Ottoman man’s burden,” and
“modern Ottoman imperialism.” Makdisi’s term “Ottoman imperialism” can prove instrumental for an analysis
of the concepts of “unity of Islam” (Ittihad-i Islam) as ‘transnational’ which was not only present in the area of
Arabic and Balkan peninsula, but also among the Ottoman Syrian diaspora in South America, and among
Russian and Indian Muslims. During World War I, Ottoman subjects served as an important window of
opportunity for the unity of Islam to extend beyond the spiritual battleground of the Indian Ocean and to the
Atlantic world. See: Christoph Herzog and Raoul Motika, Orientalism ‘allaturca’: Late 19th / Early 20th
Century Ottoman Voyages into the Muslim 'Outback', Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 40, Issue 2, in edition Ottoman
Travels and Travel Accounts from an Earlier Age of Globalization (Jul., 2000), pp. 139-195; Christoph Herzog,
Nineteenth-century Baghdad through Ottoman Eyes, in Jens Hanssen, Thomas Philipp, Stefan Weber (ed.), The
Empire in the City : Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire, (Bayrouth: Ergon Verlag, 2002), pp.
311-328; Ussama Makdisi, Ottoman Orientalism, American Historical Review, 107 (3), Jun 2002, pp. 768-796;
Ussama Makdisi, Rethinking Ottoman Imperialism: Modernity, Violence, and the Cultural Logic of Ottoman
Reform, in The Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Cities in the Ottoman Empire, 2004, edited by Jens Hanssen
and Thomas Philipp, (Bayrouth: Ergon Verlag, 2002), pp. 300-330.; When it comes to Ottomanism, the most
active supporters of Ottomanism were the Christian brothers Miguel and Naguib Samra who published the al-
Zamān out of Buenos Aires. See: Isa Blumi, op.cit., Die Welt des Islams, 56, 2016, p. 313.
28
‘center.’66 Accordingly, the Ottoman ‘borrowed colonialism’ was a “survival tactic” and, was
therefore very different from “the aggressive industrial empires of the West.”67 In the context
of the Macedonian Questions, the Ottoman ”colonial” relations with the locals were much
more nuanced in comparison to the relations of its Western European counterparts with their
imperial subjects. However, there are few points in common, such as the Ottoman attempt of
(1) rationalising the use of lands and extracting the taxes which were misused by ‘backward
nomads,’ (2) implementing the ‘civilising mission’ in order to discipline the locals,68 and (3)
establishing the regulations to reorganise the state, with the aim of being accepted among the
Great Powers.
Therefore the tax extraction, ‘civilising mission,’ and regulations of order were parallel steps
taken by the Ottoman state art to maintain its imperial status and to define its efforts of
extending power, the aim of which was to convince its subjects and the Great Powers to its
right of existence. This imperial idea implies the importance of the quest for legitimacy, or in
Weberian terms, the Gewaltmonopol des Staates, 69 which means “the monopoly on
legitimated use of physical force.”70 In order to be able to use physical force, states introduced
military reforms too. In the view of Bob Jessop, “the state is seen as an apparatus for warmaking
and repression. It must defend its territorial integrity against other forces and maintain
social cohesion inside its own territory by resorting to coercion as and when this proves
necessary.” 71 Actually, it tended to promote ”territorial consolidation, modernisation,
centralisation, differentiation of the instruments of the government and monopolisation of its
means of coercion, that is, all the fundamental state-making processes.”72 Due to the impared
66 See also terms: “internal colonialism,” “colonialism without colonies,” “Ottoman civilizing mission,”
“colonial Ottomanism,” „colonisation oft he countryside.“ Ozgur Turesay, The Ottoman Empire seen through
the lens of Postcolonial Studies: A Recent Historiographical Turn, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine,
2013/2 No 60-2, pp. 127-145; See: For a critique of the theoretical construction of “colonialism without colonies,”
and its derivative “internal colonialism,” see Jürgen Osterhammel, “‘Colonialisme’ et ‘Empires coloniaux,’”
Labyrinthe 35 (2010): 61; Thomas Kühn, Shaping and Reshaping Colonial Ottomanism: Contesting Boundaries
of Difference and Integration in Ottoman Yemen, 1872-1919, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the
Middle East 27 (2) (2007): pp. 315-331.
67 Ibid., p. 39.
68 Furthermore, in this Ottoman instance, the locals retained their agency and negotiated relations with the
Ottoman capital, Western Europe, and their local counterparts.
69 “Monopoly on violence” is the tradition which argues that the state has legitimate monopoly over the control
of the means of violence across a territory, performed by means ofa military, courts, laws, police force, and tax
bureaucracy. The tradition is associated with scholars like Max Weber, Otto Hintze, Anthony Giddens, Charles
Tilly, Michael Mann and others.
70 Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation, Published as “Politik als Beruf,” (München: Gesammelte Politische
Schriften, 1921), pp. 396-450.
71Bob Jessop, State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p. 63.
7272Nazir Ahmad Mir, Dynamics of ‘Civil-Military’ Relations in India, in
https://www.idsa.in/strategicanalysis/40_1/dynamics-of-civil-military-relations-in-india (Acessed 02.04.2019)
29
state power of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, its state displayed a greater
‘obsession’ with centralisation and legitimation. As a result, the state created legitimation
devices such as coats of arms, the Friday prayer, the caliphate, education, propaganda wars
against foreign missionaries, proselytisation among its own subjects/citizens, and world
fairs.73 Furthermore, during this period the Ottoman administration was trying to develop
state-centralist terminology as tanzimat (measures for regulating order), vergi (taxation),
vatan (fatherland), asayis (public order/tranquillity), mulkun mamurlugu (prosperity), emniyet
(security), adalet (justice), even vahsi (wild), and cahiliyyet (ignorant), adressed to the people
living at periphery. The following relations were established between state and subjects: the
state ensured security, prosperity, and justice to its subjects, but was in turn entitled to the
subjects’ complete obedience. In other words, the state symbolised a ‘guardian/protector’
(himayet) while the subjects symbolised obedience (itaat, mutabaat, inqiyad). A major token
of obedience and of the recognition of the state’s legitimacy was the payment of taxes.74 In
order to convince the subjects to pay their taxes, to be obedient, and to participate in the
mechanisms against Western penetration, the state first borrowed ideas and practices from the
Europe, which it then tried to implement by colonisation in the form of mission civilizatrice.
This “borrowed colonialism,” defined by Selim Deringil, led Ottoman officials to depict the
provincial subjects as living in “a state of nomadism and savagery.” 75 In Maurus
Reinkowski’s example related to the Mirdita tribes in northern Albania, in order for the
Ottoman Empire to secure the rule, it implemented a more ambitious project of civilisation
and provision of a higher standard of education and living the ‘peripheries.’76 In the regions of
Rumelia, since 1860s the Ottoman Empire introduced what may be recognised as the
Foucauldian concept of ‘governmentality.’ 77 The methods by which a state builds
73 Selim Deringil, op. cit.
74 Maurus Reinkowski, The State’s Security and the Subjects’ Prosperity: Notions of Order in Ottoman
Bureaucratic Correspondence (19th Century), in Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power
ed. Hakan Karateke and Maurus Reinkowski, (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), p. 200.
75 Selim Deringil, op. cit. pp. 39-42; and See: Selim Deringil, ‘They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery’:
The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 45,
No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 311-342; Some Balkan peoples, living in the Ottoman periphery, were considered by
Ottoman statesmen as “noble savages at best and corrupt slaves at worst’’ ; or as “pig herding” for the
Montenegrin, “pig farmers” for the Serbian, and “wild and ignorant” or “wild and brave” for the Albanian
people. See: Ebru Boyar, Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans: Empire Lost, Relations Altered (London and New
York: IB Tauris, 2007), p. 74;
76 The status of the Mirdita region and their loyaty was not defined as mutavaat (submission) but as husn-i
hizmet ve sadakat (good services and loyality) oteden beri (from the olden times). This is how the state applied
the principle of istimalet (strategy of reconciliation in newly conquered territories) and imtiyazat (privileges).;
See: Maurus Reinkowski,op.cit., in Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power ed. Hakan
Karateke and Maurus Reinkowski, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2005, pp. 207
77 For similar terms, see also: Michael Mann, The autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and
results, European Journal of Sociology, 25 (2), 1984, pp. 185–213.
30
infrastructural power and implements governmentality blend perfectly with the establishment
of a bureaucracy, which ables a greater efficiency in the distribution of authority, and thus,
spreads bureaucrats to ensure rule in each field by taking full advantage of their expertise.
Exactly with this introduction of bureaucratisation, the autonomous status of the Mirdita and
other autonomous regions in the Balkans was no longer accepted. Due to the latter, the
Ottoman state introduced the Committee for the Mountains of Shkodra (Iskodra Cibali
Komisyonu) considering the Malisors/Mirditas and even Gega tribal grouping in Kosovo and
Debre as vahsi (wild) and cahiliyyet (ignorant). These tribes (asabiyet) lived in mountainous
regions and governed themselves according to the Law of Lek Dukagjini. In order for the
Ottoman Empire to establish control over them, punishment and castigation were introduced
under such terms as tedbi (punishing for a fault) and terbiye (correcting, educating), whose
goal was to make the tribes submit to inzibat (discipline).78 The ‘backward’ regions on the
periphery of the Empire, such as the Balkans, were particularly targeted by this enforced
modernisation, in the course of which the civilised imperial state apparatus was pitted against
savage, tribal local populations. The Ottoman principles of civilising and disciplining were
introduced as a process of ‘borrowed colonisation’ in order to prevent the influence from
outside and to bring economic income to the state apparatus.79
Within the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms (1839-1876), there was a concerted effort to change the
nature of the state subjects, legitimacy, and order by developing a sense of membership in the
form of an Ottoman political identity or nationalism known as “Ottomanism.” A group of
intellectuals known as Young Ottomans developed this “Ottomanism” named also in the
Ottoman scripts as “Unity of the Elements” (İttihad-ı Anasır). This ideology was envisaged
by Tanzimat bureaucrats and intellectuals of that time in order to protect the unity of the
Ottoman empire and maintaining the loyalty of ethnic religious groups toward the imperial
center.80 The essence of this “Unity of the Elements” was the idea that all subjects of the
sultan were brought together in a “brotherly union,” which became a matter of state policy in
the period of the reforms. To the contrary, the decisions from the Congress of Berlin where
Serbia, Romania and Montenegro got independence, intensified nationalist and imperialist
projects among the Balkan intelligentsia. This new Ottoman map, without the large portion of
the Christian inhabitants, was one of the reasons to turn Islam first into a more colloquial,
78Maurus Reinkowski, op. cit., in Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power ed. Hakan
Karateke and Maurus Reinkowski, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2005, pp. 208
79Ibid., p. 212.
80 Behlul Ozkan, From the Abode of Islam to the Turkish Vatan - The: The Making of a National Homeland in
Turkey, (Yale University Press: 2012). p. 42.
31
rather than formal component of Ottoman state. According to Behlul Özkan, “Unity of Islam
became the dominant ideology of the state after the 1877–1878 war with Russia, when the
Ottoman Empire lost almost one-third of its territory and its Christian population decreased
from 40 percent to 20 percent.”81
Consequently, Abdulhamid’s ideological mechanisms were incorporated into Unity of Islam
(İttihad-I Islam) both internally and externally.82 In the Macedonian context, it resulted often
with exclusion and dissatisfaction of Christians, since the Hamidian policy was primarily
dealing with recruitment of the Muslim population, in fact, Albanian speaking locals into the
Ottoman administration, who constituted the stronghold of the Ottoman presence in the
Balkans or “the pillar of support in Rumeli.”83 The aim was to promote an Albanianism
closely linked to strong common “Islamic” values, which would respond to Hellenism and
Pan-Slavic regional threats. Semsedin Sami Frasheri viewed those two concepts (Albanianism
and unity of Islam) as “different sides of the same coin.” 84 Therefore, Abdulhamid II
supported the ‘Albanianism’ and organised resistance force of the Prizren League (1878)
against the invading states and tried to imbue an Islamic spirit into the resistance an Islamic
overtone.85 However, these recruitments, based on external threats and the internal civilising
mission, had an aim to bind Albanians not to an independent national movement but to
religious feelings. After the Debre meeting on October 14, 1878, as has Governor of Kosovo
Hafiz Pasa pointed out, it was unwise to leave such a vast territory in the hands of
‘uneducated and uncivilised people,’ as this would pave the way for foreign states to acquire
the region foreign states.86 There is no doubt that Abdulhamid wanted to identify himself as
‘father (baba) of the Albanians’ in order to “establish an enlightened rule in his domains.”87
In Kosovo vilayet more than in other administrative units of Macedonia, local officials
requested to deploy troops to assist the fulfilment of government functions and to bring
‘civilisation’ (medeniyet) and ‘humanity’ (insaniyet) to the wild regions. 88 One such
bureaucrat was Mehmed Esad Safvet Pasa, who submitted a memorandum on 12 April 1880
advocating to formulate a separate policy for those Albanian speaking Muslims (but often
81 Ibid. p. 42.
82Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 198.
83George Gawrych, The Crescent and the Eagle: Ottoman Rule, Islam and the Albanians, 1874-1913, (New
York: I.B.Tauris, 2006), pp. 55
84Ibid., p. 37.
85Nuray Bozbora, The Policy of Abdulhamid II Regarding the Prizren League, Turkish Review of Balkan Studies,
2006, p. 47.
86Ibid., p. 53.
87 George Gawrych, op. cit. New York, I. B. Tauris, 2006, p. 107.
88Ibid., p. 117.
32
their Christians’ compatriots as well) who were the ‘essence of support’ (maya-ul-istinadi) of
the Ottoman state and could fight against enemies of the state.89 What is more, Dervis Pasa
called for the recruitment of Albanian speaking population in the Balkans who had military
experience.90In order to prevent the spread of the dangerous European imperialism,91 the
Ottomans claimed to be conducting a mission civilisatrice in its own peripheries, in this case
to civilise and recruit Albanian speaking population, who would serve as defensive barriers
against future foreign threats. On the other hand, Balkan states attempted to penetrate and to
cooperate with the Christian subjects of the sultan, with the goal of advancing their own
imperialistic projects. This situation of competition and conflict created instability over the
Balkans especially in Ottoman parts of three vilayets.
B) HISTORIOGRAPHY AND METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN
The history of 19th and partly of 20th century was shaped by national ideologies produced
from the top layers of the hierarchy for ‘the people’. According to Georg Iggers this was the
period of “increasing ideologization of historical writing. Historians went into the archives to
find evidence that would support their nationalistic and class preconceptions and thus give
them the aura of scientific authority.”92 Balkan historiographies passed through a similar
phase (some of them still are). During the nation- and state-building processes of the Balkan
countries, the aim was to use name references that would signal, for the Montenegrins or
Serbs, a linear historical continuity of the medieval Duklja and Nemanjić dynasties; in the
Bulgarian case of the First Bulgarian Empire in the medieval period; while in the Greek and
Albanian cases the line of this linear historical continuity was drawn from the ancient
Hellenes and Illyrians. These regionalist perspectives of the 19th and 20th centuries were
attempts to describe the events which took place in ancient and medieval times as primordial
ethno-national foundations. In the Macedonian context, in order for the Greeks and Albanians
to legitimise their actions, they claimed direct links to the Hellen and Illyrian inhabitants of
the Balkans as predecessors to the Slavic invasion of the VI century, while Montenegrins,
Serbs and Bulgarians presented an imaginary of their medieval empires. The constructions of
89 Ibid., p. 73.
90 Ibid., p. 75.
91Maurus Reinkowski, op.cit., in Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power ed. Hakan
Karateke and Maurus Reinkowski, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2005, p. 212.
92 Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern
Challenge, (Hannover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), p. 28.
33
these meta-narratives were based on the European understandings of “civilisation” and
“progress” versus the “Orient,” and thus, followed the assumption that the Ottoman conquest
created “primitive and barbarian”93 socioeconomic relations in the Balkans.94
These Balkan “regionalist” perspectives assert that Ottomans “were usurpers of a primordial
Christian order or agents who suppressed the nationalist yearnings of intact national
peoples”95 and that they were responsible for “discontinuity of the progress,” “devastation,”
“backwardness,” “social lag of the Balkan peoples,”96 and “unenlightened slavery.”97 It is
clear today that in many cases the modes of representation have not changed significantly.
Namely, in the views of Maurus Reinkowski, the history writing of “the South East Europe, is
still limited in its scope to the framework of the respective nation states,”98 while by contrast
Istanbul’s “centralist perspective is seen from the viewpoint of the centre (…) owed to
ideological attitudes (and) also to the nature of archival material to be found in Istanbul’s
imperial archives insofar as it reflects the viewpoint of the centre.”99 Similarly, Gül Tokay
and Mehmed Hacısalihoğlu point out that “in studying Ottoman historiography related to the
93This problematic interpretation has been studied by Branislav Djurdjev, Osnovni problem srpske istorije u
period turske vlasti nad nasim narodima, Istoriski glasnik, No. 3-4, 1950, p. 108; The historiographies of the
Balkan state were in effect neglecting the pre-Ottoman Byzantine Lebenswelt and avoiding writing about the
Byzantine institutional heritage of the Ottoman Empire.
94 On the contrary, the Turkish historians such as Fuad Koprulu and Halil Inalcik maintain that the Ottomans
rather intermingled with no animosity towards the Byzantine and Slavic institutions, and that “the Ottoman
heritage is actually, to an extent, the Byzantine heritage.”; See: Fuad Koprulu, Bizans Muesseselerinin Osmanli
Muesseselerine Tesiri Hakkinda, Turk Hukuk ve Iktisat Tarihi Mecmuasi, I, (Istanbul: Evkaf Matbaasi, 1931), pp.
165-331; Halil Inadzik, Od Stefana Dusana do Osmanskog carstva, Prilozi III-IV, Orijentalni Institut u Sarajevu,
1953, pp. 23-55; Wayne S. Vucinich, Some Aspects of The Ottoman Legacy, in The Balkans in Transition, eds.
Charles and Barbara Jelavich, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), pp. 80.
95Isa Blumi, Reinstating the Ottomans – Alternative Balkan Modernities (1800-1912), Palgrave Macmillan, 2011,
p. 31.
96Wayne S. Vucinich, op.cit., in The Balkans in Transition, pp. 82; See: S. Stanojevic, F. Sisic, V. Corovic, N.
Iorga, V. Zlatarski, C. Jirecek etc.
97Petr N. Tretiakov, Istoriia Bolgarii, (Moscow: Akademiiа nauk SSSR, 1954)
98Maurus Reinkowski, The Ottoman Empire and South Eastern Europe from a Turkish perspective, In: Images of
imperial legacy: modern discourses on the social and cultural impact of Ottoman and Habsburg rule in
Southeast Europe, ed. By Tea Sindbaek and Maximilian Hartmuth, (Berlin, LIT, 2011), p. 21.
99Ibid., pp. 26-30; According to Maurus Reinkowski there are three reasons why the non-Turkish parts of the
Ottoman Empire are poorly represented: 1. Major parts of South East Europe were relatively inaccessible to
Turkish researchers; 2. Turkish historiography concentrates on those provinces of the Ottoman Empire that form
part of today’s Turkey; 3. Turkish historical writing – like Ottoman Studies in general – suffers from the
difficulty of handling a multitude of languages when studying the history of South East Europe.; See further:
Halil Berktay and Suraiya Faroqhi, New Approaches to State and Peasant in Ottoman History, (London/New
York: Routledge, 2016), p. 36. Hans Georg Majer, Die Staaten Südosteuropas und die Osmanen, (München:
Südosteuropa Gesellschaft, 1989); Sylvie Gangloff, La perception de l’héritage ottoman dans les Balkans/The
Perception of the Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005); Maximilian Hartmuth, Centres
and Peripheries in Ottoman Architecture. Rediscovering a Balkan Heritage, (Sarajevo: Cultural Heritage
Without Borders, 2011); Tea Sindbaek und Maximilian Hartmuth, Images of Imperial Legacy. Modern Discourses
on the Social and Cultural Impact of Ottoman and Habsburg Rule in Southeast Europe, (Berlin: LIT
2011).; Hans Georg Majer, Herkunft und Volkszugehörigkeit muslimischer Amtsträger als historisches Problem
in der Osmanistik, in: Ethnogenese und Staatsbildung in Südosteuropa, ed. by Klaus-Detlev Grothusen,
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), pp. 40 –51; Oliver Jens Schmitt, Südosteuropa im Spätmittelalter:
Akkulturierung-Integration-Inkorporation?, Bd. 78 (2014).
34
Balkans of the 19th century, one faces two major drawbacks. First, there is still a major gap in
historical writing on the late 19th century Ottoman Balkans, and second, Ottoman bilateral
relations have been largely neglected by historians to date.”100 According to Suraiya Faroqhi
and Fikret Adanir “by dint of this ‘centralizing’ scholarly tradition, Turkish historians of the
republican period, once the initial distaste for Ottoman history had faded away, ‘appropriated’
the Ottoman center. From the perspective of Turkish scholars, the wish to ‘rehabilitate’ the
Ottoman Empire undoubtedly was strong, especially after Ottoman victories and cultural
florescence had come to be regarded as a source of national pride.” 101 As it might be
concluded from these statements, in the Ottoman-Balkan relations the “centralist” and the
“regionalist” views have not yet been combined in a productive scholarly manner and
multiple parts of the Ottoman Balkans were in fact depicted as ‘periphery’ in the Turkish
historiography, and the Ottomans perceived as the ‘barbarian’ among the Balkan nationstates.
In the context of the Macedonian questions, many contemporary historians (and historians
from the 20th century) from the neighbouring Balkan countries have considered these events
as a struggle of the Balkan nations against the “Ottoman/Turkish yoke” by relying solely on
the sources of their own state and national archives. In these researches, Greek historiography
tended to represent the Slavophone population of the Orthodox Christian as belonging to a
wider Greek nation,102 opposing the Bulgarian policy in Ottoman Macedonia. On the other
hand, Bulgarian historiography have tried to represent Bulgaria as claiming a “historical
right” to the former Ottoman territories that are recognised as Macedonia,103 and numerous
100 Gul Tokay and Mehmed Hacisalihoglu, Turkish Historiography on the Balkans during the Late Ottoman
Period (1878-1914), Balkanistica Vol. 22, 2009, p. 181.
101 Suraiya Faroqhi, Fikret Adanir, The Ottomans and the Balkans – A Discussion on Historiography, (Leiden/
Boston/Koln: Brill 2002), p. 24.; On (the topic of) Balkan historiographies see: John R. Lampe and Constantin
Iordachi, Battling over the Balkans: Historiographical Questions and Controversies, (Budapest/New York: CEU,
2020).; Fikret Adanir, Balkans. History and Historiography, (Istanbul: Eren Yayincilik, 2014).
102 Aristotle Tziampiris, Greek Historiography and Slav-Macedonian National Identity, The Historical Review/
La Revue Historique, Institute for Neohellenic Research, Volume VIII, 2011, p. 220.; John S. Koliopoulos and
Thanos M. Veremis, Greece: The Modern Sequel: From 1831 to the Present, (London: Hurst and Company,
2002); Paschalis M. Kitromilides, “‘Balkan Mentality’: History, Legend, Imagination”, Nations and Nationalism
II/2 (1996), p. 177. See also Paschalis M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth: Symbolic Legacies and
Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe, (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2007), and Paschalis M. Kitromilides,
The Enlightenment as Social Criticism: Iosipos Moisiodax and Greek Culture in the Eighteenth Century,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).; Anastasia N. Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood:
Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997); Anastasia
N. Karakasidou., “Politicizing Culture: Negating Ethnic Identity in Greek Macedonia”, Journal of Modern Greek
Studies XI (1993), pp. 1-28;
103Ruža Božilova, Sirbiya i Balgarskoto nacionalnoosvoboditelno dviženie v Makedoniya v načaloto na XX v,
Izsledvaniya po Balgarska Istoriya 8 (1986); Svetlozar Eldarov, Načalo na Srbskata vaoražena propaganda v
Makedoniya, Veonnoistoričeski sbornik, No. 1. 1984; Svetlozar Eldarov, Srbskata vaoražena propaganda i
balgarskoto nacionalnoosvoboditelno dviženie v Makedoniya sled Ilindensko-Preobraženskoto vastanie (1903–
35
Bulgarian historians have been publishing on these Macedonian issues in numerous
collections.104 On the contrary, Serbian, as well Yugoslav and Macedonian historiographies
have often represented this subject from opposite points of view.105 Thus, Macedonian as well
as Bulgarian historiography portrayed several organisations like IMRO and its members (i.e.
Delchev, Gruev) as fighters for the national cause . Referring to these disputes, Stefan Troebst
summarised that Bulgaria considered Macedonian nationalism as a Serbian instrument(!);
while the Greek viewed it as a short-lived will-o-the wisp of Moscow provenance; the Serbs
believed in the reversibility of the new Macedonians into ‘Southern Serbs.’106 These disputes
between the Balkan states over Macedonia and over the question to which state or nation its
national heroes belong, complicate the research, because they reduce the national heroes only
1904), Voennoistoričeski sbornik No. 3 (1984); Svetlozar Eldarov, Balgarskoto pravitelstvo i VMORO v borba
sreshu srbskata vaoražena propaganda v Makedoniya (1903–1908g.), Izvestiya na veonnoistoričeskoto naučno
družestvo, 44 (1987); Svetlozar Eldarov, Srbskata vaoražena propaganda v Makedoniya 1901–1912, (Sofiya:
Voennoizdatelski kompleks ‘Sv. Georgi Pobedonosec’, 1993); Elena Grozdanova. Balgarskata osmanistika na
granicata meždu dve stoletiya - priemstvenost i obnovlenie, Istoričeski pregled 1-2, 1998, pp. 98-157; Elena
Grozdanova, Bulgarian Ottoman Studies at the Turn of Two Centuries: Continuity and Change, in: Études
balkaniques 2005/3, S. 93–14; Rossitsa Gradeva, Rumeli under the Ot-tomans 15th–18th Centuries:
Institutions and Communities, (New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2010).; Olga Todorova, Drugijat hadžilăk: kăm
istorijata na mjusulmanskija hadž ot bălgarskite zemi prez XV–XVII vek, in: Istoričesko bădešte 2006/1–2, pp.
220 –277.
104 The following collections are but a few among a host of published historical sources, documents, and
memoirs on the subject: Velichko Georgiev Stayko Trifonov, Istoriya na Balgarite (1878–1944) v Dokumenti
(1878–1912), (Sofiya: Prosveta, 1994); Velichko Georgiev, Stayko Trifonov, Grckata i srbskata propagandi v
Makedoniya/Krayat na XIX-načaloto na XX vek: Novi dokumenti, (Sofiya: Prosveta 1995); Hristo Siljanov,
Osvoboditelnite Borbi na Makedoniya, (Sofiya: Darzhavna Pechatniya, 1983); Tuše Vlahov, Bălgariya i
Mladoturskata Revolyutsiya, Godišnik na Sofiyskiya Universitet Filosofski-Istoričeski Fakultet, kniga 3, 1965 pp.
3-77.; Peyo Yavorov, Gotse Delčev, (Sofia: Prosveta, 1992).
105Gligor Todorovski, Srpskata četnička organizacija i nejzinata aktivnost vo Makedonija, Glasnik na institutot
za nacionalna Istorija 1 (1968), pp. 181–204; Mihailo Apostolski, Istorija na makedonskiot narod II , od
početokot na XIX vek do krajot na Prvata svetska vojna, (Skopje: Institut za Nacionalna Istorija, 1969); Manol
Pandevski, Nacionalnoto prašanje vo makedonskoto osloboditel-noto dviženje (1893–1903), (Skopje: Kultura,
1974); Gligor Todorovski, Srbija i reformite vo Makedonija: sredinata na XIX vek do Mladoturskata revolucija
1908, (Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija, 1987). Manol Pandevski, Makedonskoto Osloboditelno Delo vo
XIX i XX vek, vol. 4, in Političkite Partii i Organizatsii vo Makedonija (1908-1912), by Manol Pandevski
(Skopje: Misla, 1987); Manol Pandevski, Vnatrešnata Makedonska Revolutsionerna Organizatsija i
Neovrhovizmot 1904-1908, (Skopje: Misla, 1983); Manol Pandevski, Yane Sandanski and the Macedonian
Liberation Movement, in: Macédoine (Articles d’Histoire), ed. by Aleksandar Matkovski and Krste Bitoski,
(Skopje: Institut d’histoire nationale, 1981), pp. 243-264; Manol Pandevski, Mladoturskata Revolutsija i
Makedonija, (Skopje: 1968); Manol Pandevski, Razvitokot na Političkiot Život vo Evropska Turtsija vo Periodot
na Mladoturskoto Upravuvanie 1908-1912, in: Istorija, XV/2, (Skopje: 1979), pp. 105-116. For the accounts of
the Serbian historiographies over Macedonian see: Vladimir Ilić, Srpska četnička akcija 1903– 1912, (Beograd:
Ecolibri 2006); Biljana Vučetić, Srpska revolucionarna organizacija u Osmanskom carstvu na početku 20. veka,
Istorijski časopis LIII (2006), pp. 359-374; Miloš Jagodić, Srpsko albanski odnosi u kosovskom vilajetu (1878–
1912), (Beograd: Zavod za udzbenike, 2009). Uroš Šešum, Srpska četnička organizacija u Staroj Srbiji 1903–
1908. Terenska organizacija, Srpske Studije/Serbian Studies v. 2 (2011) 239–258; Miloš Jagodić, Srpske čete u
Make-doniji 1897–1901 godine, Zbornik radova sa naučnog skupa Ustanci i pobune Srba u Turskoj u XIX veku
(povodom 170. godina od izbijanja Niške bune), (Niš: 2012), pp. 111–130; Uroš Šešum, Društvo protiv Srba
1897–1902, Srpske Studije/Serbian Studies 4 (2013), pp. 73 – 103; Uroš Šešum, Četnička organizacija u
Skopskoj Crnoj Gori 1903–1908, godine, Zbornik Matice srpske za istoriju 93 (2016), pp. 55–70.
106 Stefan Troebst, IMRO + 100 = FYROM? The politics of Macedonian historiography, in The New
Macedonian Question, ed. by. James Pettifer, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 60-78.
36
to their “national” belonging, rather than regarding them as multifaceted historical agents. In
addition, it prevents a broader view on these actors, and disables the usage of the Ottoman
sources or other international rapports, as Dritan Ergo’s work confirms as well.107
In this sense, Fernand Braudel has stated that “we do not need to listen to voices that we
know, but to try to find out other unknown voices produced by a keyboard that always
requires using both hands.”108 Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is not to investigate the
Balkans only from an imperial point of view, or more importantly, to turn a blind eye to the
rich sources of Istanbul archives in order to keep to an approach from a peripheral standpoint,
but to combine and bring the “centralist” and “regionalist” perspectives into a coherent
dialogue by using comparative sources. In addition, the Western perspective studies the
events of the 19th century in the Balkans within the framework of the Eastern Question, rarely
adopting a comparative approach that analyses the region within the Ottoman context.
Moreover, the treatment of the imperial competition over the Balkans neglects the local
perspective, considering the Balkans and Ottoman Empire as Europe’s peripheries.
Beside these historiographic gaps and histories written for the purpose of state ideology, there
are a few monographies about the Macedonian Questions worthy of mention for
understanding the complexity of Macedonia and the relations among the Great Powers,
Balkan states, and Ottomans. One of the first studies on this topic is Fikret Adanir’s “Die
Makedonische Frage. Ihre Entstehung und Entwicklung bis 1908,“ 109 which incisive
represented the construction of Macedonian nation(s)-building (den Konstruktionscharakter
der makedonischen Nationsbildung zu zeigen). In this respect, he used several European and
south-Slavic sources in order to show the socio-economic structure and complexities on the
ground, together with the influences of the Great Powers on the Orientpolitik. However, in
these findings, he omitted the rich sources of Istanbul archives that could contributed to better
understanding of multilayered relations on the local and regional levels. Nevertheless, this is
an important work that paved attention on ‘top-down,’ but also ‘bottom-up’ approaches. A
part from nationalist movements in Ottoman Macedonia, Adanir integrates the rural Ottoman
life and peasantries into broader regional analysis. Another important work is the doctoral
dissertation of Gul Tokay entitled “The Macedonian Question and the Origins of the Young
107 Dritan Egro, Historia dhe ideologjia: Një qasje kritike studimeve osmane në historiografinë shqiptare
(nga gjysma e dytë e shek. XIX deri më sot), (Tiranë: Instituti i Historisë, 2007).
108 Fernan Brodel, Mediteran - prostor i Istorija, (Beograd: Centar za Geopoetiku, 1995), p. 18.
109 Fikret Adanır, Die Makedonische Frage. Ihre Entstehung und Entwicklung bis 1908, (Wiesbaden: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 1979).
37
Turk Revolution, 1903-1908,“110 focusing on the Ottoman military and the influence of the
Macedonian Question into the Young Turk Revolution. Additionally, Mehmet
Hacisalihoglu’s book “Die Jungturken und die Mazedonische Frage (1890-1918)“111 centres
on the Young Turk policy and even on the period after the Revolution (1908), as well as on
how the Macedonian Question shaped and transformed this movement. In comparison to
Adanir’s work, he integrated relevant documents from the Istanbul archive and materials
based on Young Turk movement. I would like to emphasise this work contains with a
significant number of British, German, Austrian, Ottoman, Bulgarian, and Macedonian
archival resources, which helps to undertake comparative approaches. These studies also
focus on Ottoman Macedonia as a whole, accepting the existence of a unified Macedonian
Question, and do not base their discussions on several different problematics that created
Macedonian questions (in plural). Three other important studies on this topic written in
German are: one by Stefan Troebst, entitled “Das makedonische Jahrhundert: von den
Anfängen der nationalrevolutionären Bewegung zum Abkommen von Ohrid 1893-2001,“112
another by Stefan Rohdewald, “Götter der Nationen: Religiöse Erinnerungsfiguren in
Serbien, Bulgarien und Makedonien bis 1944,“ and Benjamin Langer’s “Fremde, ferne Welt:
Mazedonienimaginationen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit dem 19. Jahrhundert.“113
All these works discuss the Macedonian Question through a moyenne durée analysis based on
various German, French, English, but also South-Slavic sources. Works originating from
Serbian scholarship, such as Biljana Vučetić’s “Naša stvar u Osmanskom carstvu“114 and
Aleksandar Rastović’s “Velika Britanija i Makedonsko pitanje“ 115 constitute important
Serbian and British sources, while the works of Jordan Ivanov “Balgarski starini iz
Makedonija“116 and “Makedonija - Sbornik ot dokumenti i materiali“117 demonstrate the
Bulgarian presence in Macedonia from the medieval to the modern period on the basis of
important diplomatic documents, newspapers, parts from the book sections etc. Ivanov views
was actually introduced to present prevalently Bulgarian ‘element’ and importance as a part of
110 Gul Tokay, The Macedonian Question and the Origins of the Young Turk Revolution, 1903-1908, PhD thesis,
(London: University of London, 1994).
111 Mehmet Hacısalihoğlu, Die Jungtürken und die Mazedonische Frage, 1890-1918, (Munchen: R. Oldenbourg
Verlag, 2003)
112 Stefan Rohdewald, Götter der Nationen: Religiöse Erinnerungsfiguren in Serbien, Bulgarien und
Makedonien bis 1944 (Köln Weimar Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2014).
113 Benjamin Langer, Fremde, ferne Welt: Mazedonienimaginationen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit
dem 19. Jahrhundert (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2019).
114 Biljana Vucetic, Nasa stvar u Osmanskom carstvu, (Beograd: Istorijski Institut, 2012).
115 Aleksandar Rastovic, Velika Britanija i Makedonsko pitanje 1903-1908, (Beograd: Istorijski Institut, 2011)
116 Jordan Ivanov, Balgarski starini iz Makedonija, (Sofiya, 1970), first published in 1931.
117 Dimitar Kosev, Hristo Hristov, Nikolay Todorov, Valentin Stankov, Makedonija – Sbornik ot dokumenti i
materiali, (Sofiya, Izdatelstvo na Balgarskata Akademiya Naukite, 1978)
38
Bulgarian meta-narratives. By using Bulgarian and Austrian sources, Teodora Toleva in her
two works: “Vlijanieto na Avstro – Ungarija za săzdavaneto na albanskata nacija (1896–
1908)“ 118 and “Vanshnata politika na Dyula Andrashi i vaznikvaneto na Makedonskiya
vapros“ 119 approaches to Macedonian and Albanian questions by reiterating the most
important findings in Austro-Hungarian archives and points out the facts that Austro-
Hungarian policy shaped the unique development of the Albanian nation. By analysing the
Albanian national development and Macedonian question, she took into consideration the
basic characteristics of the Albanian population, especially its religious, tribal and linguistic
division. Furthermore, the monograph of Douglas Dakin, “The Greek Struggle in Macedonia
(1897-1913),“ 120 and the doctoral thesis of Georgios Michalopoulos, “Political Parties,
Irredentism and the Foreign Ministry of Greece and Macedonia: 1878-1910“121 focus more
strongly on the Macedonian Question from a Greek perspective but using American and
British sources too. A broader perspective based on a Greek point of view, but challenging its
historiography, is taken in “Fields of Whet, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek
Macedonia, 1870-1990,“ 122 written by Anastasia N. Karakasidou and in “Steam over
Macedonia, 1870-1912: Socio-Economic Change and the Railway Factor,“123 written by
Basil C. Gounaris. In his book “Kosova dhe reformat ne Turqi,“124 Emin Pllana analyses the
Ottoman reforms and Kosovo in the period of 1839-1912 by using Austrian, Bulgarian,
Macedonian, Albanian, and Serbian sources. A connection to the Macedonian Questions and
the importance of the Albanian element therein can be traced also in the work of Nuray
Bozbora “Osmanlı yönetiminde Arnavutluk ve Arnavut ulusçuluğu'nun gelişimi.“125
From the West European perspective one can mention Nadine Lange-Akhund’s “The
Macedonian Question (1893-1908) from Western Sources,“126 which engages with diplomatic
118 Teodora Toleva, Vlijanieto na Avstro-Ungarija za săzdavaneto na albanskata naciya: 1896-1908 (Sofia:
Siela Norma AD, 2012).
119 Teodora Toleva, Vanshnata politika na Dyula Andrashi i vaznikvaneto na Makedonskiya vapros, (Sofia: Ciela,
2013).
120 Douglas Dakin, The Greek struggle in Macedona 1897-1913, (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies,
1966).
121 Georgios Michalopoulos, Political Parties, Irredentism and the Foreign Ministry Greece and Macedonia:
1878-1910, PhD thesis, (Oxford: University of Oxford, 2013).
122 Anastasia N. Karakasidou, Fields of Whet, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia,
1870-1990 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
123 Basil C. Gounaris, Steam over Macedonia, 1870-1912: Socio-Economic Change and the Railway Factor
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
124 Emin Pllana, Kosova dhe reformat ne Turqi, (Prishtine: Rilindja, 1978).
125 Nuray Bozbora, Osmanlı yönetiminde Arnavutluk ve Arnavut ulusçuluğu'nun gelişimi (Istanbul: Boyut
Kitaplari, 1997).
126 Nadine Lange-Akhund, The Macedonian Question (1893-1908) from Western Sources, East European
Monographs, (New York: Columbia University, 1998).
39
archives of France and Austria, complemented by recent foreign publications from Germany,
Austria, Britain, and the US. A study of the changes of British foreign policy towards the
Macedonian Question is Julian Brook’s “Managing Macedonia: British Statecraft,
Intervention, and ‘Proto-peacekeeping’ in Ottoman Macedonia, 1902-1905.“ 127 Duncan
Perry’s “The Politics of Terror: Macedonian Revolutionary Movements, 1893-1903“ 128
intends to remain unswayed by any sort of bias as regards the Macedonian Question. He sets a
goal “to present a balanced rendering of the history of the Macedonian movements based on
the available evidence, without regard to contemporary political or nationalistic
considerations.”129 It might be asserted that he has reached his goal by and large throughout
the book. A combination of European and local sources in Greek and Ottoman Turkish is
traceable in the work of Ipek Yosmaoğlu, “Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of
Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878-1908,“130 which explains the origins of the shift
from sporadic to systemic and pervasive violence through a social history of the Macedonian
Question. However, Yosmaoğlu also analyses the Macedonian question as a whole.
Moreover, she focuses predominantly on the Salonika vilayet (district of Serres) and the
dynamics that influenced that specific region, without interconnecting it in a broader transregional
context. When referring to one specific region or administrative unit, such as the
Selanik vilayeti, one can talk about the Macedonian question as a unified one. The structure,
societies and dynamics in the Selanik vilayeti were often different from the Kosovo or
Manastir vilayeti, but still interconnected and entangled on many levels. Furthermore, in
many of these studies the Kosovo vilayet is omitted from the closer analysis. In this thesis, I
highlight that the Kosovo vilayet and its administrative centre Skopje was an important
administrative unit of the Ottoman Empire and integrative part of the three vilayets that
comprised Macedonia - at least the region that the Great Powers and the Balkan states
imagined when using this name. As such, I believe that the Kosovo vilayet should not be
analysed separately and should not remain outside the analysis of Macedonia. My opinion is
that these three vilayets were interconnected at many levels and thus should be analysed in the
broader context with other parts of the Empire and regional dynamics as well. In this regard,
this study differs from other works, because it tries to include perspectives and parts of
127 Julian Brooks, Managing Macedonia: British Statecraft, Intervention, and ‘Proto-Peacekeeping’ in Ottoman
Macedonia, 1902-1905, PhD thesis, (Burnaby: Simon Fraser University, 2014)
128 Duncan Perry, The Politics of Terror: Macedonian Revolutionary Movements, 1893-1903 (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1988).
129 Ibid., p. xiii
130 Ipek Yosmaoğlu, Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia,
1878-1908 (New York: Cornell University Press, 2014).
40
Ottoman Macedonia that were often neglected or less researched inside the Macedonian
Questions. In this sense, the present dissertation draws upon research representing various
traditions and worldviews, and thus tries to integrate them in a global perspective that
combines multi-layered relations. Although the works of all the aforementioned authors agree
that in the late 19th century four states laid claims to Macedonia: Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and
Romania, I highlight here that other actors were at play, whose roles were very important. By
looking closely at this period of time, one can discern that Montenegro played a very
important role at the border with the Kosovo vilayet. Nevertheless, Montenegro was also the
first Balkan country that declared war to the Ottoman Empire in 1912 and initiated the
beginning of the Balkan Wars – a war that initiated the partition of Ottoman Macedonia. It is
also worthy of mention that other studies neglect the Montenegrin involvement in the
Macedonian Questions and its role in the Balkan Wars. Therefore, in the last chapter I will
contribute the Montenegrin point of view in the framework of the Macedonian Questions, as a
lesser known and insufficiently researched part of this topic. In addition, the ‘Albanian
element’ in the Macedonian Question(s) is also omitted among the researchers of this topic.
By the ‘Albanian element,’ I do not mean a uniform and monolith ethno-national group, but
rather Albanian-speaking individuals, intellectuals, or notables, as well as local population
who played very important roles in organising the masses that could change policy decisions.
These notables, with individual or group “agency,” were undoubtedly neglected in past
studies about the Macedonian Question(s). To the contrary, the armed conflict that escalated
in nowadays North Macedonia between Macedonians and ethnic Albanians in 2001, showed
that the ‘Albanian element’ should not be ignored regarding the Macedonian case. This recent
escalation of violence began to puzzle me and awoke a desire to (re)search for a more detailed
overlook of the historical account of the transnational origins of the conflict. Digging through
several archives, dictionaries, and files helped me to understand better that the Albanianspeaking
population also played a very important role in the Macedonian Questions during the
Age of Empire. Bringing new sources and a deep understanding to bear on the ‘Albanian
element,’ this dissertation ultimately shows that many Albanian-speaking notables (Ahmed
Niyazi Bey, Ohrili Eyub Sabri, but also locals at the Ferizaj/Ferizovik meeting) played
important parts in triggering the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. Apart from this event, the
‘Albanian element’ had a significant presence during the Albanian uprisings (1909-1912), to
the result of which was autonomous Albania, promised by the Ottoman government in August
1912. In this study, I will show that this potential autonomous Albania was not desirable for
the Balkan states, which drove them to declare war on the Ottoman Empire and thus initiate
41
the First Balkan War. Since these events are of great relevance for an understanding of the
situation in Ottoman Macedonia, my hypothesis here is that without this ‘Albanian element’
one cannot have a clear picture of the multi-layered interactions and situations at play that
triggered many political decisions of the Great Powers, Balkan states, and Ottoman Empire.
In this vein, my study differs from the above mentioned works, because it includes two
important hitherto neglected actors: Montenegro and the Albanian-speaking players who were
not bereft of agency. As has been already mentioned, Montenegro had developed various
policies towards these territories and had many political involvements with the local
Albanian- and Slavic-speaking population in the three vilayets, particularly in the Kosovo
vilayet. In this regard, the study aims to present their entanglements, political engagements,
and complexities on the ground that often influenced the decisions of policy-makers. Thus, to
a [certain] point I argue in this study that Montenegro, the ‘Albanian element,’ and the local
population warrant a closer look regarding the Macedonian Questions at the turn to 20th
century. These scholarships, at the same time omitted (Montenegrin and Albanian)
perspective(s) could help us to rethink the relations in the region in a broader, trans-regional
context.
Apart from it, the aforementioned authors also analysed Macedonian Question as a whole,
while I will argue that there were multiple Macedonian Question(s) during the Age of Empire.
An acclaimed historian, Eric Hobsbawm describes the period between 1875-1914 as the “Age
of Empire,”131 linking it with the development of European imperialism that resulted in the
World War I. Based on Holly Case’s approach that this period is simultaneously “the age of
questions,”132 I will highlight that one cannot talk about the Macedonian Question as a unified
problem, but rather consider the existence of many questions dependent also on the real-life
dynamics. In this regard, this study is the first attempt to connect the Macedonian Questions
to post-colonial theory and its discussions of the subaltern studies. Due to these discussions,
this dissertation is an attempt to analyse the points of view of the state actors and intellectuals,
and include together with the locals by lending importance to multilayered interactions and
entanglements. Indeed, these Macedonian Questions were entangled across regions and
131 The Age of Empire: 1875–1914 is a book by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, published in 1987. It is the
third in a trilogy of books about "the long 19th century" (coined by Hobsbawm), preceded by The Age of
Revolution: Europe 1789–1848 and The Age of Capital: 1848–1875. A fourth book, The Age of Extremes: The
Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991, acts as a sequel to the trilogy. See: - Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of
Empire, 1875-1914 (London: George. Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New York: Pantheon Books, 1987).
132 Holly Case, The Age of Questions: Or, A First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social,
Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth
Century, and Beyond (Princeton University Press, 2018).
42
domains of everyday life. A number of life trajectories are encountered in the study that allow
a scholar to better gauge agencies and experiences at the local level. Thus, this dissertation
tries to understand the lifeworlds of the people ’from below’ as part of the subaltern,
introduced by authors of post-colonial theory.133 It is often argued that these lifeworlds are a
“communicative action” of various parts. 134 It should be emphasised that this is not an
isolated, rather an intersubjective world (shared) among various, state and non-state actors.135
However, by trying to give a voice to subalterns (or locals), one challenges the mapped spaces
and imagination of the ruling elites, statemen, and state-centred policies. We should also keep
in mind that the actions of the locals and their life trajectories were far from linear. In fact,
they often clashed with state projections and elitist imaginations, but also sometimes joined
the state policies depending on many factors and contexts. Thus, these dynamics were not
developing in a vacuum, but rather in the space of ”multiple arenas of domination and
opposition.”136 Since the scope of the dissertation is to understand the complexities of the
‘arena’ known as Ottoman Macedonia, I will use various documents and a mixture of sources
in different languages. I preponderouly focused on two vilayets of Macedonia: Kosovo and
Manastir. The third, Selanik vilayeti receives lesser coverage in this dissertation, due to my
limited command of the Greek language. However, several British, Ottoman, Albanian and
Serbian sources (i.e. consular reports) from Thessaloniki have been incorporated. In addition
to these sources, this study also includes documents in the Macedonian, Bulgarian, Russian,
German, French, and Italian languages, and therefore takes a trans-cultural perspective in
order to contribute to postcolonial studies and entangled (and global) history by including
various (local, regional, and international) approaches to the notions of ‘periphery’ and
‘centre.’
Still, the main collection of sources stems from: the Prime Minister Ottoman Archive (BOA)
in Istanbul; State Archives of North Macedonia (DARSM) in Skopje; Historical Archive of
133 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? Postkolonialität und subalterne Artikulation.
Englisch Broschur (Wien/Berlin: Turia + Kant, Verlag, 2020)
134 Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann, The Structures of the Life-World, vol. 2 (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1989), see pages:48, 51, 53, 56; Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communivative Action, vol. 2:
Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987)..
135 David F. Crew, Alltagsgeschichte: A New Social History "From Below"?, Central European History 22, no. 3-
4 (1989), pp. 394-407, here p. 395. Jim Sharpe, History from Below, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing,
ed. Peter Burke (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Universtity Press, 1991), pp. 24-41, see pages 36-37. Selim
Karahasanoğlu, Introduction, in History from below: A Tribute in Memory of Donald Quataert, ed. by Selim
Karahasanoğlu and Deniz Cenk Demir (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi University Press, 2016), pp. 1-23; Georg Simmel,
Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Berlin: Dunckler & Humblot, 2013).
136 Joel Samuel Migdal, Atul Kohli, Vivienne Shue (eds.) State Power and Social Forces: Domination and
Transformation in the Third World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 9.
43
Macedonia in Thessaloniki (IAM); State Archives of Serbia (DAS) in Belgrade; National
Library of Bulgaria “St. Cyril and Methodius” in Sofia; State Archive of Montenegro
(DACG) in Cetinje; Central State Archive of Albania (AQSH) in Tirana; the State Archive of
Austria in Vienna (HHStA) collected in five volumes in “Politik und Gesellschaft im Vilayet
Kosovo und im serbisch beherrschten Kosovo 1870-1914,“137 edited by Oliver Jens Schmitt
and Eva Anne Frantz; “Austro-Ugarska i Srbija 1903-1918 – Dokumenta iz Bečkih
Arhiva/Österreich-Ungarn und Serbien 1903-1918 – Dokumente aus Wiener
Archiven,“138 edited by Andrija Radenić; “Istorija srpske Diplomatije Dokumenta: Generalni
konzulat Kraljevine Srbije u Solunu (1887-1902),“ and “Istorija srpske Diplomatije
Dokumenta: Generalni konzulat Kraljevine Srbije u Serezu (1897-1900)“139 edited by Aleksej
Timofejev; and “Shqipëria në Dokumentet Austro-Hungareze (1912),“140 edited by Marenglen
Verli; Central State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg (TsGIA SPb); Archiginnasio Library
in Bologna; Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris; Staatsbibliothek in Berlin; Deutsche
Bank Berlin Orientbüro (OR) in Berlin; Ottoman diplomatic documents based on the Origins
of World War I, “The Macedonian Issue (1879-1912),“141 edited by Sinan Kuneralp and Gül
Tokay; documents based on Young Turk correspondence “Osmanlı Terakki ve İttihat
Cemiyeti: Paris Merkezi Yazışmaları Kopya Defterleri (1906-1908),“142 edited by Çiğdem
Önal Emiroğlu and Kudret Emiroğlu; and ISAM (Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı ve İslam
Araştırmaları Merkezi), where one can find “Hüseyin Hilmi Paşa Evrakı Kataloğu.“143 The
last source is particularly important due to Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha’s position as an Ottoman
statesman and imperial administrator in the three vilayets known as Ottoman Macedonia. In
the most crucial period, between 1902 and 1908, he was the Ottoman Inspector-General of
137 Oliver Jens Schmitt and Eva Anne Frantz, Politik und Gesellschaft im Vilayet Kosovo und im serbisch
beherrschten Kosovo 1870-1914, (Wien: VÖAW, 2020).
138 Andrija Radenić, Dokumenta iz Bečkih Arhiva/Österreich-Ungarn und Serbien 1903-1918 – Dokumente aus
Wiener Archiven, (Beograd: Istorijski institut, 1973)
139 Aleksej Timofejev, Istorija srpske Diplomatije Dokumenta: Generalni konzulat Kraljevine Srbije u Solunu
(1887-1902), (Beograd: Arhiv Srbije, 2016); and also edited by Aleksej Timofejev, Istorija srpske Diplomatije
Dokumenta: Generalni konzulat Kraljevine Srbije u Serezu (1897-1900), (Beograd: Arhiv Srbije, 2016).
140 Marenglen Verli, Shqipëria në Dokumentet Austro-Hungareze (1912), (Tirane: Qendra e Studimeve
Albanologjike Instituti i Historise, 2012)
141 Sinan Kuneralp and Gul Tokay, Ottoman diplomatic documents based on the Origins of World War I, the
Macedonian Issue (1879-1912), (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 2011).
142 Cigdem Onal Emiroglu and Kudret Emiroglu, Osmanlı Terakki ve İttihat Cemiyeti: Paris Merkezi
Yazışmaları Kopya Defterleri (1906-1908), (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yayinlari, 2017)
143 Hüseyin Hilmi Paşa Evrakı Kataloğu, (Istanbul: ISAM Yayinlari, 2006)
44
these provinces. In addition, several published archival collections that cover Ottoman,
Serbian, Bulgarian, and Albanian sources have been included in this study.144
Apart from these archival collections and documents, I used several memoirs and diaries. In
the former, the research deals with two important Turkish sources “Osmanlı Devleti'nin
Makedonya Meselesi”145 by Süleyman Kani Irtem and Tahsin Uzer’s memoirs “Makedonya
Eşkiyalık Tarihi ve Son Osmanlı Yönetimi.”146 Both books employ a critical approach to the
Hamidian regime and are an important account of authors’ views on the Ottoman Empire and
the society in Ottoman Macedonia. Next, Tahsin Uzer was even a member of the Young Turk
movement, along with Ahmet Riza, Enver Pasha, Talat Pasha, Kazim Karabekir, and Mithat
Şükrü Bleda, who wrote memoirs and diaries: “Ahmet Riza Bey’in Anıları,“ 147 “Enver
Paşa’nin Anıları, “148 Talat Paşa’s “Hatıralarım ve Müdafaam,“149 Kazim Karabekir’s “İttihat
ve Terakki Cemiyeti,“150 and Mithat Şükrü Bleda’s “İmparatorluğun Çöküşü.“151 These books
help us to understand their entanglements with Albanian-speaking Young Turks who were
originally from Ottoman Macedonia and played important roles in the Ottoman Empire. In
this respect, this research will analyse the memoirs of Ibrahim Temo “İttihat ve Terakki
Anılarım,“152 Ismail Qemali’s “Memoirs“153 (written in English) and those of his cousin,
Sureyya Bey Avlonyalı, “Osmanlı Sonrası Arnavutluk.“154 Sureyya Bey’s son, Ekrem Bey
Vlora, wrote his memoirs in German, known as “Lebenserinnerungen.“155 At that time, it was
common to write memoirs in different languages, since these personalities lived in different
parts of the world, sometimes as fugitives, but also voluntarily.
144 The edition titled Documents on Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Serbia, 1903-1914 that was being
published between 1980 and 2015 in 42 volumes. It has been digitalized:
http://diplprepiska.mi.sanu.ac.rs/Wiki.jsp?setLang=en&page=Serbia-Forum accessed 28/03/2021. See also other
published editions Milić F. Petrović, Dokumenti o Raškoj oblasti, 1900-1912, (Beograd: Arhiv Srbije, 1995).
Živko Avramovski, Britanci i Kraljevini Jugoslaviji: Godišnji izveštaji Britanskog poslanstva u Beogradu 1921-
1938, vol. I (1921-1930) (Beograd - Zagreb: Arhiv Jugoslavije - Globus, 1986); Ljubodrag Dimić and Đorđe
Borozan, Jugoslovenska država i Albanci, vol. 1-2 (Beograd: JP Službeni list SRJ/Arhiv Jugoslavije/Vojnoistorijski
institut, 1998/99).; Biblioteka Kombëtare e Shqipërise https://www.bksh.al/online-catalogues accessed
28/03/2021; Sinan Kuneralp and Gül Tokay, Ottoman Diplomatic Documents on the Origins of World War One
IV the Macedonian Issue 1879-1912, (Istanbul: ISIS, 2011); Atatürk Kitapligi
http://ataturkkitapligi.ibb.gov.tr/ataturkkitapligi/index.php accessed 28/03/2021;.
145 Süleyman Kani Irtem, Osmanli Devleti'nin Makedonya Meselesi (Istanbul: Temel Yayinlari, 1998)
146 Tahsin Uzer, Makedonya Eşkiyalık Tarihi ve Son Osmanlı Yönetimi (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 1999)
147 Ahmed Riza, Ahmet Riza Anıları, (Istanbul: Dizgi Yayimlari, 2001)
148 Enver Pasa, Enver Paşa’nin Anıları (Istanbul: Is Bankasi Kultur Yayinlari, 2018).
149 Talat Paşa’s Hatıralarım ve Müdafaam, (Istanbul: Kaynak Yayinlari, 2006)
150 Kazim Karabekir, İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti, (Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, 2009)
151 Mithat Şükrü Bleda, İmparatorluğun Çöküşü, (Istanbul: Destek Yayinlari, 2010)
152 Ibrahim Temo, İttihat ve Terakki Anılarım, (Istanbul: Alfa Yayincilik, 2013)
153 Ismail Qemali, The Memoirs of Ismail Kemal Bey, (London: Constable and Company LTB, 1921)
154 Sureyya Bey Avlonyalı, Osmanlı Sonrası Arnavutluk (1912-1920), (Istanbul: Klasik Yayinlari, 2018).
155 Ekrem Bey Vlora, Lebenserinnerungen, (Berlin/München: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 1973)
45
These writings are helpful in depicting people, ideas, places and social interactions from the
perspectives of the local Albanian-speaking population. Of no lesser importance are also
Ahmed Niyazi Bey’s “Hatırat-i,“156 Bekir Fikri’s “Balkanlarda Tedhiş ve Gerilla,“157 and
Hasan Prishtina’s “Nji shkurtim kujtimesh mbi kryengritjen shqiptare të vjetit 1912,“158 all of
whom were born in different parts of the Ottoman Macedonian vilayets. Hasan Prishtina was
born and raised in Kosovo, while Ahmed Niyazi and Bekir Fikri were born in the Manastir
vilayet. Their memoirs also verify links with the broader region and detail such events as the
meetings and personal contacts with different personalities that established interactions with
the locals as well. These autobiographical texts make it possible to afford an insight into the
ways in which individuals established connections and cooperations with each other and to
understand the real-life entanglements at the local level.
From the South-Slavic perspective(s), one should mention the memoirs and diaries of gang
activists and members of various organisations, either nationalist or anarchist and socialist.
Their plans, projects, and interactions with locals can be traced in the memoirs of Milan
Matov, “Nai komitata raskazva, zhivot za Makedoniya;“159 Hristo Tatarchev, “Spomeni na
Hristo Tatarchev: Prviyat Komitet na VMRO;“160 “Makedoniya i Odrinsko 1893-1903, s dve
karti, “ published in 1904 as a memoir of the International Organisation (Vatreshnata
Organizatziya);161 Hristo Matov, “Osnovi na vatreshnata revolyutzionna organizatziya“162
and “Shto byahme – shto sme;“163 Angel Tomov and Georgi Bazhdarov, “Revoluzionnata
borba v Makedoniya;“164 Dimitri Vlahov, “Memoari;“165 Mihail Gerdzikov, “V Makedonija i
Odrinsko Spomeni,“166 Petar Mandjukov, “Predvestnici na burjata Spomeni,“167 and Pavel
Shatev, “Solunskiyat attentat i zatochenitsitie v ‘Fezan.’“168 The memoirs important for their
records of the events before the Balkan Wars were edited in nine volumes by Lyubomir
156 Ahmed Niyazi Bey, Hatırat-i yahut tarihçe-i inkilab-i kebir-i Osmani’den bir sahife, (İstanbul: Sabah
Matbaası, 1326 [1910]).
157 Bekir Fikri, Balkanlarda Tedhiş ve Gerilla (Istanbul: Vakfi Yayinlari, 2008)
158 Hasan Prishtina, Nji shkurtim kujtimesh mbi kryengritjen shqiptare të vjetit 1912 (Tiranë: Eurorilindja, 1995).
159 Milan Matov, Nai komitata raskazva, zhivot za Makedoniya (Sofiya: Kulturno-blagotvoritelna fondacija
‚Bratya Miladinovi‘, 2002)
160 Materiyali za Istoriyata na makedonskoto osvoboditelno dvizhenie, kniga IX, (Sofiya: Pecatnica P. Gluskov,
1928)
161 Memoari na Vatrasnata Organizaciya, Makedoniya i Odrinsko (1893-1903), (Sofiya, 1904).
162 Hristo Matov, Osnovi na vatreshnata revolyutzionna organizatziya’ (Sofiya, 1904)
163 Hristo Matov, Shto byahme – shto sme (Plovdiv, 1905)
164 Angel Tomov and Georgi Bazhdarov, Revoluzionnata borba v Makedoniya (Skopje, 1917)
165 Dimitri Vlahov, Memoari (Skopje: Nova Makedonija, 1970)
166 Mihail Gerdzikov, V Makedonija i Odrinsko Spomeni (Sofiya: Glusov, 1928)
167 Petar Mandjukov, Predvestnici na burjata Spomeni, (Sofiya: Federacijyata na anarhistite v Bulgariya, 2013)
168 Pavel Shatev, Solunskiyat attentat i zatochenitsitie v ‘Fezan.’ (Sofiya: Makedonski nauchen institut, 2015).
46
Miletich, “Materiali za istoryata na makedonskoto osvoboditelno dvizhenie;“169 the tenth was
edited by Stefan Avramov, and the eleventh by Boyan Mirchev. Here I focus mostly on the
discussions inside the IMRO members and I try to deconstruct their ‘primordial’ ethnonational
positions ‘given’ by Bulgarian and Macedonian historiographies as monolith and
constant. Rather, I will highlight their views as part of changable dynamics that were
developed in the trans-regional context. However, my aim here is not to focus only on IMRO
members, since this topic has been quite researched. Thus, apart from these memoirs and
materials written in Bulgarian and Macedonian, I will also draw on the memoirs written by
members of the Serbian gang organisation known as Četnička akcija. In the works of some of
their members, such as Vasilije Trbić’s “Memoari,“170 or their raports closely analysed by
Biljana Vučetić and Uroš Šešum, where they published important information about the
contacts between various groups and their actions in Ottoman Macedonia. Apart from the
archival documents, books, memoirs, and diaries, there are several maps, cartography, and
photos, which I analyse through the lens of imagination. 171 Important sources are also
gazettes, journals, and newspapers written in Ottoman Turkish, like Tanin, Ibret, Tercuman-ı
Şark, which are available online. The newspapers have been digitised as a part of the Ottoman
newspaper collection (Osmanlica Gazeteler).172 Relevant newspapers and journals, such as
Kanun-i Esasi, Şuiurâ-yi Ümmet, Içtihad, Anadolu, and Osmanli are stored in the IBB Atatürk
Library in Istanbul. Further Ottoman Turkish books from the period are also in the same
library, while several of them are also available online on the library’s website. 173 The
newspapers published in Albanian, such as Kalendari Kombiar, Besa, Drita, Shpnesa e
Shqypnis, Shqiptari (Arnavut), are stored in the General Directorate of Archives in Tirana.
The newspapers in Serbian, such as Politika, Carigradski Vestnik, one can find online in a
digital library.174 This also applies to the Montenegrin newspaper Glas Crnogorca175 and the
Bulgarian newspapers Makedonija, Yugozapadna Bulgaria, Svoboda, and Gayda.176
169 Lyubomir Miletich, Materiali za istoryata na makedonskoto osvoboditelno dvizhenie, knjiga IX (Sofiya,
1925-28)
170 Vasilije Trbić, Memoari (Beograd: Kultura, 1996)
171 Dimitar Rizov, Bulgarite v tehnite istoriceski, etnograficeski I politiceski granici 679-1917, (Berlin:
Königliche Hoflithographie, Hof-Buch-und Steindruckere Wilhelm Greve, 1917); H.R. Wilkinson, Maps and
Politics – A review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia, (Liverpool: Liverpool, University Press,
1951);
172 Osmanlica Gazeteler: https://www.osmanlicagazeteler.org (Accessed: 11.11.2019).
173 Atatürk Kitapligi: http://ataturkkitapligi.ibb.gov.tr/ataturkkitapligi/index.php (Accessed 11.11.2019).
174 http://digital.bms.rs/ebiblioteka/
175 http://dlib.me/
176 http://nationallibrary.bg/wp/?page_id=1337
47
C) WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE CONTENTIOUS IMAGINATIONS OF
OTTOMAN MACEDONIA?
If we take into consideration that the spatial territories are in fact often constructed by power
of imaginations, one simoultaneously acknowledges that within one polity many different
borderlands exist depending on one’s imagination. Thus, these notions of spatiality and
territoriality should be analysed as imagined, made, moulded, percieved, constructed, but not
given as natural entities.177 Nowadays, by using different archival sources, it is a commonly
accepted view that is not such a consensus for the geographical borders of Macedonia. Instead
of discussing them as something given, rather they “can be interpreted as manifestation of
socio-spatial consciousness and imaginations.”178 This is a “collective form of consciousness
and ideologies, which have developed in the course of the history of a specific territorial unit,
and which cannot thus be reduced to the ideas of single individuals living in some specific
period of time. Socio-spatial consciousness is abstraction which aims to conceptualize the
social and historical construction of spatial (and social) demarcations.”179 Therefore, for the
Balkan nationalists who came into power in the 1990s, it was common not to interpret
boundaries not only inside the nation-state borders, but also to imagine them even wider. A
similar situation was encountered in the period that I examine, the “Age of Empire,”180 which
saw the process of nation-state formation and nation-building. This era is particularly marked
by meta-geography and a spatial imaginary that played a powerful role in organising and
shaping understandings of the world, and by extension, influenced actions.181 According to
Peter Haslinger’s analysis, in the same way that the collective history and tradition has to be
‘imagined’ or ‘invented,’ space too undergoes a similar process in the form of ‘invented
177 Maurus Reinkowski, Double Struggle, No Income: Ottoman Borderlands in Northern Albania, International
Journal of Turkish Studies 9, no. 1 (2003), pp. 239-53, here p. 39; James Anderson and Liam O'Dowd, Borders,
Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance, Regional Studies, Volume
33, 1999, p. 594. On the center-periphery paradigm see Şerif Mardin, Center- Periphery Relations: A Key to
Turkish Politics?, Daedalus 102, no. 1 (1973): 169-90; Şerif Mardin, Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday
and Today: Continuity, Rupture and Reconstruction in Operational Codes, Turkish Studies 6, no. 2 (2005): 145-
65. Metin Heper, Center and Periphery in the Ottoman Empire: With Special Reference to the Nineteenth
Century, International Political Science Review 1, no. 1 (1980). and Kemal H. Karpat, Comments on
Contributions and the Borderlands, in Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities and Political Changes, ed.
Kemal H. Karpat and Robert W. Zens (Madison: The University of Wisconsin, 2003), 1-14.
178 Anssi Paasi, Constructing Territories, Boundaries and Regional Identities, In, Contested Territory: Border
Disputes at the Edge of the Former Soviet Empire, ed. by. Tuomas Forsberg, (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995), p.
43.
179 Ibid., p. 43
180 Hobsbawm, op.cit.
181 Andreas Faludi, Multi-level (territorial) governance: Three criticisms, Planning Theory and Practice, 13,
2012, pp. 197–211.
48
territory’ or ‘imagined territory.’ 182 Therefore, claims to a imagined territory are very
important for the propagation of nationhood as imagined community. What is more, nationalterritorial
arguments can make each side shy away from compromise and perceive any
compromise over territory as a defeat. This applies to the Macedonian case, where every party
claimed that it had a historical mission in Ottoman Macedonia. Liberating these provinces
from the Ottoman yoke was the objective pursued by different protagonists - Greece,
Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania.183 However, many works about Macedonia fail to report on the
Montenegrin mission towards these territories. Therefore, in this thesis I will present and
interpret the additional issue of Prince Nikola’s attempts to conquer parts of the territory of
the three vilayets. An important remark at this point is that the borders of present-day
Northern Macedonia should not be mixed with those of the territories of vilayet-i selase,
which were broader and encompassed parts of present-day Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek,
Albanian, and Montenegrin territories too. After the Congress of Berlin (1878), Macedonia
was divided into three vilayets (administrative districts): Salonica, Manastir, and Kosovo,
headed by a governor (vali) who was appointed by the sultan. For each of the Balkan states,
Macedonia occupied a special place in their concept of boundaries, background, and
affiliation of its population. Consequently, after 1890, Macedonia became the playground of
several nationalist movements: Serbian, Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian, Turkish etc. For every
party involved in the conflict, Macedonia and the Macedonians were subsumed into narratives
of their regional anf local identity, which contains such elements as: “[I]deas on nature,
landscape, the built environment, culture, ethnicity, dialects, economic success, recession,
periphery and centre relations, marginalization, stereotypic images of a people and
community, both of ‘us’ and ‘them’, actual invented histories, utopias and diverging
arguments on the identification of people.” 184 These elements are used contextually in
practices, rituals, and discourses to construct narratives of more or less closed, imagined
communities and territories. This social construction of territories and regions means that
boundaries are shaped by the collective perception of identities and meanings.185 Because the
territories/regions are constructed, their names and meanings in the historical context are
different. It means that the meaning of the term ’Macedonia‘ was not the same in the past as it
182 Peter Haslinger, Nation und Territorium im tschechischen politischen Diskurs 1880-1938 (Munchen :
Oldenbourg, 2010), p. 30; In this vein, Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de memoire (memory places) can be
comprehended as an attempt to disclose the way in which imagined territorial space is filled with identity sites
that reinforce its claims to be a historically legitimate national and political entity.
183Nadine Lange-Akhund, op. cit. Columbia University Press, NY, 1998, p. 7
184Anssi Paasi, Region and Place: Regional Identity in Question, Progress in Human Geography 27,4 (2003) p.
478.
185Raimo Vayrynen, Regionalism: Old and New, International Studies Review 5 (2003) p,p. 37.
49
is today, and that it was frequently modified. In line with the latter, Arabian geographer
Muhamed Al-Idrisi termed the Balkans of today as the “Macedonian mountains/gebel al-
Maqedoni,”186 including even the Danube region west of Belgrade. Many lands of the Balkan
Peninsula were called “Macedonia, such as Stara Srbija, Zeta, Albania, and Bosnia and
Herzegovina.”187 Moreover, Bozidar Vukovic Podgoricanin too used to say that he came from
“the Diocletian lands, in Macedonia, from the town of Podgorica.”188 In the same way, in one
of his letters to the Pope Urban VIII, bishop Mardarije from Montenegro introduced himself
as:
“Marderius, by the grace of God bishop of Macedonia, the fatherland of Alexander the Great,
in the Montenegrin Monastery of Jovan Crnojevic in Cetinje on the border with Kotor.
(Marderius, Dei gratia episcopus Macedoniae patriae Magni Alexandri, Montisnigri in
Monasterio ducis Ioannis Cernovichii in campo Cetinae ad confinum Cathari).’’189
Similarly, on 28 January 1712 Montenegrin bishop Danilo Petrovic (founder of dynasty
Petrovic-Njegos) signed off his letter to the Russian Tsar Peter the Great with the words:
“from Montenegro in Macedonia.”190 In addition, the famous Austro-Hungarian and Czech
historian Konstantin Jirecek (1854-1918) pointed out that “in the Middle Ages the whole of
present-day Rumelia was often called Macedonia.”191 Following the Ottoman conquest of
Macedonia it became part of Rumeli and was divided into sanjaks, which brought about major
changes in the toponymy and demographics. This led to a complete disappearance of the use
of the name ‘Macedonia’ in the Ottoman administration, but for the texts of authors such as
Idris Bitlisi, Hoca Sadeddin, Asik Mehmed, Evliya Celebi etc,192 where Macedonia was
present and identified with the Rumeli (the Balkans) and Istanbul as ancient Macedonia.
Since the beginning of 19th century Macedonia got not just geographical, but also a political
meaning imagined variously by different actors. One description was given by Hugo Grothe
(1869-1954), who states that “only three vilayets (Salonica, Bitola, Kosovo) may today be
regarded as constituting Ottoman Macedonia.”193 According to Irena Stefoska, in the 19th
century “the term Macedonia refers to geographical region of Macedonia in a supra-national
186 Djoko Slijepcevic, The Macedonian Question: The Struggle for Southern Serbia, (Chicago: The American
Institute for Balkan Affairs, 1958), p. 10.
187 Jovan Cvijic, Osnove za geografiju i geologiju Makedonije I Stare Srbije ,kniga I, (Beograd, 1906), pp. 38-42.
188Ljubomir Stanojevic, Stari srpski zapisi i natpisi, br. 494, p. 161.
189 Vuk Uskokovic, Identitet Crne Gore u prvoj polovini 18. Vijeka, in O Identitetu, ed. Dragan Vukcevin,
(Podgorica: CANU, 2015), p. 16.
190 Ljubomir Stanojevic, op.cit., br. 494, pp. 161.
191 Konstantin Jirecek, Geschichte der Bulgaren, (Prague, 1876), p. 157.
192Dragi G’orgiev, The Name Macedonia in the Ottoman Period (14th-19th Century), in Macedonia: Land,
Region, Borderland, ed. By Jolanta Sujecka, (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2013), pp. 109-111.
193 Hugo Grothe, Auf turkisher Erde, (Berlin, 1903), p. 358.
50
sense (…) including the territory of today’s Republic of Macedonia, territories in southwestern
Bulgaria, northern Greece and small portions of southern Serbia, southern Kosovo
and south-eastern Albania.”194 In general, there was no accepted definition of Macedonia. By
modern times “Macedonia had never formed a racial, linguistic or political unit (…) nor
indeed was Macedonia a definite geographical term.”195
In the Greek state formulations of the socio-spatial consciousness inside the Megali Idea
project, as Macedonia were considered the territories of the Manastir and Salonika Vilayet.
Thus, viewed from a “Greek” lens,196 the Macedonian Question has been nothing but the
compulsory struggle for the spread of Hellenism. Textbooks from 1892 stated that “the whole
ancient Macedonia, the homeland of the philosopher Aristotle, of Philip and of Alexander the
Great, is and has stayed 100% Greek.”197 In this period the reinterpretation of Alexander of
Macedonia changed too, as he became a symbol of the ‘Macedonian province and Greek
ethnicity’ in order to maintain a continuity of the Greekness of the Macedonian territory.
As for “Bulgarians,”198 their main aspiration was to re-gain the territories lost as a result of the
Treaty of San Stefano. According to their arguments, the imagined territories of Macedonia
contain the areas of the mountains Shar and Skopska Crna Gora in the north, through the
Skopje Sanjak to the Manastir and Salonika Vilayets in the southeast and south. Furthermore,
in Bulgarian sources the term ‘Macedonia’ sometimes refers to ‘western Bulgaria.’199 One
article from the newspaper “Yugozapadna Bulgaria” dated 11 September 1893 reads: “We
194Irena Stefoska, Fragments from the Medieval History of Macedonia, in Macedonia: Land, Region, Borderland,
ed. By Jolanta Sujecka, (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2013), p. 69.
195Douglas Dakin, op.cit., p. 3.
196 Here is rather meant Greek intellectuals and statesmen who defined Greek policies toward Ottoman territories.
In order to avoid generalisations and essentializations with the total Greek speaking population, I used quotation
marks.
197 Demetrius Kiminas, The Ecumenical Patriarchate: A History of Its Metropolitanates with Annotated
Hierarch Catalogs (Cabin John: Wildside Press LLC., 2009); Olimpia Dragouni, Macedonia in Greek Textbooks
(19th-20th Century), in Macedonia: Land, Region, Borderland, ed. By Jolanta Sujecka, (Warsaw: University of
Warsaw, 2013), p. 420; Basil C. Gounaris. Social cleavages and national "awakening" in Ottoman Macedonia.
East European Quarterly 29 (1995), pp. 409-426.; Basil C. Gounaris. Preachers of God and martyrs of the
Nation: The politics of murder in ottoman Macedonia in the early 20th century. Balkanologie. Vol. IX, n° 1-2 |
décembre 2005.; Basil C. Gounaris. IX. National Claims, Conflicts and Developments in Macedonia, 1870-1912.
In: The History of Macedonia. Ed. by. Ioannis Koliopoulos, (Thessaloniki: Musesum of the Macedonian
Struggle, 2007). pp. 183–213.; Douglas Dakin. Op.cit., 1966. p. 538; Dimitris Livanios. ’Conquering the souls':
nationalism and Greek guerrilla warfare in Ottoman Macedonia, 1904-1908, BMGS 23 (1999), pp. 195-221;
Lora Gerd, Russian Policy in the Orthodox East: The Patriarchate of Constantinople (1878-1914), (Berlin: De
Gruyter Open, 2014). p. 10.
198 As in Greek case, by Bulgarians here is rather meant Bulgarian intellectuals and statesmen who defined
Bulgarian policies toward Ottoman territories. In order to avoid generalisations and essentializations with the
total Bulgarian speaking population, I used quotation marks.
199Jolanta Sujecka, The image of Macedonia and the categories rod-narod-natsiya in literature from Macedonia
in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, in Macedonia: Land, Region, Borderland, ed. By Jolanta Sujecka,
(Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2013), p. 138.
51
want to champion the interests of that Bulgarian land which the Berlin Congress tore away
from the free Principality and left in the same plight it was in before the Congress - we will
fight for this land which is called South-Western Bulgaria or, as history knows it, under the
name of Macedonia.”200 According to the newspaper “The Sun” from 16 June 1903, “the
Turks do not accept the mention of the name Macedonia in any form or manner in the
translation of the New Testament of Bible (…) with regard to the ancient geographical term
Macedonia, which occurs in the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians, the Turks
now insist to use instead the ‘modern’ term ‘the vilayet of Salonika and Monastir.’”201 A
similar situation emerged when the delegate from Thessaloniki, Hristo Delchev, mentioned
the name Macedonia in the Parliament (January 1909), was interrupted and warned to use the
term ‘vilayet-i selase.’202
During the Serbian-Ottoman Wars (1876-1878), the invented territory of ‘Old Serbia’ was
expanded almost across the entire territory of the Macedonian region. Even some years later,
following the establishment of the St. Sava Society (1886), “Macedonia was an integral part
of ‘Old Serbia’, (…) its Slavic inhabitants were Serbs, and (…) their dialect was a southern
dialect of Serbian.”203 The renowned Serbian geographer of the time, Jovan Cvijic, points out
that “many of our writers consider the area/region of ‘Old Serbia’ to lie within King Milutin’s
country’s borders, and some of them add Thessaly, Epirus, and Thrace to it; onlyThessaloniki
and its surroundings are considered to be truly Macedonia.”204 In later works Jovan Cvijic
locates the borders between Old Serbia and Macedonia south of the towns of Prilep and
Veles.205 At the beginning of the 20th century, its territorial definition also entailed the
northern part of the Albanian region. However, one can notice that throughout the given
historical time the term ‘Old Serbia’, whose territorial scope kept changing especially with
regard to the south, had one territorial constant: the Kosovo area and Sanjak region,206 which
belonged to the Ottoman administrative unites of vilayet-i selase.
According to Albanian historiographic works, two vilayets of vilayet-i selse (Kosovo and
Manastir) were inhabited by a majority of Albanians who “had been living there during the
200 Yugozapadna Bulgaria, Sofija, No. 1, from 11.09.1893
201Dragi G’orgiev, op.cit., p. 124.
202Dragi Gjorgiev, Makedonsko prasanyevo osmanliski v parlament 1909, (Skopje: 2010), pp. 25-27.
203Jolanta Sujecka, op.cit. in Macedonia: Land, Region, Borderland, (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2013), p.
160.
204 Jovan Cvijic, op.cit. Beograd, 1906, pp. 38-42.
205 Jovan Cvijic, Govori i clanci (drugo izdanje), Sabrana dela, knjiga 3, (Beograd: SANU, 1991), p. 153.
206Makedonka Mitrova, The Kingdom of Serbia and Mursteg reforms in Ottoman Macedonia, in Journal of
History, No 1, Skopje, 2015/2016, pp. 181-182.
52
whole of their history.”207 This meta-narrative appears inthe work of an Ottoman-Albanian
intellectual named Semseddin Sami Frasheri, who described the territories of Macedonia that
since antiquity had been inhabited by the Pelasgians, ancestors of the Albanians.208 According
to him, “[T]his people [Albanians/Pelasgians] have resided in the Balkan Peninsula since
earlier times than history has record of.” 209 In the chapter about Macedonia in the
encyclopaedia “Kamus al-alam,” Semseddin Sami Frasheri states further that “there is no
doubt that the ancient Macedonians were originally Albanians (Eski Makedonyalilarin sirf ve
halis Arnavut bulunmus olduklarinda suphe kalmaz).”210 These nationalist intellectuals have
seen the Macedonian Question often as an Albanian Question.211 In similar way, Nuray
Bozbora argues that “for the Albanians the Macedonian issue would continue to be the most
dangerous threat.”212 Hence, Albanian nationalist intellectuals tried to formulate an Albanian
autonomous province within the territories of the Ottoman Empire. An autonomous Albania,
for many Albanian intellectuals of that time meant actully “maintaining the commitment to
Caliph Sultan,”213 and not, as many Albanian scholars214 argue: exclusevely a seccession from
the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, Abdulhamid II did not support such idea of the
autonomos province of Albania directly submitted to His Majesty the Sultan, but rather has
been seen as indirectly responsible for the forging of Albanianness close to imperial policy.215
In this regard, Semseddin Sami Frasheri in the introduction of Kamus al-alam (1889-1898)
praised Abdulhamid II for allowing the Albanian people (kavim) to establish a school in the
Albanian language in order to create an Albanian national literature (edebiyat-i milliye). Its
aim was to “counter Greek and Slavic territorial claims to these regions (including
Macedonia).”216 Therefore, one part of the participants in the League of Ipek advocated for
207 Stefanaq Pollo, Aleks Buda, Kristaq Prifti, Kristo Frasheri, Historia e Shqiperise (vitet 30 te shek. XIX-1912),
vellimi I dyte, (Tiranë: Akademia e shkencave e RPS te Shqiperise – Instituti I Historise, 1984), pp. 35-37.
208 According to one version that Sami Frasheri represented, the name Pelasgian derives from the Albanian word
“plak” (Turkish Ihtiyar or Kadim) that was given to the old people as Albanians. According to him they were
widespread on all sides of the Balkan Peninsula and western parts of Anatolia.
209 Samy-Bey Fraschery, Kamus al-alam I, (Istanbul, 1306/1889), p. 86.
210 Ibid., p. 117.
211 Sami Frasheri, Shqiperia cka qene, ceshte e cdo te behet, (Tirane: Mesonjetorja e pare, 1999).
212 Nuray Bozbora, Failures and Achievements of Albanian Nationalism in the era of Nationalism, Balkan
Araştırma Enstitüsü Dergisi-Trakya Üniversitesi, 2012, pp. 5
213 Ibid. p. 14.
214 Ibid.
215Nathalie Clayer, The Young Turks and the Albanians or Young Turkism and Albanianism? In Penser, agir et
vivre dans l’Empireottoman et en Turquie, ed. by Nathalie Clayer et Erdal Kaynar, Collection Turcica, Vol 19,
Paris, 2013, p. 71.
216 Ibid. p. 72
53
unification of the four ‘Albanian’ vilayets (Janina, Kosova, Shkodra, and Manastir), while
another group demanded that the vilayet of Salonika also be incorporated into this entity.217
The concepts of an ‘imagined territory,’ combined with an ‘imagined community,’ have long
been implicit in geography and history, since traditional approaches to territory/region and
ethno-nation often celebrated their primordial nature, accentuating their ‘personality’ and the
harmony and unity between a territory/region and its inhabitants. 218 As we could see,
Macedonia as a region and Macedonians as people have multiple imaginaries and even
names. In actuality, “it has never been precisely stated what one is to understand by the
expressions ‘Macedonia’ and ‘the Macedonian people.’”219 This lack of clarity may stem from
the fact that the situation on the ground was different from the above imaginations and
representations. Did the locals have national awareness and socio-spatial consciousness of
that time? Can we talk about monolithic national communities? How people at the local level
understood their world priory to the Balkan Wars (1912/13)? How we understand the
ambiguous matrix on the ground or its local level in the late Ottoman Macedonia?
In this regard, Spiridon Gopcevic noted that “there were people here [in Macedonia] who felt
no enthusiasm for Serbia, Bulgaria or Greece.”220 Aligned with these were the statements of
Krste Misirkov that all people in Macedonia share the same “fate” and “if we crossed the
border of Macedonia (...) to Bulgaria, Greece or Serbia, we would immediately feel a different
wind blowing: we would feel that we were uninvited guests and if they wanted to make it
seem that we are brothers they would do so in order to rob and exploit us.”221 Therefore, it is
very important to take into consideration the entire complexity of Macedonia (including the
locals, too) in order to deconstruct the heavy emphasis on meta-narratives that attempted to
champion uncritical acceptance of claims, such as that “people living in such a vast
geographic area shared more in common with unknown people living hundreds of miles away
because they were categorically of the same ‘ethnicity’ than with neighbors who were often of
217 Though it was well known that there was no significantly Albanian population living in the Salonika vilayet,
the following tripartite conclusion can be drawn from here: (1) Albanian landlords wanted to incorporate
Salonika because it occupied a large part of the land in this vilayet, (2) the Albanian religious group wanted to
prevent potential annexation of this territory by the neighbouring states or Great Powers, as it was/provided for
an important connection to Istanbul and the Caliph, and (3) Albanian national revivalists (Rilindasit shqiptar)
wanted to create a socio-spatial consciousness of Macedonia as a territory of Ottoman Albania and of old
Macedonians as Albanians.
218Anssi Paasi, op.cit., Progress in Human Geography 27(4),2003, pp. 476
219 Djoko Slijepcevic, op.cit. Chicago: The American Institute for Balkan Affairs, 1958, pp. 9
220Spiridon Gopcevic, Makedonija i Stara Srbija, (Beograd: Sazveždje, 2016) First published in 1890, pp. 311
221 Krste P. Misirkov, Blaze Ristovski, Biljana Ristovska-Josifovska, Za makedonckite raboti, in Sobrani dela –
tekstovi na makedonski jazik (1900-1905), (Skopje: MANU, 2005), p. 134.
54
a different faith and thus a different ‘ethnic group.’”222 On the local level, being a ‘Serb,’
‘Greek,’ ‘Turk,’ ‘Montenegrin,’ ‘Macedonian,’ ‘Albanian,’ or ‘Bulgarian’ had an entirely
different meaning prior to the Balkan Wars, because “they had no firm ethno-national
consciousness that superseded their immediate local needs,” and thus, they rather “associated
and collaborated with people who would today be considered their ‘ancient enemies.’”223 In
this respect, the events on the ground (upon the Balkan wars) were much more complexed
and not driven by national affiliations as represented by national historiographies.224 People
on the local level gave often more importance to tribe, family, neigbours or religion as
presented by the British journalist Henry Noel Brailsford who wrote:
“I questioned some boys from a remote mountain village near Ohrida which had neither
teacher nor resident priest, and where not a single inhabitant was able to read, in order to
discover what amount of traditional knowledge they possessed (…) I took them up to the
ruins of the Bulgarian Tsar’s fortress which dominates the lake and the plain from the summit
of an abrupt and curiously rounded hill. ‘Who built this place?’ I asked them. The answer was
significant - ‘The Free Men.’ ‘And who were they?’ ‘Our grandfathers.’ ‘Yes, but were they
Serbs or Bulgarians or Greeks or Turks?’ ‘They were not Turks, they were Christians.’ And
this seemed to be about the measure of their knowledge.”225
Brailsford’s detailed raport of local life in parts of the Manastir vilayeti, nevertheless,
highlights how the situation on the ground contradicted the ambitions of local actors as
forerunners of the nation (i.e. Serbs, Bulgarian, Greeks or Turks), the terms, associated today
with concepts of modernity that were imposed by ‘’Western ‘’ understandings. According to
Isa Blumi, “the ethno-national subjects living under Ottoman rule’’ thus, should not be
analyzed in ‘’fixed, essentialist terms,”226 because this situation in the administrative unity of
Manastir vilayet was not exception, but rather a wide-spreaded phenomenon inside the ‘’three
222 Isa Blumi, Reinstating the Ottomans – Alternative Balkan Modernities (1800-1912), (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011), p. 5.
223Ibid., p. 9.
224 If we take into consideration Miroslav Hroch’s chronological stages of nation-building processes of small
nations, the following three phases can be identified:
Phase A) Groups in the ethnic community start to discuss their own ethnicity and conceive of it as a nation-to-be:
scholarly enquiry into and dissemination of an awareness of the linguistic, cultural, social, and historical
attributes of the nation-to-be;
Phase B) A new range of activists try to “awaken” national consciousness and to persuade as many members as
possible of the ethnic group: (1) development of a national culture based on the local language and its use in
education, administration and economy, (2) civil rights and self-administration, (3) creation of a complete social
structure – beginning of a national movement;
Phase C) A mass movement is formed which pursues these aims: a fully-fledged social structure of the would-be
nation comes into being.
See: Miroslav Hroch, From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation: The Nation-Building Process in
Europe, in. Mapping the Nation ed. by Gopal Balakrishnan (New York and London: Verso, 1996). pp. 78-97.
225Mark Mazower, Kratka povijest Balkana, (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2007), p. 59; Henry N. Brailsford
Macedonia - its races and their future, (London: Methuen & Co.,1906), pp. 99-100.
226Ibid., p. 3.
55
vilayets.’’ A similar illustration was presented in the work of Leon Sciaky who described
Salonika and his childhood. In one of his statements he wrote:
“Le Petit Lycee Francais opened its doors early in the year 1904 (…) The lower group, in
which I was placed, was made up of three French boys, one Greek, four Spanish Jews, a Serb,
a Mamin, an Armenian, a Turk, and a Montenegrin boy who had come from Cetinje expressly
to join us (…) Soon Mehmed, the Turkish boy, was volunteering explanations of the rites of
Kurban Bairam, the holiday following Ramadan; Yovanovich, a relative of King Nicholas of
Montenegro, spoke freely of his people and his mountains; and we found with Papopoulos
that the Greeks had many customs in common with the Serbs, when Ivan, the son of the
consul, told us of his home celebration of Easter. As we talked freely together and played
together, as we made warm friendships, visited one another’s homes, and shared our
confidences, we came to know more intimately of those things about one another’s ways
which, viewed from the outside, might have appeared strange and meaningless.”227
By using such sources, the aim of this work is to take into consideration these multiplicities
entailed at the local level, in order to avoid the use of ’monolithic ethno-national identities’ as
a given, and rather to reflect the complexity of events on the ground. At that time and even
today, some politicians, statesmen and intellectuals tried to implement various national
narratives and worldviews according to the primodial ethnoreligious containers without
reflecting that the imposed identification are ambiguous and problematic with the situation at
the local level. Nevertheless, the dissertation does not aim to discard such works (and picture)
of the locals that help to deconstruct the meta-narratives produced by the policies of the
nation-state(s).
D) STRUCTURAL RATIONALE
In this introduction, I have provided the theoretical approaches, together with methodological
and historically interpretative discussions by placing them into a historical and socio-political
context of Ottoman Macedonia. Furthermore, the chapters progress chronologically and
thematically, in order to fit in a theoretical framework and contextualisation of events from
the point of view of the actors that lived in that time and to avoid anachronistic conclusions. I
have structured the remaining chapters of the dissertation as follows:
• Chapter I presents the emergence of the Macedonian Question and contentious politics
between the Great Powers, the Ottoman state, and Balkan elite. Here I chronologically trace
the ways in which Macedonia became popularised among the Great Powers during the period
227 Leon Sciaky, Farewell to Salonika – City at the Crossroads, (Sansom: Paul Dry Books, 2003), pp. 152-154.
56
of the Enlightenment and Romanticism and in which it was imagined by the European elite.
By using British, French, and German sources, I show (thematically) that the Great Powers
regarded this territory (along with Greece) as the the wellspring of “European civilisation”
since ancient Hellenic times. For most Hellenophiles in Europe, these Ottoman territories
were the “cradle of European civilisation.” Thus, this dissertation begins with a careful
analytical overview of relevant developments in Western Europe and their imaginations of
Macedonia. This source of knowledge was circulating (Wissenszirkulation) among the Balkan
elite too, who produced the narratives against the Ottomans, and labels such as “Turkish
yoke” and “Asiatic Mongols” or “barbarians.” By illuminating a spotlight on this ’top-down‘
approach, I argue that the European elite, together with Balkan intelligentsia developed
prejudice against the “Oriental other” Ottomans and imagined Macedonia into their future
nation-state projects.
• Chapter II covers contentious projects of the Balkan states and Ottoman consolidation
during the period from 1878 to 1903, that is, after the Congress of Berlin and up to the Ilinden
Uprising. Here I demonstrate how the Ottoman state, especially the Hamidian regime tried to
keep its remaining territories in Rumelia (Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania gained
independence in 1878). In order to respond to the “small state imperialism” of the Balkan
states and their nationalist projects in Ottoman Macedonia, I argue that the Ottoman state
introduced a counter-colonialist strategy known as “borrowed colonialism.” This strategy
entailed a centralisation policy and was influenced by European ideas of the time,
constructing narratives of the “civilized centre” (Istanbul) and a need to bring civilisation
(mission civilizatrice) to the Ottoman peripheries. By using Ottoman and Albanian sources, I
highlight that the Albanian element in three vilayets played a very important role during the
rule of Sultan Abdulhamid II in keeping the three vilayets close to its centre – Istanbul. From
a different perspective, I show how the Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek sides formulated
policies in Macedonia, often by narrowing spiritual associations and reinforcing education by
indoctrinating members of societies.
• Chapter III studies the period between the Ilinden Uprising (1903) and the Young Turk
Revolution (1908) and introduces various organisations and movements (that were active) on
the ground (i.e. IMRO, Chetnik, Young Turks etc.), which cooperated with the local
population or often originated from the local regions of Ottoman Macedonia. Here I introduce
a ’bottom-up‘ perspective and argue that the situation on the ground was far more complex
than represented by nationalist promoters and the state elite. By deploying various local
57
examples from Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Ottoman Turkish, and Albanian sources, I
argue that the organisations were not ’purely‘ national, but consisted of members with
different religious and ethnical backgrounds. This argument largely aims to deconstruct metanarratives
and narratives of the superiority of “civilised Europe” that were produced by
nation-states during the short 20th century.
• Chapter IV delves into contentious practices of the local and state agents during the period
from the Young Turk Revolution (1908) to the First Balkan War (1912). Here too I adopt a
‘bottom-up’ perspective and show how the locals were influential in changing the state
strategies and projects. In this regard, I draw on the examples of Albanian- and Turkishspeaking
locals (e.g. Ahmet Niyazi Bey, Enver Bey, Ohrili Eyüp Sabri) in the three vilayets
and the importance of the Ferzovik meeting (Kosovo vilayet) in triggering the Young Turk
Revolution. These events reflect the significance of the ‘periphery’ and its influence on
‘centre’ by changing the government in 1908 and dethroning Sultan Abdulhamid II in 1909.
Here, I aim also to show that ‘periphery’ can be active and its peripheral populations were not
bereft of agency. Apart from it, other uprisings of the local Albanian population in 1912
triggered the decisions of the Balkan states to declare war to the Ottoman state and opened up
the room for implementing ‘small state imperialism’ in Macedonia.
The conclusion takes findings from all chapters into account and provides a diachronic
perspective for discussing how each macro- and micro-process affected contentious practices
and vice versa. This dissertation offers insights into the complex ways in which Macedonian
societies were transformed from different regional viewpoints, focusing on the interplay
between Great Power politics, Ottoman state reforms, Balkan state nationalist projects, and
social dynamics on the ground. All of these developments were in correlation with each other,
and it is therefore important to situate events in a broader Ottoman and transnational context.
Moreover, my research demonstrates the conceptual bearings of this case study on debates in
Ottoman Studies, Postcolonial Theory, History of Eastern Mediterranean and (South-)Eastern
Europe, Entangled History, and Social History.
58
1. IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES AND IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: THE
GREAT POWERS AND OTTOMAN RUMELIA
Since Edward Said’s seminal study Orientalism,228 scholars have been aware that the post-
Ottoman space - the Balkans and the Near East as well - was referred to multiple meanings by
politics, and that it was imagined variously dependent on the interests of a certain ideology. In
this sense, Macedonia became contested terrain and a place to be imagined, invented, and
variously constructed by the Great Powers and Balkan intelligentsia. Next, it also became a
space for several interventions by European states and Imperial Russia. In order to understand
these processes of imagination and intervention, the present chapter analyses them through the
lenses of geographical imagination229 and the emergence of international law, which gave
legitimacy to the Great Powers to interfere in Ottoman affairs and to formulate political
programs according to their interests. The aim of this chapter is to scrutinise these various
imaginations and policies, complex relations and interventions through the entanglements and
circulation of knowledge between the Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire, and the Balkan
population in the Macedonian context. In this sense, these relations will be exempflied
through discursive, spatial, and political dimensions, by contextualising the Macedonian
Question within a larger historical perspective. Inspired by the Annales School,230 I analyse
the situation in Macedonia through a middle-term approach (moyenne duree), encompassing
the time framework between the late 18th century and the Congress of Berlin (1878). I argue
that by analysing this long-term historical dynamic, one can better understand the changing
processes within a larger transregional setting of South-Eastern Europe, and follow more with
228 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1979)
229 Ibid.; Gregory Derek, The Colonial Present, (New Jersey: Blackwell, 2004); Mohnike Thomas, Imaginierte
Geographien, (Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2007); Joanne P. Sharp, Geographies of Postcolonialism. (London:
Sage Publications, 2011); Ó' Tuathail Gearoid, Critical Geopolitcs: The Writing of Global Space, (London:
Routledge, 1996); For example, sociologist Wright Mills and geographer David Harvey developed the idea of
the “sociological imagination” (1961) and “geographical imagination” (1973), relating these terms to the
metaphorical ways in which people conceptualised spaces. Their analysis shows that imagination is the tool for
reaching greater understanding of the ‘self’ as civilised/developed and the ‘other’ as uncivilised/undeveloped.
Edward Said (1979) thus demonstrates how the Western society posits an imaginary “Orient” through
travelogues, art, literature, and scholarly work in order to justify and advance its colonial ambitions and practices.
These fundamental colonial ambitions brought about the image of superiority of the ‘European Western-white-
Christian-male.’ See: Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 106.
230Fernand Braudel, History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée, in On History, trans. Sarah Matthews
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 25–54. Originally published as “Histoire et sciences sociales.
La longue durée,” Annales ESC 13, no. 4 (1958): pp. 725–53.; Fernand Braudel, preface to The Mediterranean
and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II, translated by Sian Reynolds (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995), pp. 1-20. Originally published as La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque
de Philippe II (Paris: Armand Colin, 1949).
59
greater ease the mobility dynamics and circulation of knowledge (Wissenszirkulation)231
between various actors such as the Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire, and the Balkan
intelligentsia. Thus, I first highlight the imaginaries and production of knowledge about
Macedonia by European intellectuals and the Great Powers, and secondly, I analyse the
circulation of this knowledge and the entanglements of imaginaries about Macedonia,
especially among the Balkan intelligentsia and the Ottoman Empire. In this regard, the
analysis will follow: European political interventions in Ottoman Rumelia and their
imagination of a geographical region of “Turkey in Europe” including Macedonia of that
time, which had been a virtual terra incognita for many Europeans; historical changes of the
Balkan’s intelligentsia that accepted “colonisation of the mind,” discourses of Orientalism,
interventions, building of nation-states, and imperial projects; and Ottoman imperial
enforcement toward its peripheries defined also as “borrowed colonialism” or “colonisation of
the countryside”.
In fact, these politics and imaginaries are closely connected with what has been termed “the
discovery of the future.” In his famous work Die Entdeckung der Zukunft,232 Lucian Hölscher,
researched “the historical visions of the future” (Zukunftvorstellungen) in the European
modern period during the late 18th and beginning of 19th century. According to Hölscher, the
crucial driving force for the change from premodern to modern visions of the future was the
progressive historicisation of the world through modern historical science that led to
imperialism. Due to this development, the change of the world was no longer considered to be
the result of Christian determination and eschatological expectation, but a consequence of
231 See, for example, Stefan Rohdewald, Albrecht Fuess, Florian Riedler, Stephan Contermann,
Wissenszirkulation: Perspektiven und Forschungsstand. in Transottomanica – Osteuropäisch-osmanischpersische
Mobilitätsdynamiken, ed. by Stefan Rohdewald, Stephan Contermann and Albrecht Fuess (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Unipress, 2019), pp. 83-104; Ulrich Johannes Schneider, ‘Wissensgeschichte, nicht
Wissenschafsgeschichte’, in Michel Foucault: Zwischenbilanz einer Rezeption eds. by Axel Honneth and Martin
Saar (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003); Jakob Vogel, Von der Wissenschafs- zur Wissensgeschichte der
“Wissensgesellschaf”, Geschichte und Gesellschaf 30 (2004); Philipp Sarasin, ‘Was ist Wissensgeschichte?’,
Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur (IASL) 36 (2011); Daniel Speich Chassé &
David Gugerli, ‘Wissensgeschichte: Eine Standortbestimmung’, Traverse: Zeitschrif für Geschichte 1 (2012);
Jürgen Renn, ‘From the History of Science to the History of Knowledge and Back’, Centaurus: An International
Journal of the History of Science & its Cultural Aspects 57 (2015); Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Les conditions sociales de
la circulation internationaldes idées’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 145/1 (2002); Johanna Sumiala,
‘Circulation’, in Keywords in Religion, Media, and Culture ed. by David Morgan (London: Routledge, 2008),,
pp. 44–55; Wiebke Keim, ‘Conceptualizing Circulation of Knowledge in the Social Sciences’, in Global
Knowledge in the Social Sciences: Made in Circulation eds. by Wiebke Keim, Ercüment Çelik, Christian Ersche
and Veronika Wöhrer (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 87–113; Katja Valaskivi and Johanna Sumiala,
‘Circulating Social Imaginaries: Teoretical and Methodological Refections’, European Journal of Cultural
Studies 17/3 (2014), pp. 229–43.
232 Lucian Hölscher, Die Entdeckung der Zukunft, (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag GmbH, 1999)
60
historical events that for their parts were now increasingly interpreted as “progress.”233
However, even after the implementation of the modern concept of the future, older ideas
about the past still continued to exist. Following Peter Burke, “many historians referred to the
rationality of the modern period and the ability of many people in this period to anticipate and
plan future developments long-term.”234 In fact, this “long-term planning,” also known as “the
vision of the future,” was often glorified on behalf of “progress” be use of elements of the
ancient past, especially through the imagination of the Greek, Hellen (Macedonian), and
Roman heritage. In this regard, the Bloch’s notion of die Ungleichzeitigkeit des
Gleichzeitigen 235 can be applied to provide an explanation for ethnic and territorial
imagination, state-building, and nation-building processes constructed in the contemporary as
“the vision of the future” with non-contemporary elements of the past. More specifically, the
modern colonial empires, their rulers and elite were revealed as imagining “contemporary”
Europe as a continuity of the “non-contemporary” ancient Greek civilisation. These ideas
were disseminated during the period of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution,
transforming all spheres of European life: from intellectual to social, industrial, and
technological.
These historical events have been analysed by the German historian Reinhart Koselleck as the
emergence of a new reality aimed to assimilate the previous understanding of the present as a
“space of experience” (Erfahrungsraum), and to create a new understanding of modern
historical consciousness as a “horizon of expectation” (Erwartungshorizont).236 By using
elements of the past (i.e. of the Greek civilisation), the latter focused on “the vision of the
future,” on upcoming or expected events. This relocation happened with the promise of
modernity for infinite human improvement, progress, freedom, civilisation, mission, etc. To
233 Ibid.
234 Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, (New York: Cornell University Press, 2005)
235 In order to explain how Nazi rule (mis)used this notion of “progress” rooted in the imagination of old
Germanic mythology of the “non-contemporary” and thus, reflected it in the racism of the “contemporary”,
Ernest Bloch coined the term “the non-contemporary of the contemporary” (die Ungleichzeitigkeit des
Gleichzeitigen). In this sense, Bloch argued that on the one hand “people could be physical contemporaries,”
while on the other “they could at the same time be non-contemporaneous/non-contemporaries in terms of their
consciousness and mentality, meaning that they are culturally, cognitively, and emotionally rooted in earlier
times. ”David Hayes, The Simultaneity of the non-simultaneous: Ernst Bloch's concrete utopian thought as a
challenge to rising nationalism in Europe. Conference Paper. Jul 2017; the 18th International Conference of the
Utopian Studies Society – Europe, Solidarity and Utopia, 5-8th July 2017:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318517941_The_Simultaneity_of_the_nonsimultaneous_
Ernst_Bloch's_concrete_utopian_thought_as_a_challenge_to_rising_nationalism_in_Europe
[accessed Dec 20 2017].; Falko Schmieder, Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen: Zur Kritik und Aktualität einer
Denkfigur, Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie 2017; 4(1–2): 325–363
236 Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1979), in English see: Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time,
(Columbia University Press, Year: 2004).
61
bring these ideas to fruition, each present era was once based on an imagined future and a
belief of a better tomorrow. Since that time, “the infinite geographical surface of our globe
shrunk into a finite and interdependent space of action.”237 The acceleration of this kind of
understandings was associated with the possibility of humanity to make history, to create
change with the power of imagination. These imaginations are aimed to construct geographic,
political, or cultural borders defined by maps in order to enforce their control over territories.
The construction/invention of territories and the employment of territorial strategies are bound
together to maintain and to impose the power of a dominant group.238 These “imagined
geographies” are charted in maps in order to serve the power which creates its own field of
exercise through knowledge. According to Koselleck, these imaginations conjoined questions
that emerged squarely in the period 1750–1850. He regarded it as a “saddle-period”
(Sattelzeit), or period of transition, wherein concepts emerged that were both abstract as well
as future oriented. This future was often constructed according to the maps that had the aim to
involve a practice of violating others’ frontiers. In the Macedonian context it included a
“humanitarian intervention” of the Great Powers against the Ottoman Empire. From the
perspective of the history of Ottoman Macedonia, which was very important for the Great
Powers at that time, the following questions arise: when and under what circumstances did
happened a transition from eschatological expectation to the modern (more secular) vision of
the future in Western Europe and Ottoman Macedonia? What were their driving forces during
this change? Why was Macedonia important for the Great Powers and European elite? How
was it imagined by them? Why did the Great Powers interfere in Ottoman affairs and initiate
interventions in Ottoman Rumelia (defined also as “Turkey in Europe”)? What was the
relation between the Great Powers and Balkan intelligentsia regarding the imagination of
Macedonia? How did the circulation of knowledge take place239 between these actors? Can
one find entanglements between Western Europe and South-Eastern Europe, specifically, and
between the Great Powers’ statesmen and elite, the Balkan intelligentsia or Ottoman
modernists?
237Ibid. p. 56.
238 David Storey, Territories: The Claiming of Space (London: Routledge, 2012).
239 Circulation has become a popular term among historians of postcolonial studies, such as Claude Markovits,
Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Jacques Pouchepadass and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
emphasized that “Circulation is different from simple mobility, inasmuch as it implies a double movement of
going back and forth and coming back, which can be repeated indefinitely. In circulating, things, men and
notions often transform themselves. Circulation is therefore a value-loaded term which implies an incremental
aspect and not the simple reproduction across space of already formed structures and notions.” See in: Claude
Markovits, Jacques Pouchepadass and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds.), Society and Circulation: Mobile People
and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950 (London: Anthem, 2006), pp. 2–3.; See:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/ws/files/36167357/Circulation_of_Knowledge.pdf (Accessed 21.01.2020)
62
1. IMAGINATION AND INTERVENTION
The study of imagination and “the vision of the future” may seem an exotic pursuit, but there
is a vast literature devoted to this topic. This includes various studies of images of the Orient
in Edward Said’s context of “Orientalism,” Larry Wolff’s famous Inventing Eastern
Europe,240 Vesna Goldsworthy’s masterpiece, Inventing Ruritania,241 and Maria Todorova’s
Imagining the Balkans.242 All of them are concerned with European views of the region that
emerged during the period of the Enlightenment. The philosophy of the Enlightenment
presented emancipation from the medieval worldview and move towards the victorious
modernity and imagination, which changed the perception of geography, space, regions,
territories and people. The years between 1790 and 1830 announced the “arrival of a whole
new age, a new world of social and individual traumas and possibilities (…) within the
historical map of modern imperialism and modern capitalism.”243 The upcoming Romanticism
was not merely a response to this transformation brought about by the Enlightenment. More
precisely, these two movements overlapped in the sense that “the idea of the imagination
forms a hinge connection of the Enlightenment and Romanticism”244 and “it becomes the
resolving and unifying force of all antithesis and contradictions (between Enlightenment and
Romanticism).”245 Imagination changed numerous areas of thought and generated other ideas
that were developed in the Enlightenment and triumphed in Romanticism.246 This epoch
forged spatial imagination among the European elite that contributed to the development of
geography as a scientific discipline. At the same time, geography became a discipline that
stimulated “dreams and fantasies, poetry and painting, philosophy, fiction, and music.”247
This geographic knowledge was not developed in a vacuum, but rather circulated around and
influenced the Ottoman space, especially parts that later became known as Macedonia. One
should not understand this construction of Macedonia and the Orient as a geographical space
240 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization n the Mind of the Enlightenment, (Redwood
City: Stanford University Press, 1996)
241 Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination, (New Haven: Yale University
Pres,1998)
242 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
243 Saree Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism – Universal Empire and the Culture of Moderny, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. xi
244 James Engell, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism, (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1981), p. 6
245 Ibid., p. 8
246 Ibid., p. 6
247Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, (New York: Vintage 1995), p. 30; Edward Said, Invention, Memory,
and Place, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 2, Winter, 2000, pp. 181; For philosophy would be Heidegger's
Holzwege, about fiction one should think of Walter Scott's Highland novels, and music is present in Sibelius's
Finlandia or Copland’s Appalachian Spring.
63
only as a geographical and ethnographical description, but rather as a political one, based “on
the mapping, conquest, and annexation of territory.”248 Ipek Yosmaoglu points out that this
rather subtle discourse in the form of a political program was used explicitly to “chase the
Turks out of Europe once and for all.”249 Furthermore, she stressed that this “inextricable link
between geographical knowledge and imperial ambition became even more pronounced in the
19th century as European colonial projects not only charted and measured their overseas
acquisitions but also created and named entire regions according to their interests.” Thus, it is
useful to take into consideration the political programs of the Great Powers, Balkan
intelligentsia, and the Ottoman Empire regarding Macedonia, which became a battleground of
spatial and geographical imaginations for all parties involved, intersecting on different levels
(international, regional, local).
This excerpt is an early reminder of a specific rhetoric among the European elite that helped
develop geography as a discipline, but also of the political programs based on a “Western
civilisation” that found its source in Greek philosophy and Hellen culture during the period of
Enlightenment and Romanticism. Maria Todorova also noticed that an interest in classical
antiquity, discovery, and imagination of “the ancient world through the lives of the
contemporary inhabitants” emerged during this era, which generated “an awareness of the
present Greeks and their problems.”250 This was soon extended to “the Slavs and other ethnic
groups inhabiting the peninsula who became the live figures of what came increasingly to be
seen as the Volksmuseum of Europe.”251 Moreover, the centrality of the classic world during
the Enlightenment produced a Greco-Roman lineage that “not only branded the peoples that
fell outside the confines of that intellectual heritage as inferior but also created a foil for the
submission of the same peoples to European colonial power.”252 Additionally, during the
early 19th century, in the period of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, a colourful and
motley Orient that imagined “the Greeks a little too magnificent and the Turks a little too
tatar” was invented.253 These ideas of a uniform superior world divided between the Occident
and the Orient, Europe and the Ottoman Empire, encouraged the European elite to construct a
discourse based on the notions of “civilised” versus “barbarian” worlds. In the fulfilment of
248 Edward Said, op.cit., Vol. 26, No. 2, Winter, 2000, pp. 181
249 Ipek Yosmanoglu, op.cit.
250 Maria Todorova, op.cit., Oxford University Press, New York, 1997, pp. 62
251 Ibid., pp. 62-63
252 Ipek Yosmanoglu, op.cit. 2013, pp. 87
253G. Deschamps, La Grece d'aujourd'hui, (Paris: 1901): first published 1892, p. 390; Eleni Bastea, Nineteenthcentury
travellers in Greek lands: politics, prejudice and poetry in Arcadia, Dialogos, Hellenic Studies Review,
1997, p. 57.
64
this objective, they constructed geographical spaces of ancient Greece and Macedonia as a
“cradle of the European civilisation” and accordingly, no place for the “Turks,” who did not
belong to Europe. In order to “chase the Turks out of Europe once and for all,” one part of the
European “enlightened” elite produced the knowledge about Macedonia and Orient by using
the power of imagination. Thus, they contributed to the development of geography as a
discipline, drew maps and cartographies, and politically called upon an intervention in
Ottoman Macedonia in order to restore the “cradle of the European civilisation.”254
1.1.EUROPEAN INTERVENTION(S) IN OTTOMAN GREECE
In recent decades historians of international law have started to research the imperial context
of their discipline and studied how international law was fashioned in such a way as to serve
the interests of the Great Powers. According to James Tully, “European constitutional states,
as state empires, developed within a global system of imperial and colonial law from the
beginning.”255 The global 18th and 19th centuries presented the colonial domination in the
form of a “global liberal constitutional moment.”256 In the view of Achille Mbembe, “in
modern philosophical thought and European political practice and imaginary, the colony
represents the site where sovereignty consists fundamentally in the exercise of a power
outside the law.”257 The Great Powers undoubtedly served as a vehicle for the imposition of
“liberal” ideas in order to project colonial domination. This was the reason for Slavoj Žižek to
define Western policy as a form of “cultural imperialism.” Žižek and postcolonial theorists
see human rights and European law issues as feeble excuses for imperialist intervention.258
Furthermore, Gustavo Gozzi emphasises that the European powers constructed the conceptual
paradigm of the 19th century, revealing the character of hegemonic technique that hides
partisan interests in the form of universal concepts, such as ‘humanity’ (umanita), ‘human
rights’ (diritti umani), and ‘responsibility to protect’ (responsabilità di proteggere).259 These
developments appeared in Hugo Grotius’s work De Jure Belli ac Pacis, making the argument
254 Alexis Heraclides, The Macedonian Question and the Macedonians: A History, (London: Routledge Histories
of Central and Eastern Europe, 2021). p. 216.
255 James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, volume 2: Imperialism and Civic Freedom (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 200.
256Christopher Alan Bayly, Rammohan Roy and the Advent of Constitutional Liberalism in India, 1800–30',
Modern Intellectual History 4 (2007), 25–41; Nasser Hussain, The Jurisprudence of Emergency: Colonialism
and the Rule of Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).
257Achille Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’, trans. Libby Meintjes, Public Culture, 15(1), 2003, pp. 23
258 Ian Almond, Anti Capitalist Objections to the Postcolonial on Zizek and History, Ariel: a review of
international english literature, Vol. 43 No. 1, 2012, pp. 4
259Gustavo Gozzi, Umano, non umano. Interventoumanitario, colonialismo, «primavera arabe», (Bologna: Il
Mulino, 2015).
65
that legitimised the Western colonial expansion program (legittimavano l’espansione colonial
occidentale) through the denied/negated rights (ius denegatum) of ‘others’ who were not
Europeans. Hugo Grotius’s concept of denied/negated right was in opposition to the right of a
humanitarian society (ius humane societatis) to be involved in the affairs of another state.260
In this respect, the Westphalian order was nothing else than an “imperial system of hegemonic
and subaltern states.”261 The Ottoman Empire was part of the subaltern states, situated outside
the European civilisation, whereby it became a space for cartographic, geographic, and spatial
research. On the other hand, Paschalis Kitromilides argues that a superior European
civilisation was constructed in order to grant legitimacy to interventions.262 This represents
one of John Stuart Mill’s arguments in the essay ”A Few Words on Non-Intervention” (1859)
to justify the intervention and imperialism towards the barbarian people of Algeria and India,
declaring that “a civilized government cannot help having barbarous neighbors” and that “the
intervention recommended would really give them freedom.”263 Possibly the first historical
example of such an intervention in the internal affairs of another state/country on the grounds
of humanitarian concern took place during the Greek War of Independence in the early 19th
century, when Great Powers such as Imperial Russia, Great Britain and France intervened in
Navarino (1827) to secure independence from the Ottoman Empire on behalf of the Greeks.264
The legitimating action of this humanitarian intervention was manifestly justified through
‘international’ law that ensured the rights of civilised people, like Christians and Westerns (il
diritto dei popoli civili, cristiani, occidental), to intervene. Especially at the beginning of the
19th century these “humanitarian practices” were associated with religious and political
programs. David Rodogno’s initial assumptions are that these coercive interventions “on
grounds of humanity” took place on behalf of Ottoman Christian populations.265 Europeans
intervened militarily when the “barbarous” Ottomans used the same “savage” methods to
repress insurrections of the Christians that the Europeans were systematically using in their
own colonies. These humanitarian interventions undertaken by European governments can be
260Gustavo Gozzi, Diritti e Civilta: Storia e filosofia del diritto internazionale, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), p. 2.
261 Tully, op.cit. pp. 140
262 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), p.
16; In his words “for the first time in the history of European civilization, a sharply self-conscious and
committed intelligentsia, with an intense awareness of its social and intellectual role, developed across cultures
and state boundaries acting as the evangelists of a cosmopolitan outlook of shared human values.”
263John S. Mill, A Few Words On Non-Intervention, Foreign Policy Perspectives No. 8, Libertarian Alliance,
London, pp.4-6; This essay first appeared in Fraser’s Magazine in 1859.
264Gustavo Gozzi, op. cit. 2010
265 Davide Rodogno, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, (Princeton /
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 15.
66
considered “on the same basic assumptions of imperialism.”266 In Gustavo Gozzi’s views, in
the second half of 19th century, the Western powers tried to form an international law as the
expression of a “global society” (società globale), in order to force the Ottoman Empire,
China, and Japan to accept the regional legal system that was implemented in Europe. This
system of Western domination and superiority has been in place ever since.267 According to
David Rodogno, “it was the presumption of superiority of the European civilization that,
throughout the 19th century, shaped interventions against massacre in the Ottoman Empire”
where the “theories of progress became more triumphalist, less tolerant of cultural differences
and more specifically national.”268 Therefore, I argue that, as the beliefs of superiority and
progress as the promises of modernity emerged from the new understanding of the ‘horizon of
expectation,’ they evoked a “civilizational confidence” that was manifested in the form of
intervention - to liberate Ottoman Christians and give them freedom - and civilizing mission -
to expel the savage Ottomans from the cradle of European civilisation situated in Greece,
Macedonia, Epirus, and Illyria. It is not a coincidence that during the Enlightenment period
the understanding that ancient Greece was source of “Western Civilization” was established,
and to the contrary, the “Ottoman civilization was fatalistic and stagnant, voiceless, feminine,
irrational, despotic, backward, and lacking in European moral character or a fully developed
concept of the state.”269 Especially since the Congress of Vienna (1815), European political
leaders’ supported these discourses against the Ottoman Empire, and they started to define
them as the Eastern Question. In European history of diplomacy, the Eastern Question was
related to the strategic competitions and interventions of the Great Powers in the Ottoman
Empire. These interventions were developed according to the “universal values” that
Europeans can interfere in the politics of “barbarous/barbarian” Ottomans. By interfering and
intervening on behalf of the Christian population in the Ottoman Empire, the enlightened
European intelligentsia started to also imagine this place as a source of the European
civilisation or better-known at that time as the “cradle of Civilisation.” There were
widespread calls among some Europeans to make an intervention into their cradle of
Civilisation, in order to halt Ottoman atrocities. Some, such as the British poet Byron,
volunteered to fight on the side of Greece. The imagination of ancient Greece as a cradle of
European civilisation aroused an interest in Greece, but also in geography as a discipline,
266 Ibid, p. 17.
267Gustavo Gozzi, op.cit., 2010, p. 6.
268 Davide Rodogno, op.cit. 2011. p. 12.
269 David Rodogno, op.cit. 2011, p. 37.
67
which became a curricular requirement for the educated classes.270 Due to this connection and
imagination, the Greeks were the ‘chosen ones’ by Europeans, who had a duty to help the
Greeks through the interventions.
Map 1: The Ottoman Balkans around 1815271
This intervention began on 6 March 1821, when a Russian general of Greek origin and the
leader of the Society of Friends (Filiki Eteria), Alexander Ypsilantis, crossed the Pruth River
270 Jeremy Black, Maps and History, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 30.; These processes of
domination and imagination began by the late 18th and early 19th century, when there was a gradual shift of
travellers’, adventurers’, and geographers’ interests in imagination and exploration. In John Kirkland Wright’s
words, “what distinguishes the true geographer from the true chemist or the true dentist would seem to be the
possession of an imagination.’’ Daniel Gade concludes that “geography is curiosity about places,’’ but according
to John Wright “curiosity is a product of the imagination.’’ Therefore, Immanuel Kant, in his work
‘Antropology’ (1798) emphasised that “to start talking of the latest news from Turkey’’ we need to consider ‘’the
power of the imagination (Einbildungskraft).’’ The following thinkers: Johann Gottfried von Herder, Wolfgang
Goethe, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Wilhelm von Humboldt advocated in a romantic spirit that human
understanding (Verstand) is more than reason (Vernunft). On the one hand, the Enlightenment contributed to the
construction of an imagined superior Europe flourishing in progress, cosmopolitanism, prosperity of reason
(Vernunft), while on the other, the romantic sensibility helped to develop the new understanding/meaning
(Verstand) of geography, regions and borders, defining them according to their/Europe’s own interests
represented through the power of the imagination (Einbildungskraft). See: John K. Wright, Terrae Incognitae:
The Place of Imagination, Geography Annals of the Association of American Geographers 37, 1947, pp. 4-6;
Daniel W Gade, Curiosity, Inquiry, and the Geographical Imagination, (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), p. 66;
John K. Wright, op.cit. pp. 2; Ian Almond, History of Islam in German Thought From Leibniz to Nietzsche,
(London: Routledge Studies in Cultural History, 2009), p. 29;
271 Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements (1806-1914), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), p. 25.
68
and “invited the Christians in the Ottoman Empire to throw off the sultan’s yoke.”272 In
addition, he addressed a request to the Russian Tsar Alexander I to help Orthodox
coreligionists in the fight against the Ottomans. After Easter Sunday 1821, when the Sublime
Porte publicly hanged Patriarch Gregory V, which symbolised the Ottoman suppression of
Orthodox Christians, the Russian minister of foreign affairs (minister inostrannih del) Ioannis
Kapodistrias, who was also of Greek origin, became increasingly active in support of Greek
independence. However, he could not convince the Tsar to grant him this support, since
Alexander I’s project of Holy Alliance restricted ideas of liberalism and nationalism in order
not to be shaken by riots that threatened its conservative monarchy regimes. Despite this, the
religious affiliation, the cooperation between Russia and the Ottoman Greek leading elite in
Moldova and Wallachia, the presence of Greek merchants in Odessa, Russian Empress
Catharina’s Greek project (1774) of conquest of Constantinople etc. strengthened the ties
between Russia and the Greeks, which led to closer personal relations and family ties through
marriages among them. On the other hand, the British Foreign Secretary Castlereagh
sympathised with the Greek cause too, but regarded the Greeks in the same way as Russia, as
insurrectionists against a political order that was associated with the Concert of Europe.273 It
seems that at the beginning the Greek War of Independence did not receive great support from
the Great Powers. More precisely, solely philhellenes were directly involved in keeping the
Greek Question alive in Europe. They were a diverse group of travellers, adventurers, and a
handful of policy-makers, and they established the London Philhellenic Committee (1823),
supported by John Bowring, Lord Byron, Shelley, George Canning, David Urquhart, Robert
Walsh and others. These philhellenes became “the locus for opposition to the politics of the
Holy Alliance in support of liberty.”274 Similarly, French philhellenes such as Chateaubriand,
La Fayette, Sebastiani, de Broglie, Laffitte, founded the Societe Philanthropique en Faveur
des Grecs (1825). One of their friends, painter Eugene Delacroix, painted in 1826 “La Grèce
sur les ruines de Missolonghi.“ This painting portrayed the Greece awaiting the fate in
resignation or despair, which should awaken and influence the Europeans to protect their
‘cradle of Civilisation.’275
272Miroslav Sediy, Metternich, the Great Powers and the Eastern Question, Typos, (Pilsen, University of West
Bohemia, 2013), p. 59, David Brewer, The Greek War of Independence: The Struggle for Freedom from
Ottoman Oppression and the Birth of the Modern Greek Nation, (New York: Woodstock, 2003), p. 53.
273Theophilus C. Prousis, British Embassy Reports on the Greek Uprising in 1821-1822: War of Independence or
War of Religion?, History Faculty Publications. 21, 2011, pp. 182
274Rodogno, op.cit. pp. 72
275Nina M. Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, French Images from the Greek War of Independence (1821-1830): Art and
Politics under the Restoration, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 73.
69
Philhellenism has been defined as “an international movement of protest in which
nationalism, religion, radicalism and commercial greed all played a part, as well as romantic
sentiment and pure heroism.”276 All of them were trying to convince state elites to take action
for the benefit of the Greeks. David Rodogno demonstrated how “this tiny group of people
proved to be so influential” that they “put forward the question of Ottoman sovereignty over
Greek lands.”277 One of these philhellenes, François-René de Chateaubriand, wrote about
“civilised” Christian Greeks who were under the yoke of “barbarity and Mahometanism” and
needed European help. In his book Note sur la Grece (1825), he justified intervention by
arguing that the Greeks, as Christians (comme les peoples chretiens), were usurped by the
Turks, who did not acknowledge European laws (ne reconnoit point le droit politique de
l’Europe), but were adhered to their Asiatic customs of government (se gouverned’apres le
code des peoples de l’Asie).278 Since they ruled according to Asiatic customs, which were not
part of Europe and Christianity, the Ottoman Empire’s sovereignty was not applicable to its
Christian provinces. Another prominent figure was Edward Blaquiere, who wrote “Greece
and Its Claims” (1826) and “Letters from Greece: With Remarks on the Treaty of
Intervention” (1828). He argued that Europe should advocate for “the fate of our Christian
brethren of the East” against “the fiery zeal and bigoted enthusiasm of the followers of
Islam.”279 These arguments were based on his “Report on the Present State of the Greek
Confederation and on Its Claims to the Support of the Christian World” (1823), which
emphasised the “illegitimacy of Ottoman rule over Greece.”280 According to Blaquiere it was
necessary “to make another appeal to the British public (…) addressed to the religious
communities generally. These are bound by every tie, both as Christians and as man, to
succour the Greeks and contribute towards their speedy restoration to the bosom of the
European family, as well as to the blessings of an extended civilization.”281 It was necessary
to contribute to the intervention for “the cause of civilization and Christianity” against the
Ottomans as a symbol of “barbarism, vice and ignorance.”282 Therefore, in Theophilus C.
Prousis’ words, “the Greek struggle represented a strange mix of traditional and modern
elements: religious ardor and confessional identity interacted with secular notions of liberty
276Maria Todorova, op.cit. p. 70.
277Rodogno, op.cit. pp. 72-73.
278François-René de Chateaubriand, Note sur la Grece, (Paris, 1825), p. 20.
279 Edward Blaquière, Greece and Her Claims, (London: G.B. Whittaker, 1826), p. iii
280Rodogno, op.cit. p. 74.
281Edward Blaquière, ’Report on the Present State of the Greek Confederation, and on Its Claims to the Support
of the Christian World, (London: G.B. Whittaker, 1823), p. 18.
282Ibid. pp. 20
70
and nationality.”283 The books from this period demonstrate how Europe as “civilized” should
undertake a modern crusade (intervention) against “barbarians,” in order to rescue their cradle
(Greece). However, this intervention could not happen without Russian involvement since it
was the protector of Ottoman Orthodox subjects.
After years of negotiation, the Great Powers finally decided to intervene in the war on the side
of the Greeks. The battle of Navarino (20 October 1827) became the turning point and
symbolic triumph of “civilisation” against ”barbarity.” These historical events in Greece and
the triumph of Europe were reasons to postpone David Urquhart’s return to England.284 He
travelled to Greece in 1827 in order to champion the Greek cause in the war of independence
there, which would (later) be one of the reasons for his appointment to Sir Stratford Canning’s
mission to Constantinople. In his book “The Spirit of the East“ (1838), he wrote: “[I]t is only
necessary to cast a glance on the map of Greece, to appreciate the value of this arm of the sea
(…) inspired her (Greece) with fresh hopes, and called forth the renewed energy of her
sons.” 285 For an Irish historian and writer, Robert Walsh, analysing the situation from
Istanbul, he reported that “Constantinople was immersed in darkness and ferocity”, while the
“destiny of Greece [was] fixed.” According to him the destiny of the Ottoman Empire
“remain[ed] in the womb of time – whether, enlightened by literature and civilization which
ha[d] dawned on it, it [would] finally adopt the religion and free institutions of the West, and
so became a member of the great European family; or, falling under the power of a neighbor,
it [would] merge into a province of a state half Asiatic, add other millions to the slaves
already in bondage, and improvement end in engrafting European vices on Oriental
ignorance.”286
1.2. IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES AND CARTOGRAPHY
These European interventions popularised the Ottoman space among educated Europeans. By
intervening in Ottoman Greece, it aroused interest among many travellers and adventurers to
explore other parts of the Ottoman Empire (i.e. Macedonia), since this region was for them an
uncharted territory – terrae incognitae. In the opinion of Viscountess Emily Anne Beaufort
Smythe Strangford, who visited Ottoman Rumelia, “the geography of the country, for one
283Theophilus C. Prousis, British Embassy Reports on the Greek Uprising in 1821-1822: War of Religion?
History Faculty Publications. Vol 21. 2011, p. 173.
284David Urquhart, The Spirit of the East, (London: H. Colburn, 1838), p. 4.
285Ibid., pp. 21-22
286Robert Walsh, A Residence at Constantinople: During a Period Including the Greek and Turkish Revolution,
(London: Westley & Davis, 1836), p. 486.
71
thing, [was] very little known, as regard[ed] much of European Turkey.” 287 She even
compared some regions in Ottoman Albania with “the Hoti and the Clementi, to Shalla and
Pouka, and the subjects of Prince Bib - tribes of good Catholics who [were] more unknown to
[them] than the Waganda and the Wagogo of Equatorial Africa.”288 This was also Vuk
Karadzic’s criticism to the French colonel, Vialla de Sommieres, who visited Montenegro in
1813 and stated that “the Montenegrin language [was] the dialect of the Greek.”289 According
to Vuk Karadzic “surely they were of that opinion since some French diplomats (as
Dominique Dufour de Pradt), were dividing the Ottoman Empire and Greek border to the
Danube. They could not have held these ideas if they had already known that between Greece
and the Danube live[d] a people more numerous than the Greeks, and which from them
obviously differ[ed] not only in language, origin, and character, but also in ethnic hatred and
contempt.”290 Also, this was one of the reasons for Leon Hugonnet to publish a book on the
“unknown Turkey,” which included Macedonia, and was titled La Turquie inconnue:
Roumanie, Bulgarie, Macedoine, Albanie (1886). It seems that during the 19th century the
Ottoman space was subject to the discovery and imagination of the Europeans. As Jeremy
Black concludes, “in European eyes, non-European lands could appear empty, non-European
societies unsophisticated” and thus, there was a necessity for “inventing territories according
to their interests.”291
In order to understand these parts of “non-European lands,, geography was recognised as a
discrete academic discipline, and became part of a typical university curriculum in Europe
(especially Paris and Berlin). In Edward Said’s understanding, this discipline became
important for making “projections - imaginative, cartographic, military, economic, historical,
or in a general sense cultural. It also [made] possible the construction of various kinds of
knowledge, all of them in one way or another dependent upon the perceived character and
destiny of a particular geography.”292 With this aim, multiple geographical societies were
established around Europe, such as: the Société de Géographie in 1821, Die Gesellschaft für
287Viscountess Emily Anne Beaufort Smythe Strangford, The Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1863: With a
Visit to Montenegro, (New York: Palala Press, 2015), p. 305.
288Ibid., p. 202.
289Vialla de Sommieres, Voyage Historique et Politique au Montenegro, (Paris: Alexis Eymery Libraire, 1820)
290Vuk Kradzic, Montenegro und die Montenegriner: Ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss der europäischen Türkei und des
serbischen Volkes (Stuttgart: Verlag der J. G. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung, 1837), translation: Crnogorci,
(Beograd: Nolit, 1972)
291 Jeremy Black, op.cit. 1997, p. 134.
292 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (Lecture), (Toronto: York University, February 10, 1993); See
collection of his essays in ‘’Culture and Imperialism’’, (New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random
House, Inc. 1994), p. 78.
72
Erdkunde in 1828 and the Royal Geographical Society in 1830. At the same time there were
established the Russian Geographical Society in 1845, American Geographical Society in
1851, and the National Geographic Society in 1888. 293 This European “science” and
“universalism” based on the power of imagination and “law of intervention” produced
knowledge, maps, and museums in order to serve the politics of imperialism.294 By default,
the Ottoman space was turned into “an imaginary waiting room of history.”295 According to
Zygmunt Bauman, “whoever traveled faster could claim more territory – and, having done
that, could control it, map it and supervise it.”296 In constructing itself as superior, the imperial
force or colonising agent was able to justify its actions in the form of interventions against the
“Other.”297 This construction of a space and a discursive “Other” occurred through an array of
images, myths, texts, maps etc. Foucault asserts that knowledge is always related to power,
thus, these imagined geographies constructed by “knowledge” could be seen as a tool of
European power to subordinate the Ottomans. In this sense, I take on board Count Hermann
Keyserling’s claim that “if Macedonia (the Balkans) had not existed, they would have been
invented”,298 since this part of the Ottoman Empire served as a canvas onto which to project
European preoccupations. In what follow, I will further delineate how this geographic
appellation known as Macedonia was transformed into a widespread pejorative “Macedonian
salad” - a symbol of inter-ethnical conflict.
293Susan Schulten, The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950, (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2001), p. 5.
294 Ibid, pp. 174
295Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, (New York:
Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 8.
296 Zygmund Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 110-112.
297Joanne Sharp, Geographies of Postcolonialism: Ch. 1, Imagining the World (London: SAGE Publications Ltd,
2009); Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History, (Berkley: University of
California Press, 2005), p. 4; See also: Derek Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (New Jersey: Blackwell,
1994) and Derek Gregory, Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror, and Political Violence (London: Routledge,
2006). In this respect Gregory developts an argument that the “War on Terror” represents a continuum of
imagined geographies that Edward Said already discussed. Accordingly, the Islamic world and Muslims are is
uncivilised or barbarian, also labelled as backward and failing. Such examples are seen as a result of the military
intervention that were realised in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent period. Furthermore, it reflects how the popular
discourses found in the media and in political circles indicate a continued Orientalism and colonialism.
298 Count Hermann Keyserling, Europe (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1928)
73
1.2.1. INVENTING THE BALKANS, IMAGINING MACEDONIA
There is no doubt that the Balkans were invented through European imagination. A prime
example is the notion of the Balkan Peninsula, which has no geographical base that the
mountain Balkan was spreading over whole Peninsula. Firstly, German naturalist Johann
August Zeune coined this term in his work Gea: Versuch ein erwissenschaftlichen
Erdbeschreibung (1808) using the term “Balkan Halbeiland” (“Balkan Peninsula”). 299
Referring to the relief of this part of Europe, Zeune imagined and wrongly concluded that the
“Balkan mountains (Stara Planina) or the former Albanus, Scardus, Haemus, which, to the
northwest, joins the Alps in the small Istrian peninsula” and stretches from the Adriatic to the
Black Sea and is the central mountain range that divides the European mainland from its subcontinent.
300 Thus, it was due to the mistake of a geographer that the name “Balkan” was
circulated throughout the whole of South-Eastern Europe.301 However, the term “Balkan
Peninsula” was soon challenged by Austrian geographer and geologist Ami Boue.302 In 1864
the Austrian Consul in Ottoman Janina, who was one of the founders of Albanian studies,
Johann Georg von Hahn, used the term “South Eastern European peninsula” (Südostereuropäische
Peninsula) for the same region, while he was defining the European
territories under Ottoman rule (south of the Sava and Danube rivers). The European interest in
classical antiquity and the intensification of the activities of Ottoman Christians for their
political sovereignty contributed to the attempts of the European imagination to define this
region according to respective European interests and to view the Balkans as an ambiguous
region, potentially civilised but still under barbarous Ottoman influence. Thus, the
geographical discovery in Europe went hand in hand with the invention of the Balkans, which
until the Congress of Berlin (1878), was called by different names: ”Hellenic peninsula,”
“Greek peninsula,” “Illyrian peninsula,” even “Macedonia,” “Rumelia,” “European Turkey,”
“Turkey-in-Europe,” “European Levant,” “South Eastern European peninsula,” etc.
Therefore, the Balkans’ geographical position in Europe did not allow for it to be regarded as
(part of) the Orient. However, a French geographer André Blanc has correctly noted that the
term “Balkan” rather denotes a problem (especially after 1913), than a region.
299 August Zeune, Gea: Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Erdbeschreibung, Blindenanstalt, Doct. der
Weltweisheit, Mitglied der Jenaischen mineralogischen Gesellschaft. Nebst zwey Karten. (Berlin: bey Wittich,
1808). p. 8.
300 Velimir Veljko Rogic, op.cit. 1972, p. 284.
301Mirela Slukan Altic, Hrvatska Kao Zapadni Balkan – Geografska Stvarnost Ili Nametnuti Identitet?,Drus.
Istraz. Zagreb 20 (2011), Br. 2 (112), pp. 401-413.
302 Ami Boue, La Turquie d'Europe ou observations sur la ge'ographie, la geologie, l'histoire naturelle, la
statistique, les moeurs, les coutumes, l'archeeologie, I'agriculture, I'industrie, le commerce, les gouvernements
divers, le clerge, l'histoire et l'etat politique de cet empire (Paris: Arthus Bartrand, 1840).
74
As I have argued before, the Balkans were not physically colonised, but were influenced by
European colonial ideas defining this process as “colonisation of the mind.” In this respect,
Maria Todorova considers that the Balkan is a place where “its Christianity (Civilization)
opposed it to Islam (Barbarism) and fed the crusading potential of western Christendom.”303
In this respect, due to its majority of Christian elements, the Balkans had the potential to
“join” Civilization. Especially after the Congress of Berlin (1878), some countries
(Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania) liberated them (the Balkan region) from the “barbarous”
Ottoman yoke, which gave them more space to imagine themselves as part of Civilization.
Hence, influenced by the European imagination, power-knowledge relations and their ability
to construct, map, and name, the Balkan states automatically trasnferred into the question
such names as “Turkey in Europe” or “European Turkey.” It was necessary for them to find a
new geographical determinant that would cover the same part of Europe. A prominent role in
this proces played the famous Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijic (1865 - 1927), who published
La Peninsula Balcanique (1918) in Paris, in the year when the creation of the Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) was decided on. The revitalisation of the name
“Balkan Peninsula” was important for the demonstration of a homogeneous geographical
region of South Slavic unity. What is more, Cvijic even shifted the borders of the Balkans
towards the Alps to include Slovenia too.304 Thus, the notion of the Balkan Peninsula became
solidified with the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, whereby it had more of a political
than geographical connotation. In this manner the Balkans were invented, that is, using its
name and borders to best serve the states’ interests.
Macedonia became a region inside the not-well-defined and wrongly depicted Balkan
Peninsula. The increase of interest in Macedonia arrived with the Greek war of independence,
since “the resurrection of Greece [was] considered the original front of Western culture,”
which was “connected with new spiritual, political or cultural revival.”305 The Greek war of
Independence provided an opportunity to explore and imagine new areas of Turkey in Europe
or the Balkan Peninsula. For, the French explorer, diplomat, and historian, Francois
Pouqeville, who published his Travels in Epirus, Albania, Macedonia, and Thessaly (1820)
just one year before the Greek events, “” emphasised that “before us, and to the right, lay
several villages, inhabited by Christian and Mahometan Bardariotes, noted for being the
303 Maria Todorova, Balkans: From Discovery to Invention, Slavic Review, 53 Summer, 1994, p. 455.
304 Jovan Cvijic, La Péninsule balkanique: géographie humaine, (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1918).
305David Roessel, Byron's Shadow: Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002), p. 5.
75
mildest and the most hospitable of all the country-people of Macedonia.”306 In his imagination
religious distinction was more important surpassed ethnical. Even the advice of his friend,
who was his dragoman, contained more religious than ethnical connotations. Thus,
Pouqeville’s dragoman recommended: “[M]ake the best use you can, and quickly too, of this
indulgence: but remember; be on your guard against the Turks (Muslims),” stressing that “the
Turks [had] no conception of your sciences and knowledge.”307 This notion of Western
knowledge against the barbarous Ottomans gained importance during the Greek war of
independence. Many travellers started to explore their “cradle” of civilisation – Greece. With
this eruption of exploratory travel, Pouqeville became one of the most prominent philhellenes,
informing Europe about events in Greece through his five-volume Voyage en Grèce (Paris,
1820–1822), which reached 20 editions by 1826–1827. Another prominent French figure was
G. A. Mano, who became inspired by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-
Vincentand and his well-known research “Resume de la géographie de la Peninsule Iberique“
(1826), and (similarly) decided to carry out a detailed analysis of these historic events in
Greece and other parts of Turkey in Europe in his book “Résumé géographique de la Grèce et
de la Turquie d'Europe“ (1826). Beside Greece, he described Macedonia as one of most
fertile provinces of Turkey in Europe and as the second province of Rumelia (first was
Thrace), divided in three parts. Accordingly, the first part included Peonie and Dardania
(Kosovo), or Illyrian Macedonia (Macedoine illyrienne), bordered to the north by Servia and a
part of Bosnia; while the second part bordred Bulgaria and Thrace to the east; and the third
part spread to the Archipelago and Thessaly, and to the west to Albania.308 He included the
following sanjaks as parts of Macedonia: Pristina, Uscup, Qustendil, Seres, Thessaloniki,
Monastir, and Ochrida.309 He emphasised that the “Kingdom of Macedonia originated as a
Greek colony” and that this territory belonged to Hellenes since the time ofAlexander the
Great. 310 According to Esprit Marie Cousinéry, “view of Alexander as divine [was]
widespread among the Greeks (repanduparmi les Grecs),”311 but unfortunately this “glorious
Macedonia” became “humiliated by the Bulgarians and debased under Ottoman reign.”312
306 Francois Pouqeville, Travels in Epirus, Albania, Macedonia, and Thessaly, (London: Printed for Sir Richard
Phillips and Co, 1820), p. 81.
307 Ibid., p. 84.
308 G. A. Mano, Résumé géographique de la Grèce et de la Turquie d'Europe (Paris: 1826), pp. 515-516; See
quote: “estl’une de plus fertile provinces de la Turquie d’Europe.”
309 Ibid., pp. 515-551.
310Ibid., pp. 238-244.
311 Esprit Marie Cousinéry, Pierre Langlumé, Voyage dans la Macédoine: contenant des recherché sur l'histoire
la géographie et les antiquités de ce pays, Bände 1-2 (Paris: 1831), p. 257 ,See quote: “La royaume de
macedoine avaiteu pour origine un ecolonie grecque.”
312Ibid., p. 11; “si humiliee sous les Bulgares, et enfinsiavilie sous le fer ottoman.”
76
This imagination of Macedonia as humiliated and debased evoked among the Europeans to
reformulate their interest and to establish mission civilisatrice against Ottoman barbarity. As
an illustration of the latter, Cousinery wrote: “I did not let escape this opportunity to revisit
some of the provinces (of Macedonia) that I had already explored, and I thought I should try a
description that has always seemed to inspire great interest.”313
Many travellers, adventurers, and diplomats started to imagine and define Macedonia in
different ways, mostly in alignment with their sympathies and governments’ interests. As we
saw in G.A. Mano’s examples, in the territory of Macedonia he included the territories of
today’s Kosovo and Serbia as part of Macedoine illyrienne. These geographical parts he
joined with northern Albania, “which leads to the bank of the Drino, a little above Alessio
(Lezha).” The French traveller, Francois Pouqueville, named it “Macedonian Illyricum.”314
For Edmund Spencer, a prolific British traveller and writer of the mid-19th century, the city of
Prizren or “the ancient Priscopera, [which was] supposed to have been founded by Philip of
Macedonia.“315 Still, it was placed in today’s territory of Kosovo, which Spencer named
“Upper Albania,” while the first city in Macedonia he termed Kalkandelen.316 The continuous
ascent and descent of the mountain ridges, with their impenetrable forests, jutting rocks, and
deep defiles form a natural boundary between Macedonia and Albania as “the most execrable
and dangerous for the traveler in European Turkey.”317 On the other hand, August Griesebach,
a German botanist and geographer, asserts that “Macedonia and Albania were on the border,”
but he recognises that sometimes they comprised “one overlapped Prefecture, while at others
they had an “opposite dividing line from the West to the East.”318 Jean-Henri-Abdolonyme
Ubicini, who was a French historian, journalist, and honorary member of the Romanian
Academy, described “the eyelets of Yania (Epirus) and of Selanik (Salonica)” that
313 Ibid, p. 5; “paru propre a inspirer un grand interet.”
314 F. Puqeville, op.cit. p. 29.
315 Edmund Spencer, Travels In European Turkey, In 1850 Through Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, Macedonia,
Thrace, Albania, And Epirus; With A Visit To Greece And The Ionian Isles. A Homeward Tour Through
Hungary And The Slavonian Provinces Of Austria On The Lower Danube. Vol. II, (London: Colburn and Co.,
Publisher, 1851), p. 11.
316 Edmund Spencer, p. 20.
317 Ibid., p. 65.
318 August Griesebach, Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa im Jahre 1839, Band 1, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
und Ruprecht, 1841), p. 369; „Macedonien und Albanien in der Umgrenzung (…) der neue gebildeten
Präfecturen zusammen ubereintreffen (…) der bisherigen entgegengesetzten Theilungslinie von Wessten nach
Osten.“
77
“compromise[d] the ancient Epirus and Macedonia,” while “the eyelets of Uskup and
Roumelia [were] formed from Albania.”319
One of the first significant examples of not only defining the Macedonian borders, but also of
including an ethnographic map of imagined Macedonia was the research of the Austrian
geologist Ami Boué, who was educated in Paris and Geneva (1840). His book, La Turquie
d'Europe ou observations sur la géographie, la géologie (1840), along with its map (which
will be analysed later) changed the perception of the region as “Greek.” For the first time,
Bulgarians were said to constitute a major ethnical population in Macedonia.320 He mapped
Bulgarian residents in almost the whole of Macedonia until Ochrida (leur Bulgarians
residence a Ochri).321 His other work, written in German, Beiträge zur Geographie Serbiens
(1856) for the first time exposes Serbia’s ambitions towards Old Serbia (Kosovo) and
Macedonia: “[N]ew rough maps related to Serbia should imagine Old Serbia and Macedonia
inside (its territories).” 322 This is coterminous with the period when Edmund Spencer’s
“Upper Albania” became imagined as “Old Serbia” (Stara Srbija) and “Macedonia” as “South
Serbia” (Juzna Srbija) among Serbian intelligentsia. In his book Considérations sur l'état
social de la Turquie d'Europe (1842), Louis Auguste Blanqui favours the role of Serbia in
liberation from the “Ottoman yoke.” According to him, “in Europe Turkey offers a serious
obstacle to the fulfilment of their (the Christians’) new destinies.”323 Therefore, the role of
“emancipated Servia (la Servie emancipee)” was to “light the first fires of eastern liberty.”
This is the place where “Christianity claimed its first victory, after which were “today’s
population of Bulgaria, Thrace, and Macedonia was born.”324
Viewed from this perspective, “the European policy should focus on inhabitants who are part
of the Greek religion (la religion grecque).”325 In his book Travels in European Turkey
(1851), Edmund Spencer declared that the “consolidation of these provinces (Bosnia, Servia,
Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thrace, Albania, and Epirus), (…) would call into existence several
319Abdolonyme Ubicini, Letters on Turkey: an account of the religious, political, social and commercial
conditions of the Ottoman Empire (London: John Murray, 1856), p. 15.
320Yosmaoglu, op.cit. 2013. p. 91.
321 Ami Boué, La Turquie d'Europe ou observations sur la géographie, la géologie (Paris: Bertrand, 1840), p. 76.
322 Ami Boue, Beiträge zur Geographie Serbiens (Wien: K.-K. Hof-und Staatsdruckerei in Commission bei Karl
Gerold's Sohn, 1856), p. 3; „Diese grobe Skizze sollte nicht nur das jetzige Serbien, sondern auch das alte bis
Macedonien vorstellen.“
323Louis Auguste Blanqui, Considérations sur l'état social de la Turquie d'Europe (Paris: W. Coquebert, 1842),
p. 35; “la Turquie d’Europe offer un serieux obstacle a l’accomplissement de leurs/ chretiens nouvel les
destinees.”
324Ibid, p. 39; “s’allumeront les premiers feux de la liberte orientale (…) le christianisme a remportesa premiere
victoire (…) soupirent aujourd’hui les populationes de la Bulgarie, de la Thrace et de la Macedoine.
325Ibid, p. 42.
78
new Christian States with their energetic inhabitants, and at the same time increase the wealth
and commercial prosperity of civilized Europe.” Indeed, the mission of Europe was to be to
liberate these Christian provinces and to leave “Osmanli… to their Asiatic possessions,”
which “would still leave Turkey a respectable power, and [while they became] more
concentrated and united in the bonds of one common faith and nationality,” The latter would
have left behind “the Turks, [and] their ignorance and self-sufficiency.”326 This idea of the
Balkans without Turks was common among most travellers and geographers in the mid- and
second half of the 19th century. For, the renowned French poet, diplomat, and politician
Alphonse-Marie-Louis de Lamartine, who travelled to the Ottoman Empire and passed
through the Balkans in the early 1830s, in his study “Souvenirs, Impressions, Pensées et
Paysages Pendant un Voyage en Orient“ (1835) wrote: “if this people (in the Balkans),
establish a new Slavic empire (d'un nouvel empire slave) by reunion of Bosnia, parts of
Bulgaria, warrior hordes of Montenegrins (and Serbia) as they desire to, a new state will
appear in Europe risen from the ruins/ashes of Turkey.” This new state should have a
“European protectorate and assistance towards the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire for
leaving Europe and Asia.”327 In order to materialise this romantic fantasy, he advocated
against the Ottomans with the words: “do not help barbarity and Islamism against
civilization.”328 In a similar way, in the work La Serbie: Son Passé et Son Avenir (1862),
Henri Thieres recognises that the “Bosniaks and Bulgarians are of the same race (sont de
meme race) as the Montenegrins and Serbs” and that they “will form a Slavic empire that
Europe will allow to exist.”329
1.2.2. MAPPING MACEDONIA
As I have argued above, the regions are socially constructed and imagined territories. The
social construction of territories/regions, their mapping and imagination mean that boundaries
are shaped by the collective perception of identities and meanings.330 Since we consider that
territories and regions are constructed and invented, their names and meanings are different
too, relative to the historical context. Therefore, the meaning of the term “Macedonia” was
not the same in what period as today, and it was frequently modified by changeable dynamics.
326 Edmund Spencer, op.cit. p. 453.
327 Alphonse-Marie-Louis de Lamartine, Souvenirs, Impressions, Pensées et Paysages Pendant un Voyage en
Orient, 3-4, (Paris, 1835), pp. 8-9; “l'Europe verra un nouvel Etat surgir des ruines de la Turquie (…) la
disparation de l'empire ottoman va laisser en Europe comme en Asie.”
328 Ibid, pp. 289; “ne vous faites pas les auxiliaires de la barbarie et de l’islamisme contre la civilization.”
329Henri Thiers, La Serbie: son passé et son avenir, (Paris: Dramard-Baudry, 1862), pp. viii; “formeront un
empire slave le jour oul’Europe leur permettr a d’exister.”
330Raimo Vayrynen, Regionalism: Old and New, International Studies Review 5 (2003), p. 37.
79
As we have already seen, during the medieval period Macedonia appeared as another name
for the whole Balkans without reference to a precise territory. However, the Enlightenment
made this transition from a medieval understanding to modern, where maps, cartography, and
regions gave meanings to “imagined territories” and politicised the regions. This was often
carried out by “scientific” attempts to define certain regions according to the interests of
politics.331 In fact, there is a close connection between map-making and imperial conquest and
rule, since “maps are used both to assert territorial claims and to settle them.”332 These politics
are central to the production and understanding of maps, because “the maps are a medium”
which “is multifaceted and, as with individual maps, it is possible to offer several analyses of
its purpose and means of operation.”333 In this way, the language of maps and cartography - as
a means of production of knowledge - was constructed in order to shape “spheres of contest”
and “ideologies of colonized terrains.” 334 In the Macedonian context, the medieval
understanding of multiple identities -many Montenegrins or Albanians considered themselves
also as Macedonians - was no longer acceptable. The naming and mapping the regions and
defining their people and races, the legitimacy and the right of belonging was shrunk to
belonging to one nation with a monolithic identity. The construction of “imagined
geographies” was accompanied by a construction of “imagined communities.” In their cycles
the concepts of races, ethnicities, religions, and languages started to be discussed and applied
as if they were primordial. Thus, Jeremy Black considers that these “races are constructed as
much as described, and mapping plays a role in such construction.”335 Therefore, mapping
and cartography played an important role during the nation-building and state-building
processes as well.
In this Chapter I discuss how the nations were imagined and how their boundaries were drawn
across the land. In the Macedonian case, various European intellectuals, together with the
331Ibid., p. 9.
332Ibid., p. 9.
333 Ibid., pp. 168; Also, a British geographer, Brian Harley analyzed maps as essentially documents that
contribute to the discourse of power, and that should be seen in that light. In his understanding maps and
cartography are a form of language which should be deconstructed as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida did.
See: Brian Harley, Deconstructing the Map, Cartographica, v. 26, n. 2 (Spring 1989), pp. 1-20.
334Jeremy Black, op.cit. 1997, pp. 18-19; Jeremy Black wonders “if power is about space, spaces were created
through the exercise of power. Cartography could be seen as central to this process.’’ This perception led Harley
to consider the cartography and mapping traditions as a product/construction of the imperialist powers. In his
eyes, “the sense and naming of place of those who had suffered from imperialism had been appropriated, and
that their understanding of territory and boundaries had been neglected.” It means that the colonized do not have
a right on cartographic understanding, and that this knowledge/power belongs only to the Western map-makers.
This intellectual hierarchy shows non-Western cartography as primitive and uncivilized, in order to serve a
malign purpose.
335 Ibid., p. 48.
80
Balkan intelligentsia, variously perceived, imagined, and mapped these territories and its
population. According to Irena Stefoska, during the 19th century, “the term Macedonia
referred to the geographical region of Macedonia in a supra-national sense (…) including the
territory of today’s Republic of Macedonia, territories in south-western Bulgaria, northern
Greece and small portions of southern Serbia, southern Kosovo and south-eastern Albania.”336
In general, there was no accepted definition of Macedonia. As already have been mentioned
that Macedonia did not form neither a racial, linguistic or political unit, nor was Macedonia a
definite geographical term.337 Almost every state has had its own imagined geographical
boundaries and maps of Macedonia.
However, an ethnic classification in the Ottoman context was introduced in 1821 by member
of the Prussian Army, F. A. O’Etzel, who was interested in ethnographic cartography
depicting the Greeks as the predominant ethnic group in the Balkans.338 It is note-worthy that
this map appeared at the beginning of Greek War of Independence. Therefore, its importance
lies in its political support of the Greek national movement, the revival of Ancient Greece,
and the rise of philhellenism. 339 As we have seen, this interest in neo-classicism and
philhellenism became a hallmark of the Zeitgeist of Europe. For the Bavarian King Ludwig I
and his son, Otto, who later inherited the Greek throne, Greek revolt against Ottoman rule
represented the return of antique Hellenic virtue.340 This change, together with the national
independence movements in Serbia (1801–1830) and Montenegro (1689–1858), increased the
interest of German cartographers in South-Eastern Europe. In the wake of these geopolitical
changes, the Geographical Institute of Weimar published a new map of European Turkey,
made by Carl Ferdinand Weiland, depicting the the new, fixed borders with Greece and
Serbia.341
In the same period, Tyrolean traveller and historian Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer challenged the
knowledge about this region in his Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters
(1830), and stated that the then Greeks had no relations with the ancient Hellenic population.
336Irena Stefoska, Fragments from the Medieval History of Macedonia, in Macedonia: Land, Region, Borderland,
ed. By Jolanta Sujecka, (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2013), p. 69.
337Douglas Dakin, op.cit., p. 3
338H.R. Wilkinson, Maps and Politics – A review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia, (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 1951), p. 11.
339 Ibid., pp. 16-20.
340Damian Valdez, German Philhellenism: The Pathos of the Historical Imagination from Winckelmann to
Goethe, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
341Mirela Slukan Altic, pp. 6-7; Quote: „Das osmanische Europa oder die europaeische Türkey nebst dem
Königreiche Griechenland und den Jonischen Inseln/entworfen und gezeichnet von C. F. Weiland. 1:3,000,000.
Weimar, Geographisches Institut, 1832.“
81
In his second volume from 1836 he added that the Greek War of Independence was a “purely
Shqiptarian (Albanian), and not a Hellenic Revolution (rein schkypitarische, nicht eine
hellenische Revolution).”342
In similar ways, in 1842 W. Müller designed a map where he resurrected Pelasgians in
southern Macedonia, emphasising that “these peoples were not the descendants of ancient
Greeks,” while “Albanians comprised the majority of the inhabitants of the Greek archipelago
(…) and western Macedonia.”343 Moreover, in his 1951 book on maps of Macedonia, Henry
R. Wilkinson notes that Müller had used the term “Pelasgian,” and the notion that he “had
distinguished so many Albanians, Zinzares, and Zigeuner, where O’Etzel had marked only
Greeks, was further proof of a trend for ideas to veer away from the conception of
aHellenistic Balkans.”344 Evidently, by the mid-19th century the fashion of depicting a Greek
majority in the Balkan Peninsula was in decline, while the Slav interpretation gained
momentum. The development of Slavic nationalism by South-Slav-speaking intelligentsia
affected new explorers in the Peninsula. In this regard, it is important to state that Pavel Jozef
Shafarik was the first author who depicted ethnographic maps based on linguistic affinity
(1842).345 This Slovakian philologist, historian, and ethnographer became one of the most
influential Slavists in that time. He wrote the well-known Slovansky narodopis (1842),
translated into English as Slavic Ethnology, where he gave a detailed account of Slavic
nations and their ethnic borders. This study was combined with the ethnographic map
Slovansky Zemevid, which presented all Slavs as one nation, divided into a number of units
(tribes). In the Macedonian context there were two units of Slavs, Serbo-Croats and
Bulgarians, and non-Slavs as Turks, Greeks, Albanians, and Romanians. In this map, the
majority in Macedonia consisted of Slavs of the Bulgarian unit.
342 Jakob Phillip Fallmerayer, Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters, ( Sttutgart: Cotta'sche
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1836), p. 74.
343Wilkinson, op.cit. pp. 21-22; Joseph Müller, Albanien, Rumelien und die österreichisch-montenegrische
Grenze. Nebst einer Karte von Albanien. Mit einer Vorrede von Dr. P. J. Safarik (Prague, 1844)
344 Ibid., p. 22.
345 Ibid., p. 33.
82
Map 2: Pavel Jozef Shafarik’s Slovansky Zemevid346
A similar portrayal was provided by Ami Boue, the above-mentioned Austrian geologist and
traveller who lived in Paris and wrote La Turquie d’Europe, (1840), which depicted different
races in Macedonia and was published in the form of a map in Berghaus’s atlas of 1847.347 He
was the first European traveller who presented a majority Slavic population (Bulgarians)
living in Macedonia. Boue’s map displays (striking) similarities with Shafarik’s, yet my
archival research did not yield records that would evidence an exchange of ideas between
them. However, there is an extant, detailed analysis of Boue’s conclusions, done by French
traveller Albert Montemont in the “Bulletin de la Société de géographie“ (1844), the Bulletin
of the world’s oldest geographical society. Montemont concludes that “Bulgarians occupied
(…) the majority in Macedonia,”348 while “Albanians were spread towards the Bulgarians
along the Macedonian frontiers/borders.”349 He points out that “all of the Orientals (referring
to people living in Eastern Europe) have a more or less vivid imagination.”350 Accordingly,
this “vivid imagination” among Balkan populations appeared when they had already accepted
the “colonisation of the mind,” and the implementation of “surrogate hegemony,” as I will
argue later. Furthermore, these European travellers and scientists increased their exploration
of the Turkish regions/territories in Europe so as to further their interests in subordinating the
region and establishing hegemony. To this end, the French ethnographer and geographer
Guillaume Lejean travelled twice to European Turkey (1857-1858 and 1867-1869), of which
346 Dimitri Rizoff, op.cit., 1917, p. 24.
347 Ibid., p. 36.
348 Albert Montemont, in Bulletin de la Société de géographie Société de géographie (Paris, 1844), p. 74;
“Bulgares occupent… le noyau principal de la population de la Macedoine.”
349 Ibid., p. 75; “les Albanais s’associent encore aux Bulgares, vers la frontiere macedonienne.”
350 Ibid., p. 82; “tous les Orientaux ont une imagination plus ou moins vive.”
83
the second time in the capacity of the French Vice-Consul. He was appointed to prepare a
detailed analysis of Turkey in Europe on behalf of the French imperial government.
Consequently he wrote “Ethnographie de la Turquie d'Europe“ (1861), published in the
German and French languages by the then famous German publisher Justus Perthes.
According to Lejean, nearly all of Macedonia (with the exception of Salonica and a part of the
borderlands in south-east Macedonia), the whole district of Nish, the coastal district of
Dobrudja, and a part of Russian Bessarabia were chiefly Bulgarian territories. In his
depiction, Albanians comprised the majority in Kosovo and northern Macedonia.351 This
demarcation was partly due to the influence of Johann Georg von Hahn, who regarded the
region between Drin and the Vardar as Albanian, and not as Serb or Bulgarian as was
otherwise thought. Hahn was an Austrian diplomat and specialist in Albanian language and
history, known for his work “Albanesische Studien“ (1854). Furthermore, his other volume,
“Reise von Belgrad nach Saloniki“ (1861), featured an ethnographic map as an appendix that
depicted Albanians in the Western part of Macedonia, as well as in Kosovo.
Map 3. Johann Georg von Hahn‘s “Croquis des westlichen Gebietes der Bulgarischen
Morava”352
Worthy of mention are also the works of the British women-travellers Muir-Mackenzie and
Irby, who travelled through a large part of the Balkan Peninsula in the years 1862 and 1863
and published their research in a book titled “The Turks, the Greeks and the Slavons: Travels
351 Guillaume Lejean, Ethnographie de la Turquie d'Europe, (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1861).
352 Dimitri Rizoff. op. cit.
84
in the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey-in-Europe“ (1867). Therein they presented a map where
nearly all Macedonia was shown as inhabited by “the Bulgarian race.”353 This work was
positively accepted by William Gladstone, who wrote the preface to its second edition (1877),
asserting that “with the possession of such knowledge, we have obtained a great
advantage.”354 This production of knowledge about the Balkans appeared in Elisée Reclus’
wide-ranging study “Nouvelle Géographie Universelle“ (1875-1894) published in 18 volumes
in Paris. Reclus’ work underlines the basis of nationalism, supporting the self-determination
of the Balkan peoples and the eviction of Turkey from Europe.355 One may also argue that
these maps were put in the service of politics and the interests of the states. One of the
geographers who decided to serve the political interests of Europe and Greece was Heinrich
Kiepert. Along with Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter, Kiepert is considered one of
the founders of modern German geography. His numerous maps have great scientific value
for the advancement of geography, confirmed by receiving the prestigious “Grand Prix” at the
Paris International Exhibition (1867). Three of his maps are of particular significance to the
Macedonian context for our object of study. First is the map from 1853, which represents
European Turkey and is considered “the best scientific synthesis of German cartography of
the 19th century.”356 Its scientific value notwithstanding, this map had a political background,
since it was created in the climate of the Russo-Ottoman War (1853-1856). Second is the map
titled “Ethnographische Übersicht des Europäischen Orients“ (1876), for which he did
scientific explorations by visiting parts of European Turkey and territories of Macedonia. This
ethnographic map had historical importance, since it was instrumental to Bismarck at the
Congress of Berlin for demarcating the frontiers/borders of the Bulgarian provinces during the
Great Eastern Crisis (1875-1878). According to this map, the west of Ottoman Macedonia
was inhabited by an Albanian-speaking population, the south was inhabited by Greeks, while
the Ottoman districts of Nish and other major parts of nowadays Northern Macedonia were
inhabited by a Bulgarian-speaking population.357
353 Muir-Mackenzie and Irby, Travels in the Slavonic provinces of Turkey-in-Europe (London: Daldy, Isbister
and Company, 1877)
354 Ibid. pp. vii
355 Michel Sivignon, Le politique dans la géographie des Balkans: Reclus et ses successeurs, d’une Géographie
universelle à l’autre, Hérodote No 117/2, 2005, pp. 153 – 182.
356Mirela Slukan Altić, German Contribution to the 19th Century Cartography of European Turkey – With
Special Regard on the Map of Heinrich Kiepert, Joint Commission Seminar on Historical Maps, Atlases and
Toponymy, International Cartographic Assotiation, ed. by Jana Moser, (Leipzig: Leibniz-Institut für
Länderkunde e.V, 2016), p. 3.
357 Dimitri Rizoff, op.cit.
85
Map. 4. Heinrich Kiepert‘s “Ethnographische Übersicht des Europäischen Orients”358
The final/third is the map from 1878, titled “Tableau Ethnocratique des pays du sud-est de
l’Europe,” and diametrically opposed to the previous map (1876). According to Ipek
Yosmaoglu, “the simple replacement of the term ethnographic with ethnocratique” from the
title of the map “suggests that the author does not even pretend to be presenting a purely
‘scientific’ assessment of data but draws a direct link between the representation of ethnic
groups on a map and political claims over the region.”359 In fact, this map is a testament to the
extent to which science was put to the service of the state interests and imperialist projects.
On the one hand, the growing pan-Slavic ideas and Russian threats to the European interests
in Ottoman Rumelia, and on the other, the efforts of the Greek elites to change the present
perception of Macedonia as a Bulgarian land, demonstrate how geography and cartography as
disciplines became instruments of “Civilization”. For instance, Constantine Paparrigopoulos
was the founder of Greek historiography and repeatedly in the service of Greek state projects
whose goal was to lay the foundation for the formation of the national Greek identity in
modern times. He offered a unified image of the Greeks from the ancient through the
Byzantine to the modern era with the purpose to serve the greater state projects (Megali Idea).
In this sense, Macedonia was represented as part of Greece, since it was the homeland of
Phillip II and Alexander the Great. Therefore, he utilised an opportune time (when the threat
of Russia emerged) to undertake correspondence with Heinrich Kiepart in order to persuade
358 Ibid.
359 See: Ipek Yosmaoglu, Constructing National Identity in Ottoman Macedonia, in William Zartman,
Understanding Life in the Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion, (Athens: The University of Georgia
Press, 2009), p. 167.
86
him to create a new map sponsored by Syllogos (Society for the Dissemination of Greek
Letters). It seems that during Paparrigopoulos’s stay in Berlin (1877), he convinced Kiepert to
“draw a new map of the region comprising roughly the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus,
Macedonia, Thrace, and Eastern Rumelia.” 360 The year that passed between their
correspondence, meeting, and the publication of the map, resulted in the German cartographer
“chang[ing] his earlier depiction of the region almost entirely, in line with Greek claims.”361
Map 5: Heinrich Kiepert’s “Tableau Ethnocratique des pays du sud-est de l’Europe”362
In a similar vein, during this period maps in favour of Greece emerged in other parts of
Europe, too. Two significant examples published in 1877 favoured Greek claims over
Macedonia. One was the Stanford Map, while the other was the map drafted by F. Bianconi, a
French engineer and geographer. In the same year, a pro-Greek map was published by A.
Synvet, a French philhellene and a teacher of geography at Galatasaray Lisesi that “received
360 Yosmaoglu, op.cit. 2013. p. 122.
361 Ibid., pp. 122; K. Paparrigopoulos, note in Heinrich Kiepert, Tableau Ethnocratique des pays du sud-est de
l’Europe (Berlin, 1878) ‚‘Take a title from 1878, for instance: Tableau Ethnocratique des pays du sud-est de
l’Europe. The simple replacement of the term ethnographic with ethnocratique suggest that the author does not
even pretend to be presenting a purely ‘scientific’ assessment of data but draws a direct link between the
representation of ethnic groups on a map and political claims over the region.’ See: Ipek Yosmaoglu, op.cit., in
William Zartman, Understanding Life in the Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion, 2010, p. 167.
362 Dimitar Rizoff. Op.cit.
87
considerable publicity in Europe.” 363 For him, Macedonia consisted mostly of “Greeks of
Bulgarian tongue” (Vulgarophoni Hellini). It seems that it did not directly dispute the earlier
maps showing sizeable Bulgarian populations, but it merely showed “that the Greek
population of the Ottoman Empire had been grossly underestimated” 364 or even
misinterpreted. The French, British, and Greeks were not the only ones who “aimed at
destroying the idea of Slav supremacy in the Balkans. Austria had always a vital interest in
Balkan affairs.”365 This presented an opportunity for Carl von Sax, who was a long-time
Austro-Hungarian Consul at Sarajevo, at Rustschuk, and at Adrianople. He maintained that
Europe misunderstood the region since they were placing more importance to linguistics and
race, while in the Balkans religion was rather shaping “group consciousness” or in his terms,
“das eigene nationale Bewusstsein.”366 In his opinion linguistic criteria could only mislead the
understanding of the region, an example of which were the Muslims, Orthodox, and Catholic
Slavs in Bosnia, who spoke the same language, but were affiliated with different
communities. 367 Therefore, he listed nine groups of Slavs in the region, while Greeks
consisted the majority unit. This would consequently constitute a reason for Salisbury to
declare, at the Congress of Berlin, that “Turkey should be freed from Russia’s domination
(…) driving back the Slav State to the Balkans and substituting it with a Greek Province.”368
According to the Bulgarian politician and diplomat who served in Montenegro, Skopje,
Belgrade, Rome, and Berlin, Dimitar Rizov, “one has to keep in mind that the map was
designed in 1878” and that at that time “the official diplomats of Austria were afraid of
Russia’s expansive policy, and fought openly for a separation of Macedonia from the newly
created Principality of Bulgaria.”369
One can hence conclude that all parties involved imagined, perceived, and mapped the
Macedonian territories as well as its imagined communities in different ways. P.H. Liotta and
Cindy R. Jebb rightly conclude that “it is not that symbolic geography creates politics, but
rather the reverse.”370 The politics produced knowledge about certain regions (i.e. Macedonia)
363Dimitrie Rizov, op.cit.
364Ipek Yosmaoglu, op.cit., 2013, p. 94.
365Wilkinson, op.cit. pp. 75-76.
366Ibid, p. 77.
367 Ibid, p. 78; Carl von Sax, Geschichte des Machtverfalls der Türkei bis Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts und die
Phasen der "orientalischen Frage" bis auf die Gegenwart.( Manz, Wien, 1913); Quote: “Die bosnischen
Mohammedaner, deren Muttersprache die serbische ist haben sich niemals Serben nennen lassen, sondern
‘Türken.”
368Ibid, pp. 88-89.
369Dimitrie Rizov, op.cit.
370P.H.Liotta and Cindy R. Jebb, Mapping Macedonia: Idea and Identity (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Pub Group,
2004), p. 93.
88
expressed in the form of maps. Furthermore, these maps depicted imagined communities
according to state interests.371 In this regard, mapmakers produced a “vision of the future”
according to their imaginations and political interests, rather than what was actually in front of
them on the ground. It may not be erroneous to conclude that, in one way or another, all the
maps presented entailed domination, objectification, interventions, and thus, ultimately,
constructions of the “barbarian Others.”372 However, this imagination did not only typify the
Western Europeans, but also circulated as (a) knowledge among the Balkan intelligentsia,
who also imagined Macedonia, developed their own state policies, and mapped this region
according to their interests.
1.3. THE BALKAN INTELLIGENTSIA AND SURROGATE HEGEMONY
The century following the Peace of Carlowitz in 1699 saw many changes in the relations
among the European powers, the Ottomans, and people living in the Balkans. While the
European powers were moving towards the process of centralisation, the Ottoman Empire was
passing through a more decentralised system where some regions became semi-independent
and autonomous. These changes had an indirect bearing on the destiny of the South Slav
population who lived under Ottoman rule, which started to establish ties with its “Orthodox
brothers” in Imperial Russia. Tsar Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine began to play a
major part in these affairs of Europe and the Ottoman Empire.373 Thus, the ideas of statecentralisation,
special imagination, and interventions did not remain confined within Western
Europe, but this knowledge circulated and expanded in the direction of “Europe’s peripheries”
towards Russia, the Balkans, and Ottomans.374 In fact, I will highlight here an entangled
history (histoire croisee) based on the interconnectedness of societies, from the West to the
South-East and East of Europe. I will argue that the circulation of knowledge enabled various
connections between large geographic areas and triggered multiple trajectories of cooperation
over imperial borders. In this respect, these transfers of knowledge and relations between
371 Jeremy Black, op.cit, 1997, p. 112.
372Matthew H. Edney, Mapping Empires, Mapping Bodies: Reflections on the Use and Abuse of Cartography,
Treballs de la SCG, Vol. 63, 2007, p. 93.
373Peter the Great has a special place in Imperial Russian policy, since his was the initiative to open Russia up to
new western ideas in the form of modernisation and centralisation; See: Fred Singleton, A short history of the
Yugoslav Peoples, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 73.
374 In Vissarion Belinsky’s opinion, Russia would probably still have accepted European civilisation and
modernisation even without Peter the Great, but it would have done so in the same way in which India adopted
the English ones. Belinsky saw Russia’s westernisation as a response to the anxiety of being colonised by the
west, though of course this anxiety was also the result of European influence. See: Alexander Etkind, Internal
Colonization – Russia’s Imperial Experience, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), pp. 15-16.
89
various layers of societies did not interact in a vacuum, but rather circulated, were accepted,
imagined, and perceived in the form of a “colonisation of mind” or “surrogate hegemony.”
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the imaginary of “Orthodox and Slavic unity” was
strengthened and negotiated between Imperial Russia and Ottoman Orthodox subjects. The
first such attempt happened in the Russo-Ottoman War (1710-1711), when Peter the Great
sent the first delegation to Montenegro (1711). The head of this delegation was a Russian
general, a South Slav from Herzegovina, Mihailo Miloradović, who along with his brothers,
Gabriel and Aleksandar, entered the imperial service of Tsar Peter the Great, and stood
against the Ottomans. Miloradović carried an imperial decree (gramata), in which the Tsar
called on the Montenegrins for “a crusade war against the Turks, who tried to occupy their
‘fertile’ (blagorodne) lands, and to enslave (Montenegrin) ‘persons’ (osobe) together with all
who worshipped the crucified Christ - our God (svi narodi koji obozavaju razapetog Hrista –
Boga nasega).” Therefore, the duty of the believers in the “Greek and Roman religion” (grcke
i rimske vjere) was to put up a hard fight against the Ottomans “as in the ancient times, on the
side of Alexander of Macedon.”375 During the 18th century, it was a common belief that the
army of Alexander of Macedon consisted of Illyrians who were then considered the ancestors
of the Slavs. Even in the aforementioned decree, Tsar Peter the Great referred to
Montenegrins as “the good fighters since the time of Alexander the Great (Macedonian) and
the wars of Skanderbeg against the Ottomans.”376 Beliefs that South Slavs were descendants
and companions of Alexander the Great and ancient Macedonians, living in this ancient land
of Macedonia, were present during the entirety of the early modern period.377 In this regard,
Miloradović reported that he visited “Doklea, Zeta, Montenegro, the provinces of
Macedonia.” 378 The Imperial Russian administration kept its connections with the
375 Aleksej Jelacic, Petar Veliki i Juzni Sloveni, https://www.rastko.rs/rastko-ru/delo/10111 (Accessed.
08.09.2017); Aleksej Jelacic, Istorija Rusije, (Beograd: Romanov, 2000); The early 18th century brought many
South Slavs from this part of “Macedonia” into the Russian administration in order to strengthen ties with them
by translating different books displaying a proto-Pan-Slavic character, such as Mavro Orbin’s ‘’Il regno degli
Slavi’’ (The Realm of the Slavs). One of those mediators and translators was Sava Vladislavic, who became a
famous Russian diplomat from Ragusa (Dubrovnik). He played a multidimensional role, from a person
responsible for the cooperation between Russia and the South Slavs, to that between Russia and the Ottomans,
where, together with Peter Tolstoy, he was appointed head of the Russian mission to Istanbul. Similar examples
of such interconnections, transfers, and entanglements will be present during the whole 18th and 19th century,
especially after the Russian advances and victories against the Ottomans (1739, 1774, 1792), when the Russians
began to play a significant role alongside the major European powers in the determination of the affairs in this
undefined land of Macedonia. The Orthodox Christian inhabitants of this region turned to St. Petersburg for
diplomatic and military support by raising questions on their behalf.
376Ibid.,
377 Oliver Jens Schmitt, Shqiptaret (Tirane: K&B, 2012), p. 28; An Albanologist, Oliver Schmitt gives the
example of the Albanian priest Frang Bardhi, who introduced himself with the words: “I am from the land of
Macedonia, from Shkodra’’ (Jam dheut ce Matsedoniese, i shkodernjane), p. 96.
378Aleksej Jelacic, op.cit., 1940, p. 27.
90
Montenegrins, as they represented a so-called Russian mirror in the Ottoman Empire.379
Osman Karatay remarked that “although this (Montenegrin) community was small in
membership, one could consider that it became the first Balkan independent community.”380
This in turn enabled frequent communication between St. Petersburg and Cetinje. Thus,
during July 1789, when Bastilla was on fire in Paris, Montenegrin guvernadur Radonjić
addressed a letter to Catherine the Great, pleading with her to help the South-Slav population
to “regain (possession of) all glorious Serb lands (slavnu srpsku zemlju)” which were “under
Barbarian yoke (varvarskim igom).” Furthermore, he stressed that they had enlisted the help
of “other Serb brothers, which want to attack the Turks from all sides. All we, Serbs, from
Montenegro, Herzegovina, Banjani, Drobnjak, Piper, Bjelopavlovic, Zeta, Kliment,
Vasojevic, Bratonozic, Pec, Kosovo, Prizren, Arbanija, and Macedonia, belong to your
majesty (vasemu velicanstvu) and we beseech help from you as we would from our merciful
mother (milostiva nasa majka).” 381 This notion of the “liberation of Serb lands” from
“Barbarian yoke” was in effect a result of the influence of the European ideas of the time,
according to which the rest of the world was considered barbaric. In the view of Larry Wolff,
“the Eastern Europe was located not at the antipode of civilization, not down in the depths of
barbarism, but rather on the developmental scale (…) which was essentially in between (…)
in short, the Slav peoples, are a link between Europe and Asia, between civilization and
barbarism.”382 Therefore, as I have already stated, the idea of Eastern Europe never attained a
status of consummate “otherness” like that of the Orient, but rather the status of a space that
had the potential to belong to civilisation.383 In this respect, the Balkan population could be
integrated “into common historical destiny of the continent.”384 In order to develop (along)
the same pathways as civilised Europe, the Balkan intelligentsia constructed discourses of
itself as “the guardian(s) of European values rather than the barbarian at Europe’s gate.”385 In
Alexander Kiossev’s point of view this is a metaphorical “self-colonization” which “can be
used for cultures having succumbed to the cultural power of Europe and the west without
having been invaded and turned into colonies in actual fact (…) but, affected either by
379Ibid.
380 Osman Karatay, Osmanli hakimizetinde Karadag, in ‚Balkanlar el Kitabi‘, cilt 1, edited by Bilgehan A.
Gokdag and Osman Karatay, (Ankara: Akcag Basim Yayim Pazarlama, 2013)., p. 358.
381Gligor Stanojevic, Crna Gora pred stvaranje drzave 1773-1796, (Beograd: Istorijski Institut, 1962), p. 289.
382Larry Wolff, op.cit. p. 13.
383Larry Wolff, op.cit. p. 358.
384Paschalis Kitromilides, The Enlightenment East and West: a comparative perspective on the ideological
origins of the Balkan political traditions, Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, 10. No.1, 1983, p. 55.
385Vesna Goldsworthy, op.cit. p. ix
91
important colonial conflicts or by the techniques of colonial rule.”386 In similar ways, Ewa
Thompson defines this process as “surrogate hegemony,” in the sense that “members of the
colonized elite” display “a view that Western countries are a model to follow in every way,
that one travels westward to enjoy liberty and well-being, and to learn how to interpret history
and the present.”387 However, this “self-colonization” or “surrogate hegemony” aimed to turn
the local elites and their imagined geographies into civilised members of Europe, since they
believed that they had a new duty, that is “to spread progress and modernity, freedom from
Asiatic tyranny, self-determination, and human rights among the backward ones.”388 This
self-imagination has constructed the West in opposition to East Europe, but also the “civilized
Balkans” in opposition to the “Asiatic Turks,” by defining concluding “Easts” in the world,
and none of them is without signification.’389 This represents a process that Milica Bakić-
Hayden calls “nesting Orientalism”, that is the tendency towards (constructing) the
essentialised Self as superior, progressed/advanced, or developed, while constructing the
oriental “Other.”390 In this respect, the Balkan elite accepted the knowledge of a Europe as
superior and dreamt of a replacement of this “Asiatic” Ottoman Empire by a new “European”
republic of the Balkans. In 1797, the revolutionary vision of Rigas Velestinlis imagined a
Jacobin-inspired “Hellenic Republic,” which would unite “all Balkan ethnic, cultural and
religious communities under the rule of law.”391 Next, Velestinlis introduced the idea of the
“liberty to assault tyranny, break the (Ottoman) yoke of despotism, and establish justice and
freedom throughout the land that extended from Bosnia and Montenegro through Roumeli
and Mani to Crete and Asia Minor, to Syria and Egypt.”392 Similar aspirations were expressed
by Velestinlis’ friend, Adamantios Korais in his famous “Report on the present state of
civilization in Greece“ (1803). He wrote about the circulation of knowledge from “the
(French) Encyclopédie (…) to Greece.” Accordingly, he emphasised: “We are the descendants
386 Alexandar Kiossev, op.cit, pp. 1; For Ranajit Guha this is process of ‘hegemony without domination’ that
consists foreign cultural supremacy and voluntary absorption of their basic values and categories of colonial
Europe. See: Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India, (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1998)
387 Ewa Thompson, The Surrogate Hegemon in Polish Postcolonial Discourse, p. 4.
https://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~ethomp/The%20Surrogate%20Hegemon.pdf (Accessed: 28.05.2017)
388 Alexandar Kiossev, op.cit., p. 1.
389 Ibid., p. 15.
390 Milica Bakic-Hayden, op.cit., Slavic Reviw, Vol. 54, No. 4. 1995, p. 918.
391 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, op.cit. (2006), p. 46.
392Paschalis Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution: The Making of Modern Greece, (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2013), p. 228.
92
of Greeks (…) we must either try to become again worthy of this name, or we must not bear
it.”393
In the Greek case, this circulation of knowledge led to the imagination of the ancient Hellenic
origins, while the Serbs and the Bulgarians sought their distinct historical personality by
turning to their medieval imperial past. Firstly, they started with the historiographical projects
of Jovan Rajić and Paisij Hilendarski in the second half of 18th century. After Montenegrin
tribes defeated the Ottoman army in 1796 (in the battles of Krusi and Martinići), vladika Petar
I Petrovic established the state apparatus and its first Law (Zakon opšči crnogorski i brdski),
established the tribes’ independent status, and opened up the possibility of imagining the new
state in the Balkans, which would play a significant role in the subsequent anti-Ottoman
movements. The following Serbian Uprisings (1804 and 1815) raised awareness among South
Slavs of the need of change.394 In 1806, the leader of the Serbian Uprising Petar Karadjordje
wrote to Montenegrin vladika Petar I Petrovic: “[W]e are always, in our hearts and minds,
united (svagda, i u srcu i u mislima)” and “you will be great and powerful support to the
liberation of the Serbs/Serbian people (srpskom narodu u oslobođenju, velika i moćna potpora
biti).”395 Therefore, at the beginning of the Russo-Ottoman war (1806-1812), in 1807, vladika
Petar I Petrovic of Montenegro wrote a letter to Russian Tsar Alexander I, envisioning a new
state of Slav-Serb Tsardom (Slaveno-serbsko carstvo), consisting of Bosnia, Herzegovina,
Dalmatia, and Montenegro with its centre and seat in Dubrovnik. On the other hand, vladika
wrote to the egumen of the Decani Monastery that “in this year, we Montenegrins, along with
our brethren, the Serbs from Belgrade, wish to attack our enemies, the Turks, and if we can,
banish all of them (ako možemo vsje da izbavimo).”396 This desired and imagined alliance of
all Serbs was praised as a sacred, political, and spiritual duty, which was to be presented
before the whole of Europe.397 In this sense, the wealthiest Serb in Hungary, Sava Tekelija,
submitted a Memorandum first to Napoleon (in 1804), then to the Habsburg Emperor Francis
II (in 1805). Ultimately he printed the Geographic Map of Serbia, Bosnia, Dubrovnik,
393 Adamantios Korais, Report On The Present State Of Civilization In Greece, in Late Enlightenment -
Emergence of the Modern 'National Idea', ed. by Balazs Trencsenyi and Michal Kopecek (Budapest/New York:
CEU, 2006), p. 144.
394Almost a hundred years after Montenegro, Serbia established ties with Russia, by sending, in 1804, one of the
leaders of the rebels, Prota (Archpriest) Mateja Nenadović to Russia. Nenadović left a detailed account of his
journey to Russia in his memoirs. See: Mateja Nenadovic, Memoari, Portalibris, Beograd, 2017.
395 Budo Dragovic, Odnosi Crne Gore i Srbije u XIX i XX vijeku, See:
http://www.montenegrina.net/pages/pages1/istorija/cg_u_xix_vijeku/odnosi_cg_i_srbije_u_xix_i_xx_vijeku.htm
(Accessed. 15.12.2017)
396Ibid.
397 Dušan T. Bataković, A Balkan-Style French Revolution? The 1804 Serbian Uprising in European perspective,
Balcanica 2005(36), P. 116; Radoslav Perovic, Prvi srpski ustanak, (Beograd: Narodna knjiga, 1977), pp. 75-177.
93
Montenegro, and other neighbours (in 1805) in order to define the potential national claims of
the Serbs and to find allies for the re-establishment of their medieval empire.398 Commenting
on the latter, Larry Wolff notes that “Napoleon’s creation of Adriatic provinces of Illyria in
1809” was not to be the “last time that armies of Western Europe sought to establish an
empire in (south)Eastern Europe.”399 These programmes, coupled with their European tutors
and predecessors, can be considered as the first instances of the imagination of national
liberation and the attempt for “resurrection of the Serbian state” (vaskrs države srpske). It is
worth noting that the intellectual influence of the European Enlightenment among one part of
the “awakened Serbs” imagined this state as protected by Russia (e.g. Stevan Stratimirovic,
vladika Petar I). On the other hand, another part (e.g. Dositej Obradovic, Sava Tekelija)
advocated for a departure from the hegemony of the church and the creation of a new state
based on European models. This desire to put Serbs in contact with contemporary European
culture was reinforced by the influence of German Romanticism and “the trends of folklorism
that became priority of Southeastern European thought in the 19th century.”400 The aim of the
latter Serbian intelligentsia was in fact to construct a national Serbian identity based on the
Serbian medieval empire narrative, supported by the Serbian Church.
1.3.1. TOWARDS LIBERATION AND THE NATION-STATE
The role of the intelligentsia in promoting national agendas has been recognised in the works
of Benedict Anderson,401 Anthony D. Smith,402 Ernest Gellner,403 Eric Hobsbawm,404 to name
a few. This European invention, closely bound with the emergence of the modern state,
constructed new “imagined communities” and “invented traditions.” However, as I have
already stated, these processes should not be analysed in a vacuum, as nationalist
historiographies would argue, but rather as interconnected processes that influenced different
entities in creating the states. It is conceivable that during the first half of 19th century, the
histories of the Balkan Christian communities were entangled. The Balkan intelligentsia were
relatively united in their attempts at liberation from the Ottoman Empire. For example,
Alexander Ypsilanti did not invite the Greeks, but “the Christians in the Ottoman Empire to
398 Ibid., pp. 118 and Vladislav Sotirovic, Serbia, Montenegro and Albanian Question 1878-1912, (Saarbrücken:
Lambert Academic Publishing, 2015). p. 69.
399Larry Wolff, op.cit. p. 8.
400Kitromilides, op.cit. The Enlightenment East and West…, p. 59.
401 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:
Verso, 1983)
402 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
403 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
404 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, ed. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983)
94
throw off the sultan’s yoke.”405 Many prominent figures from different parts of the Balkans
adopted this duty. Thus, the veteran of the Serbian Uprising, vojvoda Hadzi Prodan accepted
the service of the Greek Revolution to liberated “Orthodox brothers” from “Turkish cruelty”
(turski zulum). Another important figure was the Montenegrin general Vaso Brajovic (Vasos
Mavrovunotis), who, together with his “spiritual brother” (kum, vlami) Nikolaos Kriezotis,
played a significant role against the Ottomans. 406 Among these soldiers were famous
Orthodox Arvanites and Albanian Souliotes (e.g. Marko Bocari, Kico Xhavella), renowned as
Greek national heroes and fighting against their “brothers in nation,” the Ottoman Albanians.
More specifically, the concept of “entangled history” helps us to avoid the replacement of
these personalities with one nationalist discourse, and to accept their interconnectedness in
one common imagination of belonging to (Orthodox) Christianity and European
“Civilization.” Influenced by European ideas, their historical mission at the beginning of 19th
century was: 1) to liberate their imagined “holy land” from the “barbarous” Ottomans, and 2)
to (re)establish their own states. The imagination of the new states occurred went hand in
hand with the imagination of community. All Balkan nations were under the influence of the
great European powers, including Imperial Russia.407 It is worth noting that “imported” ideas
from Europe did not contend with their Balkan nations’ religious and Slavic ties with Russia.
In a certain manner, these two processes complemented one (an)other, especially after the
Crimean War of 1856. In fact, most of the educated South Slavs imagined a united state or
empire divided into tribes (Serbs, Bulgarians, Illyrians/Croats, etc.). Thus, in a letter sent to
Georgi Zolotovich in November 1843, Bulgarian philosopher Ivan Seliminski wrote the
following:
“The closer our relationship becomes to other peoples and especially to those of Slavic origin,
the stronger will be our ties, the greater and more sincere our help and compassion, the
sounder the foundations of our national welfare. The more our people studies history and the
advanced literature of other nations, especially the Slavs, the sooner it will advance its own to
reach the glory of its ancestors and of modern civilized peoples.”408
405Miroslav Sediy, op.cit., 2013,pp. 59, David Brewer, The Greek War of Independence: The Struggle for
Freedom from Ottoman Oppression and the Birth of the Modern Greek Nation, (New York: Woodstock, 2003),
p. 53.
406 Stefanos P. Papageorgiou, Vasos Mavrovunotis (Vaso Brajović) - Crnogorac U Grčkoj Revoluciji, Matica
Crnogorska, Br. 62, 2015, p. 45.
407 See the works of Yuri Venelin about Bulgarians and their political, ethnographic, historical and religious
relations to the Russians.
408 Ivan Seliminski, Letter To Georgi Zolotovich, in Late Enlightenment - Emergence of the Modern 'National
Idea', ed. by Balazs Trencsenyi and Michal Kopecek (Budapest/New York: CEU, 2006), p. 186.
95
Hence, the combination of ”civilised Europe” with the peoples’ “Slavic origin” composed the
preponderant Weltanschauung of the Balkan “surrogate hegemony.” Applied through a
“colonisation of the mind,” this policy influenced many members of the Serbian intelligentsia
based in Vienna and prompted them to prepare strategies for the implementation of “surrogate
hegemony.” One of these strategies appeared in Dimitrije Davidovic’s work Djejanija k
Istoriji Srpskoga naroda translated as History of the Servian People, It was accompanied by
the map “Territories inhabited by Servians,” which represented Serbia as the centre of
liberation from the “barbarous” Ottomans. Still, in this map, Serbia was depicted without
Kosovo/Old Serbia and Macedonia. However, the major reformer of the Serbian language,
Vuk Karadzic, in his famous pamphlet Serbs All and Everywhere (1836/1849), developed a
wider conception of Serbian territories, emphasising: “[I]t is known that Serbs now live in
present-day Serbia (between the Drina and Timok, and between the Danube and the Stara
Planina Mountain), in Metohija (from Kosovo over the mountains, where King Dusan’s
capital Prizren, the Serbian Patriarchate of Pec, and Decani Monastery were), in Bosnia,
Herzegovina, Zeta, Montenegro, Banat, Backa, in Srijem, the western Danube region from
Osijek to Sentandrija, in Slavonia, Croatia (Turkish and Austrian parts), Dalmatia, and the
Adriatic region from Trieste to Bojana (Montenegro).” He points out that it was known with
certainty that a Serbian population inhabited, while “it [was] still not known how many Serbs
[were] living in Albania and in Macedonia. When I was in Cetinje (Montenegro), I talked
with two men from Dibra, who told me that there were many Serbian (serpskijeh) villages, in
which Serbian was spoken, as well as such where a language between Serbian and Bulgarian
was spoken, closer to Serbian than Bulgarian.”409 These imaginations, that Macedonia was
populated by Serbs or a people who speak “a language (…) closer to Serbian than Bulgarian”
defined the main Serbian policy after the Congress of Berlin. However, one should notice that
in the mid-19th century this differentiation of Serbs and Bulgarians was not highly important,
since they were just (separate) tribes of the more widely imagined “South-Slav nation.” Apart
from its significance for the Macedonian case, Vuk Karadzic’s work is also famous for the
establishment of the myth about “the battle of Kosovo” as the key theme of the Serbian
instance of “invented tradition.” According to Aleksandar Pavlovic and Srdjan Atanasovski,
“the myth served not only as a literary achievement, but also as a veritable battle cry and a
409 Vuk Karadzic, Srbi svi i svugdje, https://www.rastko.rs/filologija/vuk/vkaradzic-srbi.html (Accessed.
09.09.2017)
96
trump card of Serbian expansionistic politics.”410 This myth is important due to its being an
integral part of a broader context of Macedonia, via three dimensions: 1) the myth was
constructed in the territory of Kosovo, which according to the above-mentioned authors, was
part of what was imagined as the “Macedonian Illyricum,” and which after the Congress of
Berlin composed one of the three vilayets (Vilayet-i selase/Macedonia); 2) the myth revives
the heroes who fought against the Ottomans in 1389; and 3) in this Kosovo battle the Serbian
Empire of Tsar Dusan was obliterated, along with its legacy that placed its core in Macedonia
(capitals of the empire were Skopje and Prizren). This Kosovo myth evoked such folk heroes
as Kraljevic Marko, son of King Vukasin Mrnjavcevic, who ruled in Prilep (Macedonia) until
his death in 1371.411 The legendary Marko is the embodiment of all that “the Serbs wanted to
believe of themselves — his heroism, his gentleness, his respect for the religious and social
customs of his people, his ‘machismo’, even his cruelty, but above all their fierce opposition
to the Turks and his intense national pride.”412 In similar ways, the brothers Miladinov
(Dimitar and Konstantin) collected Bullgarian epic poems (pesne) from Macedonia, published
them in Zagreb in 1861as Balgarski narodni pesni (Bulgarian Folk Songs), sponsored by the
eminent supporter of the Southern Slav idea, the Croat Catholic Bishop Strossmayer. A
similar work was published in Belgrade by Stefan Verkovic, Folk songs of the Macedonian
Bulgarians (1860), supported by Serbia. It seems that during the mid-19th century the South
Slavs were moving towards a common project that found its grounds and support in Russian
Pan-Slavism. The prominent figure who wanted to contribute to the Russian involvements and
liberation from the “yoke of the Asiatic tribe (unerträgliche asiatische Joch)” was Mihailo
Polit Desančić. In his work Die Orientalische Frage und ihre Organische Lösung413 (1862),
he presented his views on the Eastern Question (die orientalische Frage) by stating that
Europe did not assist in the liberation of the Balkan peoples against the Turks. In his opinion,
“of all European states, only Russia was the protector of the Christians against the wild
Asiatic tyranny of the Turks.”414 With this aim in mind, he believed that the “final solution”
for the liberation from the “Asiatic tribe” and their “Asiatic tyranny” was the help of Russia.
To this end, he suggested an “organic solution (organische Lösung)” by “dividing Turkey (die
Teilung der Türkei) among the Balkan peoples (and uniting them) into a confederation of the
410 Aleksandar Pavlovic and Srdjan Atanasovski, From Myth to Territory: Vuk Karadžić, Kosovo Epics and the
Role of Nineteenth-Century Intellectuals in Establishing National Narratives, Hungarian Historical Review 5, no.
2, 2016, p. 371.
411Fred Singleton, op.cit., 1985, p. 45.
412Ibid., p. 45.
413 Mihailo Polith, Die Orientalische Frage und ihre Organische Lösung, (Wien: Franz Leo’s Verlag 1862).
414 Ibid., p. 21; “…dass von allen europäischen Staaten Rußland die größte und in manchen Fällen die einzige
Schußwehr der Christen gegen die wilde asiatische Tyrannei der Türken war.”
97
nations.”415 For this reason, Desančić believed that “the fight against the Asiatic barbarians
was a sacred commitment for the Balkan peoples.”416 His friend, Svetozar Miletić, president
of the Society for Serbian Unification and Liberation (Družina za ujedinjenje i oslobodjenje
srpsko) also supported this “organic solution” against the Ottomans and, for the solution of
the Eastern (Macedonian) Question, he suggested a political unity of all Slavs.417
In a similar vein, Montenegrin vladika Petar II Petrovic Njegos supported the “pan-South
Slavic” unity and its “anti-Turkish” elements. His heroic folk poem The Mountain Wreath
(Gorski Vijenac), published in Vienna in 1847, is considered the crucial anti-Turkish work in
the literature(s) of the Balkan nations, dedicated “to the ashes of the Father of Serbia,”
Karadjordje, the leader of the First Serbian Uprising (1804-13) against the Turks. In the poem,
Njegos represents Montenegro as the only free region surrounded by the “big Asiatic
Mongol” (azijatski veliki mongol).418 In his poem The False Tsar Stephen the Little (Lazni car
Scepan Mali), published in 1845, he wonders:
“What East did with the West/ what kind of disasters did/ what kind of force changed the time
(…) what Osman broke/ in order to eat the world!/ Only pain Kur’an brought to Slavs/ among
brothers blood was shed/ Despite this, who would believe/ just one small people
(Montenegrins)/ can stand up against/ wild force, combined by all evils/ to the Stambol’s
disaster rulers (stambolskijeh grubijeh hakanah)/ and to their poisoned faith/ I salute you,
Slavic sanctity (Pozdravljam te, svetinjo slavenska.)”419
In The Mountain Wreath, Njegos criticises the European Christians with the words: “Europe’s
cleric from his holy altar scoffs and spits at the altar of Asia,” for not going beyond “scoffing
and spitting” at the Turks, who devastated Christianity wherever they ruled. He continues:
“Those who escaped before the Turkish sword/ those who did not blaspheme at the True
Faith/ those who refused to be thrown into chains/ took refuge here in these lofty mountains/
to shed their blood together and to die/ heroically to keep the sacred/ oath, their lovely name,
and their holy freedom.”420
Accordingly, Montenegro accepted the role of Europe to fight the “big Asiatic Mongol” in the
name of “Civilisation.” Thus, Stedimlija concludes that Njegos “remained a pure Westerner,”
415 Ibid. p. 40.
416 Ibid., p. 1; “…dass ihre Befreiung vom assiatischen Joche zugleich einen Sieg des sittlichen Principes
involvire. Ihr Kampf gegen die asiatischen Barbaren erscheint ihnen daher al sein heiliger.”
417 Svetozar Miletitsch, Die Orientfrage, (Neusatz: Serbish-Nationale Vereins-Buchdruckerei, 1877).
418 Petar Petrović Njegoš, Lažni car Šcepan Mali (Titograd: Grafički zavod, 1965)
419 Ibid.
420 Petar Petrović Njegoš, Gorski Vijenac (Beograd: Branko Dinović, 1963)
98
but retained his Orthodox elements.421 These ideas had a strong influence on Montenegro (and
other Balkan countries) and its implementation of “surrogate hegemony” as the triumphant
victory spirit of Western culture and civilisation. Therefore, Vuk Karadzic, the greatest
intellectual of his time, and Petar II Petrovic Njegos, the greatest poet of the Serbian
language, 422 had an important political role too: the former in inventing a Kosovo myth and
depicting Serbian territories, the latter in liberating these territories from the “big Asiatic
Mongol” and returning “European civilization to its roots.” 423 This leading role of
Montenegro in the liberation from the Ottoman yoke and establishment of a greater
state/empire on the one hand contributed to anti-Ottomanism, and in the other was challenged
by another two important works, who also developed anti-Ottoman programs. These two
works appeared in the same year (1844) and were known as Ilija Garasanin’s Greater Serbia
project, defined in Nacertanije; and Ioannis Kolettis’ Greater Greece project, defined in
Megali Idea. The former, Serbian statesman Ilija Garasanin, belongs to the group of Serbs
who had a vision of “South Slavic” liberation combined with Serbian expansion. In his
opinion, “Serbia should take part among other European states (u red ostalih evropejskih
drzava postaviti)” by becoming a greater [something] through the policy of “uniting all Serb
peoples that it is surrounded by (priljubiti sve narode srpske koji je okruzavaju).”424 In this
attempt, he finds a basis and a harking back to the old Serbian medieval empire of Tsar
Dusan, which had its centre in Skopje (Macedonia) and Prizren (Old Serbia).425 According to
Garasanin, “if the (new) reborn Serbian Tsardom appear[ed], then the other South Slavs
[would] understand and happily accept this idea, because nowhere in the European land
(evropejskoj zemlji) as among the Turkish Slavs (Slovena turskih) is a historical remembrance
of the past presented (spomen istoriceske proslosti).”426 According to Stefan Rohdewald, the
memory based on medieval empires influenced “the imagination of geographical spaces
(geographische Räume imaginierten).”427 This memory, based on a common history during
421 Savo M. Stedimlija, The Foundation of Montenegrin Nationalism, (Zagreb 1937), p. 127. Among the literary
works which were announced for publishing in the manuscript, the following title is found at the beginning of
this brochure : "Croatia and Montenegro, articles and essays", p. 48.
422Armando Pitassio, The Building of Nations in South-Eastern Europe. The Cases of Slovenia and Montenegro:
a Comparative Approach, in The Balkans: national identities in a historical perspective, ed. by. Stefano
Bianchini, (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1998) p. 49.
423 Aleksandar Pavlovic, Naming/Taming the Enemy: Balkan Oral Tradition and formation of ‘the Turk’ as the
Political Enemy, in Us and Them Symbolic Divisions in Western Balkan Societies, ed. by Ivana Spasić and
Predrag Cvetičanin (Beograd: The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade,
2013).
424 Ilija Garasanin, Nacertanije, (Beograd: Ethos, 2016), pp. 23-24
425Fred Singleton., op.cit. p. 93.
426 Ilija Garasanin, op.cit., p. 28.
427 Stefan Rohdewald, op.cit., Böhlau Verlag Köln, 2014, p. 763.
99
the medieval empire, triggered the Serbian state to cooperate with the Bulgarian Committee
during 1866. Serbia was pivotal to Bulgaria in these years as a source of hopes of military aid,
asylum, or assistance in the liberation from the Ottomans.428 Having joined forces with the
Bulgarian Committee, Montenegro, Greece, and Romania, Serbia formed the first Balkan
Alliance (1867) in order to wage a common struggle against the Ottomans. In the same year,
Rusian Slavenophiles staged the Slavic Exhibition, which showcased an ethnological map of
all the Slavic races as liberated and united. M. F. Mirkowitch, a Russian geographer and
ethnographer, drew this map and titled it “Ethnological Map of the Slavic peoples,” as it
strove to demonstrate the strong Slavic unity around the Continent.429
Map 6: Slavyanskih Narodnosti430
The similarities among the Slavs were presented in August Petermann’s collections of maps,
books, and notes. He drew a map of the Balkans in 1869, marking Serbs and Bulgarians with
the same colour. Rather than differences, his map underscored similarities which could
indicate a common political future. Before the 1870s the question whether the inhabitants of
Macedonia were Serbs or Bulgarians did not carry a lot of weight, since they both were parts
of a broader South-Slavic family or, in the words of Muir-Mackenzie and Irby, “Yugo-Slavi.”
Similarly, in “Die Slaven in der Turkei,”431 Croatian professor Franjo Bradaska claimed that
428 Mark Pinson, Ottoman Bulgaria in the First Tanzimat Period — The Revolts in Nish (1841) and Vidin (1850),
Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 11, No 2 (May, 1975), pp. 122-124.
429 Wilkinson, op.cit. p. 53.
430 Dimitri Rizpoff. Op.cit. p. 36
431 Franz Bradaska, Die Slaven in der Turkei, Mitteilungen aus Junius Peters' geographischer Anstalt, Vol. XV,
1869, p. 458.
100
the “Slav inhabitants in Turkey [were] spread from the rivers Dau and Donau to the Aegean
Sea, and from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, (…) constituting one unity of different tribes
(Stamme).”432 Arguing along similar lines, Vladimir Jovanović, a Serbian politician and the
most significant liberal ideologue, considered that these Slavic tribes belong to the same
nation.433 In this regard, in his essay “Serbian Nation and the Eastern Question” (1863) he
pointed out that Serbia should have a leading role in the unification of these tribes and the
solving of the Eastern Question. Furthermore, he presented his views on the future map of the
Balkans in his two other studies: “Serbes et la Mission de la Serbie dans l’ Europe d’
Orient,“434 and “The Emancipation and Unity of the Serbian Nation or the Regeneration of
the Eastern Europe.“435 Jovanović believed that liberated Serbia should become the champion
of liberal and progressive ideas in South-Eastern Europe.436
There is no evidence if these books and maps have any relation with the establishment of the
Balkan Alliance in 1867. However, it is evident that in this period the Slavs, together with
other Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire, were united in the idea of implementing
“surrogate hegemony” and liberating from the Ottomans. These established entanglements
among various strata of population and regions were much more interconnected than what
contemporary national historiographies tend to present. Yet, the idea of Slavic unification was
soon challenged by French geographer C. Delamarre, who in 1868 introduced an
ethnographical map indicated that “Pan-Slavism from a linguistic and literary point of view
was a myth.”437 Notably, only a few years later, a schism divided the Balkan intelligentsia as
well. Firstly, the Bulgarian-Greek conflict escalated inside the Orthodox Church. The
Patriarch accused the Exarchate for spreading Bulgarian ethno-nationalist propaganda in
Macedonia. In the Bulgarian newspaper “Macedonia,” published in Istanbul, was
demonstrated as “infinitive senseless of the Greek words (beskrajni grcki palavri).”438 In
Fikret Adanir’s opinion, this conflict became one of the main reasons for the Macedonian
conflicts.439 This contestation was soon joined by Serbia, and a separate policy was supported
432Ibid, pp. 441-446.
433 Vladimir Yovanovics, Les Serbes et la Mission de la Serbie dans l’ Europe d’ Orient, (Paris: A. Lacroix,
Verboeckhoven et Cie Éditeurs 1870)., p. 9.
434 Ibid.
435 Vladimir Yovanovitch, The Emancipation and Unity of the Serbian Nation or the Regeneration of the Eastern
Europe, (Geneva: H. Georg 10, Corraterie 1871).
436 Yovanovics, op.cit. Les Serbes et la Mission de la Serbie, pp. 5-6.
437 C. Delamarre. Op.cit., p. 92.
438 Makedonija, 8. Januar, 1871
439 Fikret Adanir, op.cit., Wiesbaden 1979, p. 134. See quote: „(…) Aus diesem Grunde entstanden zahlreiche
Konflikte zwischen den Gemeinden und den Behörden des Exarchats. Bei solchen Auseinandersetzungen
ergriffen die makedonischen Lehrer gewöhnlich die Partei der Gemeinden, weil die Einbeziehung der Schulen in
101
by the Serbian historian Milos Milojevic. He published the Odlomci istorije Srba i srpskih -
jugoslavenskih - zemalja u Turskoj i Austriji (1872), where he declared that the “Serbian
language and culture extended much further in the south (in the territories of Macedonia).”440
This break of relations among the different members of the former Balkan Alliance in the
1870s only intensified their competition towards Macedonia during the “Age of Empire.” The
policy of liberation from the “big Asiatic Mongol” and inclusion of Macedonia in one
common Balkan or South-Slavic state was to transform the competition politics between the
former “Orthodox brothers.” To the contrary, the intellectuals involved constructed different
narratives about Macedonia, joined various state policies, and reflected contested imperialist
projects, as will be seen in further chapters.
1.3.2. RUSSIA’S FORCIBLE INTERVENTION AND THE MACEDONIAN
QUESTION
Barbara Jelavich asserts that, between 1806 and 1914, Russia was involved in six wars, five
of which were due to its deep involvement in Balkan affairs.441 The emergence of the Eastern
Question at the end of the 18th and its development during the 19th century was one of Tsar
Nicholas I’s reasons to define the Ottoman disintegration at the beginning of the Crimean War
(1853-1856) as a “sick man” who “has fallen into a state of decrepitude (u nas na rukah
bolnoy chelovek, ochen bolnoy chelovek).” 442 Inside this Eastern Question, the Orient
(Ottoman Empire) became a space of European colonial dominance in which Russia had its
own share.443 The borrowing of Western orientalist idioms legitimised Russia’s aggressive
policy towards the Ottoman Empire within the idea of Russia’s own integration into the
“Occident” as a “part of Civilization.” 444 This process of Russian orientalisation was
simultaneously a manifestation of Russian Occidentalism in the first half of the 19th
das Schulsystem des Exarchats bedeutete, daß die Lehrer künftig von der Schulkuratel beim Exarchat ernannt
werden würden.“
440 Milos Milojevic, Odlomci istorije Srba i srpskih - jugoslavenskih - zemalja u Turskoj i Austriji, (Beograd:
1872).
441Barbara Jelavich, op.cit., 1991, pp. ix
442 Viktor Taki, Car i Sultan – Osmanskaya imperiya glazam i Rossiyan, (Moskva: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie,
2017), p. 168.
443Viktor Taki, Orientalism on the Margins – The Ottoman Empire under Russian Eyes, Slavica Publishers,
Volume 12, No 12, 2011, p. 323.
444Ibid., p. 337.
102
century.445 Articulated by means of borrowed idioms, the Russian views of the Ottoman
Empire, can be also analysed as an example of “nesting Orientalism.”446
This understanding of the Orient as “barbaric” increased the Russian “mission” to solve the
Eastern Question and to liberate its Orthodox brethren from Ottoman rule. According to
Barbara Jelavich, “the Orthodoxy was of particular importance for the Russian relationship
with the Balkan people,” considering that “the Christian nations together represented a moral
unity and that they should cooperate (as in the Greek War of Independence).”447 Therefore,
Russia tried to strengthen its ties with the Balkan Orthodox elite by sending numerous
travellers to map this region and undertake activities in the form of: protection of Ottoman
Orthodox subjects, and intervention in Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, and the Danubian
Principalities. With the Crimean disaster and the Treaty of Paris (1856), Russia lost its rights
and obligations to protect the Ottoman Orthodox subjects, which had a major influence on its
foreign policy, reflected in its increase of emphasis on the Slavic people. The “surrogate
hegemony” of the Balkans, their aim of liberating from the Ottomans, coupled with the new
expansionist Russian policy based on common roots with their South Slavic brothers,
strengthened the already existing ties and established new trans-regional entanglements. In the
second half of the 19th century, Russia reinforced its ties with the ‘South-Slav brothers,’
especially with the Bulgarian intelligentsia, whose national movement had not proceeded as
fast as the corresponding Serbian, Greek, and Romanian movements. Barbara Jelavich notes
that the “Bulgarians also sought a foreign patron, and they had only one possible choice. They
could not expect the assistance from France, the Habsburg Empire, or Britain, largely because
of their geographic location and the lack of historic involvement in the area by Western
powers. Russia was, therefore, the only state to which they could turn.” 448 Bulgarian
nationalism was to a great extent imported from Russia, where Slavophile/Slavenophile
romanticism spread in the mid 19th century, but was built upon European national models.
Therefore, this “late Bulgarian awakening” was expressed by Konstantin Fotinov, the creator
of the first Bulgarian magazine Lyuboslovie (1842) with the words:
“Where are their daily newspapers and magazines, or the weekly and monthly ones (…)
Where is their history, written in detail and widely spread among people, such as the other
445 Ibid, p. 324.
446 The phenomenon was first explored in the Balkan context. See Milica Bakic-Hayden, "Nesting Orientalisms;
The Case of Former Yugoslavia," Slavic Review 54, 4 (1995), pp. 917-93.
447 Barbara Jelavich, op.cit. 1991, p. 92.
448Ibid., pp. 159; On Russian policy towards the Balkans see also few documents at Central State Historical
Archive in St. Petersburg (TsGIA SPb), f. 408, op. 3, d. 383, l.4.
103
nations have and which would help us to stand side by side with the others and make the
others aware of the fact that we are as verbal as the rest of God’s creatures?’’449
The question implied by the above list is: where is the complete Bulgarian culture, built up
according to the European model? Hence, as I have stated above, this European model was
not in contrast with Russian expansionist policy, but rather compatible with its strategy
towards the Balkans. In fact, Russian politicians were aware that the Bulgarians could fall
under European influence (as Greece, Serbia, and partly Montenegro had) and attract the
respective powers for their own interests. To prevent this, Imperial Russia intensified its
activities with the Bulgarian intelligentsia. In this regard, Istanbul became one of the centres
of their cooperation, especially when Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev was appointed Russian
minister to the Porte (1864-1877). He supported the Pan-Slavic ideas among the South Slavs,
particularly among Bulgarians, and he helped in promoting recognition of the Bulgarian
church by the Patriarchate.450 In this attempt, Russia’s policy firstly tacitly supported the
Bulgarian Exarchate (in the early 1870s), and secondly, supported the Bulgarians during the
Eastern Crisis (1875-1878) and the Russo-Ottoman war (1877-1878).451 This support was
realised in the form of the Russian intervention into the Patriarchate and Ottoman Rumelia.
The group of Bulgarians who published the newspaper “Makedonija” in Istanbul defined the
Bulgarian Question as a “Pan Slavic Question (Panslavistskiyi vipros)”452 that needed support
from Imperial Russia. This support was actually achieved during the Russian intervention into
Ottoman affairs in 1877 and 1878, which I analyse as a “forcible Russian intervention.” This
was in fact the second intervention in Ottoman Rumelia (the first took place in Greece)
undertaken by one of the Great Powers. As in the Greek case, when Philhellenists played a
crucial role in the European intervention, in this case Pan-Slavists became very active in
helping their “Slavic brothers” in the Ottoman Empire. The members of the Slavic Benevolent
Societies (I. S. Aksakov, A. A. Kraevski, and General Mikhail Cherniyaev) became active
supporters that collected funds and recruited medical personnel to send to the Balkans. During
this period, Count Ignatiyev defined the Russian vision related to the South Slavs. In his
letters, he writes:
449 Alexandar Kiossev, op.cit., pp. 1; See also in Kultura website:
https://www.kultura.bg/media/my_html/biblioteka/bgvntgrd/e_ak.htm (Accessed. 18.01.2018.)
450Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria and the
Macedonian Question, (New York: Praeger Publisher, 2002), p. 88; Thomas A Meininger, Ignatiev and the
Establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate, 1864-1872 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin for the
Dept. of History - University of Wisconsin, 1970), p. 17.
451Victor Roudometof, op.cit., 2002, p. 89.
452Makedonija, 1 Januar, 1872, Carigrad
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“I undertook negotiations with all the Slavic peoples, preparing them for independence. The
work of undermining the Treaty of Paris and of countering Western and all foreign influences
on the Bosporus, especially those of Turkey itself and of Austria-Hungary, had to be
continued until the development of Russia‘s strength and until propitious events in Europe
would permit us to effect an independent solution of the Eastern Question in the Russian
sense, that is, by forming territories (oblastii) of coracialists and coreligionists bound to
Russia by indissoluble bonds, while leaving the Straits to our disposition.”453
These efforts were made in April 1877, when Imperial Russia declared war to the Ottoman
Empire. The Russian troops intervened in Ottoman Rumelia and advanced to Yesilkoy (a
district in Istanbul). According to Count Ignatyev, “it was necessary to bring the war to an
end, fulfilling the historic task of Russia and ensuring long-term peace (ispolni v
istoricheskuyu zadachu Rossii i obespechiveyi prodolzhitelniyi mir).” 454 Precisely Count
Ignatyev was appointed to sign the Treaty of San Stefano (3 March 1878) in order to “fulfil
Russia’s historic task” by creating a new map of the Balkans. As stipulated by this Treaty a
“Great Bulgaria” was established, which included major imagined Macedonian territories.
This state was actually an instance of the long arm of Russia in the Balkans, which was
opposed by many Great Powers. Subsequently, the Treaty of San Stefano was abolished and
the Great Powers decided to negotiate the future of the Balkan states in Berlin.
1.4. THE OTTOMAN “BORROWED COLONIALISM” TOWARDS RUMELIA
The ideas of the Enlightenment (the concept of reason, mission civilizatrice, and its
superiority), Romanticism (the formation of national movements and activities of
intelligentsia), and modernism (the efforts to create a strong state apparatus) were not only
influential in the rule over the Ottoman Christian subjects in Rumelia, but also influenced the
Ottoman centre – Istanbul. As we saw above, the concepts of modernity, civilisation,
imagination, and imperialism started with the Enlightenment in Europe, and spread more
widely through circulation of knowledge.455 In Imperial Russia this knowledge was accepted
in the early 18th century when Peter the Great accepted discourses of European “Civilisation”
and started to threaten its “Orient”, the Ottomans. In Japan and the Ottoman Empire, these
453 Nikolay P. Ignatyev, Zapiskigrafa N. P. Ignatyeva 1875-1877, Istoricheskiivestnik, I (1914), p. 56; Michael
Boro Petrovich, The Emergence of Russian Panslavism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), p. 262.;
On Pan-Slavism few documents in Central State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg (TsGIA SPb), f. 109, op. 38,
1863, item 23, p. 175.
454 Nikolay P. Ignatiev, Pohodniyepisma 1877.
455Ibid., pp. 5-6; If this idea was born in “the West,” however, modernisation was a process developed in “the
periphery,” as a product of a reaction to technological modernity. According to Dankwart Rustow and Robert
Wardone, the reasons for the emergence of modernisation included “the threat of European invasion or conquest
in countries (such as Russia, China, Japan, Turkey, Iran, and Thailand).” See: Dankwart Rustow and Robert E.
Ward, Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey, (New Jeresey: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 8.
105
initial programmes were developed in the form of “defensive modernization”456in the mid
19th century. The reasons for such “defensive modernization” were external (the development
of the Eastern Question among the Great Powers), and internal (the appearance of semiautonomous
provincial forces – Ayans and religious forces that weakened the empire).457 The
Eastern Question appeared in the form of: “who will fill the power vacuum left by the gradual
disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in Europe?”458 It seemed at that time that Russia, as an
already “modernised” state, could “impose even more severe terms than those which it
dictated in 1774.”459 As a reflection of the latter, the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky
wrote in his Diary (1876) that “in connection with the Eastern question, there has run into
Europe some small beast (piccola bestia) which does not give to all good, peace-loving
people a chance to calm down - people who love mankind and wish to see it flourishing.”460
In his opinion, this piccola bestia did not belong to “civilised” Europe, and therefore, “it [did]
seem that with the final solution of the Eastern question, all other political strife in Europe
[would] be terminated.”461 Indeed, thinking about “final solutions” was a common feature of
the 19th century, which peaked in imperialism after the Congress of Berlin. However, for
many among the “civilised”, this Eastern Question was a Balkan Question until 1878, when it
turned into a Macedonian Question until the Balkan wars in 1912.
Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who was a pioneer of European integration, in Pan-Europa
(1926) compared [something, please add] and recognised that “today [at the time], the
meaning of the European Question for the world [was] what the Balkan Question for Europe
during the whole (19th) century was: the source of internal insecurity and disturbance.”462
This “insecurity” and “disturbance” appeared with the emergence of semi-autonomous
provincial notables (ayans) and religious forces (vladika in Montenegro, vožd and prota in
Serbia, archontes and kocabasi in Greece, etc.) in Ottoman Rumelia, who started to challenge
the central authority in Istanbul. The Ottoman policy for the centuries was based on “policy of
accommodation” (istimalet) in an attempt “to win the subjected peoples over to their side” by
granting partial autonomy and self-governing bodies (in Moldavia and Wallachia, Dubrovnik,
456Ibid, p. 8.
457 M.S. Anderson, op.cit., p. xix
458Fred Singleton, op.cit., p. 100.
459M.S. Anderson, op.cit., p. xii
460 Fyodor Dostoyevski, A Writer’s Diary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2009), p. 428.
461 Ibid., p. 428.
462 Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Pan-Europa, (Wien: Paneuropa-Union Österreich, 1979) first published in
1926, p. 24; “die europäische Frage bedeutet heute für die Welt ungefähr das, was durch ein Jahrhundert die
Balkanfrage für Europa bedeutet hat: eine Quelle ewiger Unsicherheit und Beunruhigung.”
106
the mountainous areas of Montenegro, the northern Albanian region of Malesia, Bosnia, Mani
in the Peloponnese, Souli and Himara in Epirus, etc.).463 In fact, these were the “large areas
which had never been administered directly from Constantinople.”464 This emboldened the
ascendancy of provincial authorities striving to bring some parts of the empire under their
control. At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, such provincial powerholders
were Kara Mahmud Pasa Busatlija in Shkodra/Skadar, Osman Pazvanoglu in Vidin,
the Janissarie troops known as the “four leaders” (dayi/dahije) in Serbia, Ali Pasa of Tepelen
in Janina, Husein-kapetan Gradascevic, also known as the Dragon of Bosnia (Zmaj od Bosne),
and other landowners outside Ottoman Rumelia. The internationalisation of this problem
among the Great Powers related to the power struggles in Rumelia, and simultaneously
influenced Sultan Selim III to undertake military reforms in the form of a “New Order”
(Nizam-i Cedid) based on “enlightened ideas.”465 This state making was connected with
notions of centralisation and modernisation introduced by the Enlightenment and its
understanding of central government as “superior” in comparison to its “peripheries.”466 The
first attempt toward Ottoman recentralisation467 came to coincide with the beginnings of
military and administrative modernisation. In other words, its success depended on a new kind
of rule characterised by the deployment of greater state strength based on an infrastructure of
governance. If successful, this modernisation would bring the Ottoman entity closer to the
centralised, territorial state model of Europe.468 These introduced reforms, on the one hand
463Fikret Adanir, Semi-autonomous provincial forces in the Balkans and Anatolia, in Cambridge History of
Turkey, Vol. III, in The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839, ed. by Suraiya Faroqhi (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), pp- 158-160.
464 M.S. Anderson, op.cit. p. xv
465 Fikret Adanir, op.cit. 2006. p. 185; Charles Tilly, War Making and State Making as Organized Crime, in
Bringing the State Back In, ed. by Peter Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 183;
According to Charles Tilly, “the building up of war making capacity likewise increased the capacity to extract.
The very activity of extraction (…) created organization in the form of tax-collection agencies, police forces,
courts, exchequers, account keepers; thus it again led to state making.”
466 Gokhan Bacik, Turkey and Russia: Whither Modernization?, Journal of Economic and Social Research, Vol.
3, No. 2, 2001, pp. 55; As Gokhan Bacik has noted, “the center usually represents modernity; the periphery has
represented the ancient and the obsolete. Modernization in Russia and Turkey (Ottoman Empire) has been the
choice of the center as opposed to the periphery for hundreds of years. In this division of labor, the periphery has
felt itself to be committed to protecting the status quo.”
467 It is used the word recentralization because in the 16th century the Ottoman Empire was centralized, but
during the 17th and 18th began with more decentralized formation. See: Gabor Agoston, Military Transformation
in the Ottoman Empire and Russia, 1500-1800, Kritika Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12 (2),
2011.
468 Metin Heper, Political Modernization as Reflected in Bureaucratic Change: The Turkish Bureaucracy and a
‘Historical Bureaucratic Empire’ Tradition”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, No. 7, 1976, pp. 510;
According to Metin Heper, this process of modernisation in the Ottoman case was in fact a “selective
Westernization.” The state in order to compete with a technologically advanced Europe, the Ottoman Empire
especially during the time of Sultans Mahmud II (1808-1839) and Abdul Mecid (1939-1861), introduced
(re)centralisation process.
107
appeared as a necessity to avoid military defeats, territorial losses, and the traumatic notion of
the Eastern Question, while on the other the ideas of modernity brought a new understanding
of control of the empire’s periphery.469 The development of nationalism and the rise of rebels
in the periphery followed the process of centralisation of the Empire’s centre, in order to bring
its subjects closer, even though the ‘centre’ had traditionally enjoyed autonomy and
experienced low levels of infiltration, infrastructural power and extraction of the core state. In
this regard, Michel Foucault’s work enables us to analyse a historical transition in social
forms from the disciplinary society to the society of control. In his analysis, the concept of
biopolitics is a political rationale which takes administration as a project “to ensure, sustain,
and multiply life, to put this life in order.”470 He stresses different forms of power and
governmentalities and their distinctive aims and technologies of control of societie in the form
of biopolitics.471 These conceptions of control of societies and biopolitics describe central
aspects of the modern state that were adopted by Ottomans too. In this sense, the Ottoman
drive to achieve modernity like their “Western rivals” resulted in a “whole grab bag of
concepts, methods and tools of statecrafts, prejudices, and practices,” termed by Selim
Deringil a “borrowed colonialism.”472 In his opinion, the Ottomans adopted a colonial stance
toward the peoples of the periphery of their empire.473 I argue that the appearance of the
traumatic Eastern Question, along with the semi-autonomous empire’s periphery, were the
reasons for state centralisation, bureaucratisation, defensive or reluctant modernisation,
selective Westernisation, borrowed colonialism, governmentality, and biopolitics in order to
facilitate “bringing the state back in.’’474
This process of centralisation also generated an “Ottoman orientalism,” which was reflected
in the forms of suppression of insurrection (isyan) or repression of all forms of disobedience
by punishing misbehaviour (te'dib), and by trying to correct, educate, and civilise rebels
terbiye) in order to discipline ‘people of the peripheries’ (inzibat).475 In this context, the
469Kivanc Karaman and Sevket Pamuk, Ottoman State Finances in Comparative European Perspective, 1500-
1914, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 70, No 3, 2010, p. 621.
470Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Volume 1, 1976, (trans. R Hurley, 1978),
New York, p. 138.
471 Ibid. p. 141.
472 Selim Deringil, op.cit., pp. 312; He adopted Dietrich Geyer’s “borrowed imperialism,” which he uses for late
imperial Russia. See Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism. The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy
1860–1914 (Hamburg/ New York: Leamington Spa, 1987), p. 124.
473 Ibid., p. 313.
474Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research, in Bringing the State
Back In edited by Peter B. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
475Maurus Reinkowski, op.cit., in Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power ed. Hakan
Karateke and Maurus Reinkowski, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2005, pp. 203-208; On the other hand, according to
108
Ottoman Empire implemented “borrowed colonialism” towards its “Orient” (domestic
Orientalism) in many different ways in order to spread civilisation. This mission civilizatrice
had the aim of bringing closer its peripheral subjects (Christian and Muslim) and was
stipulated in the Imperial Reform Edict (Hatt-i Hümayun) as a granting of “equality of all
peoples of the empire – Muslims, Christians and Jews.”476 The enforcement of this edict
culminated with the Ottoman formal recognition as a legitimate member of the Concert of
Europe (1856), where in Аrticle 9 of the Treaty of Paris, the Great Powers “recognized the
high value of Hatt-i Hümayun,” which gave “no right of intervention in the internal affairs of
the empire.”477 However, this non-intervention was valid for a short time, but still was
important for the Ottoman government to consider its “centre” as “part of civilisation.” Thus,
the government administration was reorganised, the judiciary and executive councils were
established, legislation and laws were regulated, technological developments in the form of
roads, telegraphs, and railways were built, all in order to bring its provinces closer than ever
before.
Since the Macedonian Question was not yet in existence or was known as the Balkan
Question/Eastern Question, the Ottoman government was focused on bringing the whole of
Ottoman Rumelia under control. One of the most prominent figures of this initiative was
Ottoman scholar, Tanzimat bureaucrat and historian, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, who wrote the
famous history of the Ottoman Empire known as Tarih-i Cevdet” (1854-57). He emphasised
that the obligation of “civilized humankind [was] to bring solidarity to different communities”
that were “living in the villages far away from civilization.”478 According to him, the Ottoman
Empire belonged to the traditionally much greater Islamic civilisation, which was not part of
Europe, since “it was for centuries divided and far away from civilization.”479 Between 1855
and 1865 Ahmed Cevdet Pasha was appointed to different administrative positions to analyse
parts of the Ottoman Empire. In another collection of the notes he authored, Tezakir”, one can
notice the notions of “orientalism” and applied governmentality towards the mountainous
Serif Mardin, “the forces of the periphery, such as locally powerful families, saw the central officials as persons
with whom they had many points of contact, and also as rivals who tried to get the greatest possible share of the
agricultural surplus and other values for the center, which meant less for themselves.” See: S. Mardin, op.cit.,
MIT Press, Vol 102, No 1, 1973, p. 174.
476Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire 1856-1876, (New York: Princeton University Press,
1963), p. 3.
477 Ibid., p. 4.
478Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, Osmanli Imperatorlugu Tarihi, (Istanbul: Ilgi Kultur Sanat Yayincilik, 2008), p. 37;
“insane yaratılışından medeni olduğundan, dayanışma icin yer yer topluluklar meydana getirir (…) köy halkı
şehir halkına nispetle medeniyet nimetlerinden uzak oldukları gibi.
479 Ibid., pp. 236; Avrupa halkı kendi problemleri içine dalmış ve medeniyetten uzak durumdaydılar.
109
people in Rumelia, especially the Montenegrins (Karadaglular).480 Ottoman colonialism and
its mission were active in other parts of the Empire, where another prominent figure, Ahmed
Mithad Pasha, was appointed. He was chosen by the Ottoman administration for the
significant mission of introducing the Tanzimat and discipline to its periphery (in Nish in
1861-1864 and in the Danube region in 1864-1868, as well as in Anatolia and the Arab
Peninsula).481 As Nadir Ozbek asserts, the aim of these bureaucrats was “to extend their
authority into the provinces, which at that time could be described as only marginally under
Ottoman sovereignty according to contemporary definitions of the term.” 482 In Mithad
Pasha’s memoirs, Hayatim Ibret Olsun, he points out that he was appointed in the Balkans
(Rumeli) in May 1855 (Nisan 1271) “to fulfil the government’s aim of security and order
(devletce asil maksadin hasil oldugu emniyet ve asayis)” and to suppress “bandits and robbers
(eskiyalik ve haydutluk belasinin ortadan kaldirilmasi).”483 Therefore, by the regulations of
the provinces (Vilâyet Nizamnâmesi) in 1864 and 1871 a radical administrative reorganisation
in the provincial administration was conducted. Before and after these changes, Macedonia
did not exist administratively in the Ottoman Empire, but with these reorganisations its
imagined territories were divided into three Ottoman vilayets (Manastir, Selanik, and
Kosovo). In the words of Mithad Pasha, “the real aim (asil maksat) of such reorganisation was
to develop the homeland (memleketin kalkinmasi), to increase fortune/wealth (tezayid-i
servet), and to live in happiness (saadet icinde yasamasidir).”484 Therefore, in the period of
Tanzimat, Macedonia enjoyed greater development, fortune, and happiness, since its
entanglements had not been yet transformed into a question, and the Ottoman Empire was
more preoccupied with bringing under control its wider peripheries (Serbia, Montenegro,
Romania, etc.). In order for this governmentality policy to succeed, “in the vilayets were
introduced new forces of soldiers and gendarmeries (vilayetin asker ve zaptiyesi),” which
aimed “to discipline and to suppress the bandits (disciplinli bir sekle… eskiyalarin yok
480Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, Tezakir, (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1953), p. 15; According to Cevdet Pasa,
the Montenegrins “were attacking parts of the Empire (nevahiye tecavüze başladıklarindan)” that “forced the
Exalted State to bring up/educate/civilize them (Davlet-i aliyye dahi anlarin terbiyesine mecbur oldu).”
Elsewhere he also described them as wild and barbarous (âmelât-i vahsiyâne). Thus, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha’s
recommendations were that northern Albanians have sufficient capacity to defeat the Montenegrins, while the
Ottomans should integrate this part in order to discipline (inzibat) the Montenegrins. With this purpose, the
Ottoman government created a Committee for the Mountains of Shkodra/Skadar in 1856 (Iskodra Cibali
Komisyonu).
481 See the Vilayet Nizamnamesi, Düstûr 1. Tertip (Istanbul 1289), pp. 608-624; Hüdai Şentürk, Osmanlı
Devleti’nde Bulgar Meselesi (1850–1875), (Ankara: TTK, 1992), pp. 253–271.
482 Nadir Ozbek, Policing The Countryside: Gendarmes Of The Late 19th-Century Ottoman Empire (1876–1908),
Int. J. Middle East Stud. 40 (2008), p. 47.
483Mithat Pasa’nin hatiralari, Hayatim Ibret Olsun, (Istanbul: Temel Yayinlari, 1997), p. 23.
484 Ibid., p. 47.
110
edilmesine önem verilerek.)”485 In Nadir Ozbek’s opinion, the “gendarmerie thus emerged in
both Europe and in the Ottoman Empire as integral to modern state formation and its
technologies of government.” 486 Ozbek is also aware that this “extension of central
government administrative apparatuses into provinces” can be conceptualised of “as a kind of
‘colonization of the countryside’.”487 This “colonization of the countryside” that I reffered as
“borrowed colonialism” emerged with Tanzimat, developed with the establishment of the
gendarmerie (asakir-i zabtiye) in 1840 and of irregular units of armed men (basıbozuk),
incorporated in the forms of annual registers (salnameler), law regulations, and regulations of
the provinces for a uniform provincial administrative system that retained its military
character.488 Thus, one of the goals of the reorganisation was to show that the Ottoman
Empire had the capacity to be treated as part of “civilisation.“ Authors such as Semseddin
Sami Frasheri went as far as to to blame “Christianity for the decline of the Greek civilisation.
It was, however, Islam which had brought back the Greek civilisation, which meant that
Europe received the Greek civilisation, which the Europeans claimed to be the root of
European civilisation, from the Islamic civilisation.”489
Another prominent figure, Namik Kemal, argued in the July 22, 1872 issue of the newspaper
Ibret that “Europe [did not] know the East (Avrupa sarkı bilmez).”490 In another article, titled
“Vatan”, published on March 22, 1873, apart from defending the Ottoman civilisation, Kemal
developed the concept of “homeland” (vatan), explaining that “in every civilisation the love
of homeland (vatan) is the most important virtue and the most sacred duty.”491 The concepts
of “Civilisation” and “homeland” were employed with the such an aim that, in the age of
questions/nationalism/imperialism, a unity of the Ottoman nation (Millet-i Osmaniyye) would
be achieved, composed by various ethnical and religious backgrounds. In the comments of
Mithad Pasha, the most important aim of the Ottoman government should be to bring exactly
these “different races, religions and sects” under the “territorial integrity” and the rule of
“basic law.”492 The implementation of this idea, as I have argued, was conceptualised on the
485 Ibid., p. 49.
486 Nadir Ozbek, op.cit., 2008, p. 47.
487 Ibid., p. 49.
488 Ibid., p. 52.
489Ebru Boyar, op.cit., pp. 86; S. Sami, Kamusül-Alam. Tarihve Cografya Lugatı, Vol. VI (Istanbul, 1316/1898).
490 Ibid., pp. 85; Namık Kemal, ‘Avrupa Sarkı Bilmez,’ Ibret, no. 7, 22 July 1872 in Özön: Namık Kemal ve
Ibret Gazetesi, pp. 54-59.
491Behlul Ozkan, Vatan: The Making of National Homeland in Turkey, p. 40.
492Mithat Pasa’nin hatiralari, Yildiz Mahkemesive Taifzindani (Mirat-I Hayret), (Istanbul: Temel Yayinlari,
1997), pp. 23-25; “irk, din ve mezhep olarak farkli ve ayri olmalariyla beraber (…) tamamiyet-i mülkiyesi (…)
Kanun-u Esasi.”
111
basis of “borrowed colonialism,” implemented by the mission civilizatrice towards its
periphery/countryside, which was challenged by the nationalism of the Balkan peoples and
threatened by the Russian mission of solving the Eastern Question. The years of the Eastern
Crisis (Şark Buhranı) were key moments in the changing of policies and strategies among the
Ottomans, Great Powers, and Balkan states. The Ottoman statesman and politician Eginli Said
Pasha, in his memoires written between 1876 and 1880, observed that ”these days were very
dangerous for the Exalted State” since on the one hand the “Russian nation, due to religious
agitations, [was] aiming to conquer,” and on the other, the “Austrian state, in order to protect
its territories, [would] be obliged to send soldiers in Bosnia.”493 These predictions came true
at the Congress of Berlin (1878) in the form of establishments of the new independent Balkan
states, which would be the stepping stone for policies and practices that further defined their
living space (Lebensraum) towards the rest of Ottoman Rumelia, known as Macedonia
(Vilayet-i Selase). On the other hand, during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II the Ottoman
Empire transformed its conception of unity of the Ottoman nation (Millet-i Osmaniyye) into a
unity of Islam (Ittihad-i Islam) as an ideology that incorporated Muslim Albanians as
“guardians” of the three vilayets.
1. CONCLUSION
Here I presented the emergence of the Macedonian Question and contentious politics
between the Great Powers, the Ottoman state, and Balkan elite. All this is to say that the
imaginations, maps, and cartography, together with media and newspapers popularised
Macedonia as a geographic region, especially among the Great Powers. By using several
European sources (British, French, and German), I thematically traced the Great Powers‘
imaginations of Macedonia, which regarded this territory (along with Greece) as the
wellspring of “European civilisation” since ancient Hellenic times. I illustrated the latter
through a few examples of Hellenophiles across Europe, who through the media popularised
these Ottoman territories as “cradle of European civilisation.” Furthermore, I argued that this
understanding of Macedonia as a geographical region did not stop with Europe, but was
circulating in the form of knowledge (Wissenszirkulation) throughout the Ottoman Empire,
especially among the Balkan elite. Such knowledge about Macedonia spilled over into
regional politics of the Ottoman Empire, where the Balkan intellectuals produced narratives
493 Said Pasa, II Abdulhamid’in Ilk Mabeyn Feriki Egenli Said Pasa’nin Hatirati, I-II (1876-1880), (Istanbul:
Bengi Yayinlari, 2011), p. 104; “Devlet-i aliyye bugunku gun gayet tehlikeli bir halde bulunuyor (…) Rusya
millet efkar-i diniyesinin galeyaniyle devleti surup goturmekte oldugundan ahaliyi zabt etmek (…) Avusturya
devleti kendisini muhafaza icun Bosna’ya asker sevk etmeye mecbur olacaktir.
112
against the Ottomans and labels such as “Turkish yoke” and “Asiatic Mongols,” or
“barbarians.” By taking into consideration several examples from the European and Balkan
literature and media, I argued that the European elite, together with the Balkan intelligentsia
developed prejudice against the “Oriental other,” the Ottomans, and imagined Macedonia into
their future nation-state projects. It also opened up windows of opportunity for cooperation
(especially with Russia) and built up various entanglements across the regions. Actually, this
small “civilised” group of Balkan people needed the assistance of the Great Powers against
“the fiery zeal and bigoted enthusiasm of the followers of Islam.” This delivery of “civilised”
ideas - for the Slavs, Catholics, Jews, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks – transformed the
Macedonian Questions into European ones. In this respect, I showed that the Macedonian
Questions did not concern the Balkans and Ottomans only, but also the whole of the West of
Europe. Thus, I openly argued that the Macedonian Questions should also be studied as a
globalised “problem” by including various local, regional, and international perspectives.
2. STATE POLICIES AND MOBILE INTELLECTUALS AS AGENTS OF
NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM: BETWEEN THE CONGRESS OF
BERLIN AND THE ILINDEN UPRISING (1878-1903)
113
The Congress of Berlin, held between 13 June and 13 July, brought different representatives
of the six great powers (Imperial Russia, Great Britain, France, Dual Monarchy, Italy, and
Germany) to the table, the Ottoman Empire, and Balkan statesmen of Greece, Serbia,
Romania, and Montenegro. This Treaty terminated the Russo-Ottoman war of 1877-78,
replaced the preliminary Treaty of San Stefano, which had granted a “Greater Bulgaria” under
Imperial Russian influence and came at the end with decisions to establish new independent
Balkan states (Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania; and semi-independent Bulgaria).494 In the
southern parts of Ottoman Macedonia, Eastern Rumelia was established under a special
administration, and the region of Macedonia was returned to the control of the Ottomans, with
the condition, arranged by the Great Powers, that the Ottoman administration should
introduce reforms. According to Article 23, these reforms were to be “implemented under
European guidance, which was bound to lead to a conflict of authority and encourage the
Christians.”495 According to Gul Tokay, “European intervention under the guise of ‘reforms’
brought complications by not only further weakening the Ottoman administration but also by
encouraging the communities involved to take advantage of the fortuitous circumstances to
express their national aspirations.”496 Along these lines, in the last fifty years scholars have
paid attention to how late-19th century reforms and education affected the development of
modern national identifications. Few historians of the Ottoman Empire and Balkan states have
recently documented that the same patterns influenced not only Western Europe, but also its
south-eastern parts – the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. Due to factors that I will highlight
below, the scheduled reforms in Ottoman Macedonia, introduced at the Congress of Berlin
and promised by the Ottoman Empire, opened a space for the interference of the Balkan states
into Ottoman affairs, especially regarding the education that predictably should have
influenced the ethno-national affiliations of the local population.
Nevertheless, the reforms were foreseen for the Ottoman provinces of Selanik, Monastir, and
Kosovo and two independent sanjaks, namely Drama and Serres. Even in the Protocols of the
Congress of Berlin, the Representatives of Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany,
Italy, Russia, and Turkey did not define precisely if these three provinces should be named
494 The Treaty of Berlin guaranteed semi-independent principality of Bulgaria within the Ottoman Empire, with
much smaller borders than “Greater Bulgaria” foreseen by the Treaty of San Stefano.
495 Gul Tokay, A Reassessment of the Macedonian Question between 1878-1908, in War and Diplomacy, The
Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin, eds. by Hakan Yavuz with Peter Sluglett (Utah: Utah
University Press, 2011), p. 4
496 Ibid., p. 1
114
“Macedonia”. Lord Salisbury in general proposes to substitute the words “Greek Provinces”
for “the border provinces with the Kingdom of Greece” that included even imaginary spaces
of Macedonia, Thrace, and Crete.497 The questions that one might hence pose would be: what
was then Macedonia? Which parts of the Ottoman Empire did it include? How did it become
popularised by the Great Powers and regional states? How did these local and regional
questions become globalised? What kind of policies were introduced by the Ottoman Empire
on the local and regional levels? What was the reaction of the Albanian intelligentsia? Can
one trace cooperations and clashes between the Ottoman government and Albanian-speaking
bureauctrats? What was the reaction of the Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek states? What kind
of policies did they develope? What was their strategy in influencing the locals and rural
population? In order to answer these questions, I will use various sources (Ottoman, Albanian,
Bulgarian, Serbian, and English, French, and German) and use the “top-down” approach that
can help us to understand the formulations of the state policies and mobile intellectuals who
tried to install the national affiliations to the locals on the ground. Thus, this chapter aims to
represent the emergence of the Macedonian Question(s), which started with competing state
policies and contested strategies between the Ottoman Empire and Balkan states over the
Macedonian population. These political competitions will be analysed in the time frame from
the Congress of Berlin (1878) to the Ilinden Uprising (1903) by taking into consideration the
role of mobile intellectuals and their instrumentalisation of education for nationalist purposes.
2.1. THE OTTOMAN CONSOLIDATION OF THE THREE VILAYETS IN MACEDONIA
(1878-1903)
If one analyses the Treaty of Berlin, one would find no mention whatsoever of the term
“Macedonia.” Even in Article 23, which referred to the Ottoman territories of the “three
vilayets,” Macedonia by was not stated under its name. It was rather compared to the reforms
“in the Island of Crete by the Organic Law of 1868” and the Treaty expressed the necessity
that reforms “be introduced into the other parts of Turkey in Europe for which no special
arrangement has been provided by the present Treaty.”498 The Ottoman administration did not
employ the term “Macedonia” for the “parts of Turkey in Europe” and referred to these
497 Protocols of Congress of the Representatives of Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy,
Russia, and Turkey; for the Settlement of Affairs in the East. (Berlin: June, July, 1878), pp. 904-908; “seront
remplaces par ceux de ‘provinces Grecques (…) e'est-a-dire, sur la question de savuir si les mots ‘provinces
limitrophes.”
498 Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt Band, Nr. 31, (Berlin: 1878), pp. 307-345.
115
provinces as vilayet-i selase, as the “three provinces,” or sometimes only as Rumelia.499 The
meaning of Rumelia was in fact the land of the Romans (descedents of the Roman Empire). It
did not include Anatolia, but rather the territories on the western side of the Bosphorus.
Likewise, the Ottoman administration insisted on the term “Rumelia,” a term that defined the
European Provinces of the Ottoman Empire. However, since Rumelia did not have clearly
demarcated boundaries, during the 1880s, the Ottoman administration deciced to limit the
reforms only to the three vilayets (the Selanik, Manastir, and Kosovo provinces) in order to
avoid interference of the Great Powers in the whole Rumelia region. Thus, the Ottoman
statemen together with Rumelia, started to use the term “vilayeti-i selase” or simply “three
provinces” more frequently. According to Article 23 of the Treaty of Berlin, these three
provinces should have been an autonomous region under the control of the European
Commission, instituted for Eastern Roumelia.500 In order to prevent this autonomy, on 23
August 1880 the Ottoman state introduced a reform project in the form of draft law named
“The Law of the Rumeli Provinces” (Rumeli Vilayeti Kanunu/Layiha). These Rumeli
provinces included Kosovo, Manastir, and Selanik, by then known officially as the “three
provinces” (vilayeti selase). On the other hand, the name “Macedonia” was promoted in
European media and among the European diplomats. This term was later also accepted by the
regional Balkan states who often had internal synonyms for it such as “Southern Serbia”
(Juzna Srbija) or “South-western Bulgaria” (Yugo-zapadna Bulgaria).
However, the Ottoman administration predominantly referred to it as the “three vilayets.” In
order to exert direct control over these vilayets from Istanbul, the Ottoman administration also
introduced a gendarmerie to apply security measures that provided it with the advantage to
constitute the region as a kind of semi-colonial province based on “borrowed colonialism.” In
seeking greater control of its territories, the Ottoman Empire pursued a programme of state
centralisation in Ottoman Macedonia. In Article 151, the draft law stipulated that the Ottoman
state and its central administration (idare-i merkeziyesi) would appoint governors (mutasarrif
ve kaymakam) in the provinces in order to provide general security (canibinden asayis-i
umumiye).501 According to Article 258, the gandarmerie (jandarma) was accountable to the
Ministry of Justice (Adliye Nazareti)502 in order to provide the central administration with
499 Gul Tokay, op.cit., p. 4.
500 Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt Band 1878, op.cit.
501 Rumeli Vilayeti Kanunu Layiha, Ahali-I Vilayetin Hukuku Umumiyesi, (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire,
1296/1880), p. 38.
502 Ibid, p. 57.
116
direct control.503 This institutionalisation developed into one of the key bureaucratic agencies
of the modernising Ottoman Empire, arranging long-distance surveillance of the local
situation.504 The policy of appointing gandarmerie in the three vilayets can also be analysed in
the broader context of the Ottoman counter-colonialist response to European imperialism and
Balkan small-state imperialism. 505 Furthermore, in pursuing this policy, the Ottoman
administration in the Macedonian context was appointing prevalently Muslim bureaucrats for
applying this centralisation policy.
Article 308 of the draft law clearly proclaimed that “the non-Muslim population [was] exempt
(as before) from its service,”506 implying that the distinction between Muslim and Christian
elements was still (strongly) emphasised. In this regard, the Ottoman administration “in every
vilayet appoints a colonel or gendermerie” (see Article 315) that belong to the Muslim
community. 507 This gandarmerie force was in fact often recruiting Albanian-speaking
locals.508 This recruitment could be also studied as an Ottoman attempt to “civilize” its
“periphery” in order to bring the locals closer to the “centre.” One of the mechanisms of this
mission civilizatrice aimed to bound local Muslims under the direct supervision of the Sultan
as the Caliph of all Muslims. This strategy also sought to bind Ottoman Rumelia to religious
notions of the Unity of Islam (İttihad-ı İslam). 509 Abdulhamid II’s support of
“Albanianism”510 was thus an attempt to bind Albanian-speaking Muslims to “Unity of Islam”
503 Ibid., pp. 64; “sehir ve karyelerde emniyet-I umumiyenin muhafazasi evvela jandarma saniyen sehir ve
koylerdeki zzaptiye neferati vasitasiyla temin kilinmistir.”
504 Başbakanlik Osmanli Arsivi or BOA., Y.EE. No. 101/54, Hicri, 4 Zilhicce 1297, (7 November 1880)
505 Isa Blumi, Ottomanism Then and Now: Historical and Contemporary Meanings, Die Welt des Islams 56
(2016), pp. 290-317.
506 Rumeli Vilayeti Kanunu Layiha, op.cit. ., pp. 65; “gayrimuslim jandarmalar hizmetlerinin imtidadi muddetce
bizzat askeriyeden muaftirlar.”
507 Ibid., pp. 66; “her vilayette bir miralay/alay beyi veyahud bir kaymakamin kumandasi tahtinda olarak bir
jandarma firkasi bulunacaktir (…) her kazada bir yuz basinin veya mulazimi evvelin kumandasi altinda olarak
bir jandarma bolugu bulunur.”
508 In order to respect the Treaty of Berlin and its article 23, the European Commission needed to approve this
draft of law that can be seen from its last part (fasil-i Mahsus) on the date 11 and 23 August 1880 (11 ve 23
Augustos sene 80 Darussaadet) by Asim Pasha (Hariciye Nazari), Sahak Abro Efendi (Surayi Devlet Azasi),
Austrian (Mosyo Kusan), German (Bronesoyan), French (Obara), English (Fiyc Moris), Italian (Vernoni) and
Russian (Hitrov) representatives. “Babiali 13 Temmuz sene 78 tarihinde Berlinde akdolunan muahedenamenin
yirmi ucuncu bendi ahkamini icraen muahedename-I mezkurede kendileri icin teskilat-I mahsusa tasrih kilinan
Rumelideki vilayeti sahaneye idhal kilinacak nizamat hakkinda Rumeli Sarki Avrupa komisyonunun rey ve
mutalaasini istifsar etmis.” See: Rumeli Vilayeti Kanunu Layiha, Ahali-I Vilayetin Hukuku Umumiyesi, İstanbul,
Matbaa-i Amire, 1296 [1880), p. 67; See also State Archives of North Macedonia (DARSM) in Skopje, N 135,
12.08.1880
509 Celal Nuri İleri, İttihad-ı İslam ve Almanya (Istanbul: Yeni Osmanlı Matbaa ve Kütüphanesi, 1333/1914).
510 Nathalie Clayer, The Albanian Students of the Mektebi-i Mülkiye: Social Networks and Trends of Thought,
in Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy, ed. Elisabeth Özdalga (London and New York: Routledge
Curzon, 2005).
117
(Ittihad-i Islam) instead of an independent national movement.511 The main supporter of such
ideas was Mehmed E. Safvet Pasha, a former Grand Vizier, who on 12 April 1880 submitted a
memorandum advocating a separate policy for the people living in the periphery, especially
the Albanian-speaking groups who offered “essence of support” (maya-ul-istinadı) to the
Ottoman bureaucracy in combatting its enemies.512 Not only the recruitment of the Albanianspeaking
population by the Ottoman Empire, but also the threats of the Great Powers
(together with the Balkan states) affected inter-community relations between Muslims and
Christians.513 As a response to this threat, Haci Mulla Zeka (1832-1902), a notable Albanianspeaking
Muslim, met in Ipek with other 450 Albanian-speaking Muslims in order to reach an
agreement (kararname). On 29 January 1899 this event was known as the creation of the
League of Ipek, whose aim was to protect the Ottoman territories in Rumelia against the
foreign invasion of the Great Powers or regional Balkan states, and to discuss a potential
autonomous Albanian Vilayet. It is worth noting that two fractions at this League were
represented: the first major, conservative group demanded that the five vilayets (including all
three vilayets of Macedonia) be united into one semi-autonomous “Albanian vilayet;” and the
second group, that of more radical members, wanted full administrative autonomy for the four
vilayets (Thessaloniki was excluded).514 For the first, the more conservative group, the vilayet
of Thessaloniki was a buffer-zone of the “Albanian-Turkish division of powers,” which would
preserve a connection with Sultan Abdulhamid II, who was the Halife-I Musluminzillullah-i
firaz (“the shadow of God on earth”).515 Therefore, for this conservative group of Albanianspeaking
notables in the Kosovo vilayet, the connection with the Sultan-Caliph expanded
more of a platform that was rather religious than national.516 As has been presented, these
notables were often offered important posts in the local administration and gendarmerie, or as
guards at the Palace in Istanbul. As a result, large numbers of male Albanian-speaking
Muslims (and few Christian Albanians) accepted their position in the Ottoman administration,
511 Nuray Bozbora, The Policy of Abdulhamid II regarding the Prizren League, Turkish Review of Balkan Studies
11 (2006), p. 47. Sultan Abdulhamid II tried to give an Islamic character to the organized resistance of Albanian
notables in the Prizren League (1878) in order to oppose preparations for the Congress of Berlin and eventual
consequences of the Treaty.
512 George Gawrych, The Crescent andthe Eagle: Ottoman Rule, Islam and the Albanians, 1874-1913 (New
York: I.B.Tauris, 2006), 73.
513 Zef Jubani, Historia e popullit shqiptar: për shkollat e mesme (Prishtinë: Libri Shkollor, 2002), pp. 182–185.
514Charles Jelavich, Barbara Jelavich, The establishment of the Balkan national states, 1804-1920, (Washington:
University of Washington Press, 1986), p. 86.
515 Nathalie Clayer, Ne fillimet e nacionalizmit shqiptar: Lindja e nje kombit me shumice mysliman ne Evrope,
botime (Tiranë: Perpjekja, 2012), in original Nathalie Clayer, Aux origines du nationalism albanais: la naissance
d’une nation majoritairement musulmane on Europe (Paris: Karthala, 2007) p. 546; According to Nathalie
Clayer, in return to this loyalty, “he (Abdulhamid II) pursued a policy of reconciliation towards Albanians, by
giving decorations and always appearing as Sultan-Caliph, protector of Albanian Muslims.”
516 George Gawrych, op.cit., New York, I.B.Tauris, 2006, pp. 125
118
joining the Ottoman bureaucracy and often playing an active role on its borders with Serbia,
Greece, or Bulgaria.517 These local, Albanian-speaking Muslims constituted a powerful group
in helping to bring both religious unity and security to borderland areas. Their engagements
aimed to preserve Sultan Abdulhamid’s four pillars of the state (dört rüknlu devlet) by being
active subjects along the Empire’s western border (the pillar of support in Ottoman
Rumelia). 518 This Albanian-speaking group recognised the Hamidian regime as their
protector, if for no other reason than that it had provided opportunities for their long-term
survival. In return, they were expected to re-establish and preserve stability in the Ottoman
peripheries (i.e. Macedonia), or to be incorporated in the Sultan’s private guard.
Apart from the role of religion and the gendarmerie in recruiting locals to work for the state,
another tool applied to bringing this population closer to the state was (that of) education.
Articles 18 519 and 63 520 of “The Law on the Rumeli Provinces” (Rumeli Vilayeti
Kanunu/Layiha) recognised freedom of education under the supervision of the Ottoman
government. The schools built by the Ottoman government in Rumelia, much like their
European and American counterparts, were meant to impose a level of homogeneity over
otherwise culturally diverse populations.521 In this respect, in several Ottoman reports from
the 1880s, the role of the Albanian mobile intellectuals was underscored, predominantly of
those from the south (the Tosk region), who were lobbying at the Palace for opening Ottoman
and Albanian schools in order to resist the educational hegemony of the Patriarchate Church
and the “Greeks.” 522 At this point one should note that the audience of these reports were
517The key figure in the Ottoman modernist movement was Namik Kemal, who considered the Western
democratic institutions as invention of Islam. Similar ideas will be represented by Abdulhamid’s Pan-Islamism
policy. For the genesis of this understanding see: Serif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A
Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle
East), Syracuse University Press; New edition edition, 2000;
Linda Darling (1998) challenged this conception of the Ottoman Empire as “stagnant and declining,” revealing
that became “promoted during the age of imperialism with the spread of Western hegemony development of
capitalism through political violence andeconomic exploitation of the rest of the world.”; See: Linda T. Darling,
Rethinking Europe and the Islamic World in the Age of Exploration, Journal of Early Modern History 2(3):221-
246; Fatma Muge Gocek, Parameters of a Postcolonial Sociology of the Ottoman Empire, in Decentering Social
Theory ed. by. Julian Go (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013), p. 86.
518 George Gawrych, The Crescent, 55.
519 Rumeli Vilayeti Kanunu Layiha, op.cit., “Umur-u talim ve tedris serbesttir ve hukiimetin nezareti tahtinda
cari olacaktir. Bu nezaret bilaistisna bilctimle mekaniye šamil olacaktir.”
520 Ibid.“Mabet ve mekatib ve mirata merbut bulunan ve me§rut lehi (?) miinderc olan evkaf hasilati umur-u
maarife sarf olunmak ifin bulunduklari vilayete terk edilmi§tir. Bu varidat vakfiyeden her cemaat evkafi varidati
o cemaat mekatibine mahsus olacaktir. Varidat-i vakfiye-i mezkure her cemaatin cemaat meclisi marifetiyle ve
maarif mudiiruniin nezaretiyle idare ve sarf olunacaktir.”
521 Isa Blumi, Teaching Loyalty in the Late Ottoman Balkans: Educational Reform in the Vilayets of Manastir
and Yanya, 1878-1912, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. XX1 No. 1&2
(2001), p. 15.
522 Ibid.
119
exclusively southern, Albanian-speaking intellectuals who often lobbied for schools to be
opened in their home areas such as the Manastir, Yanina, or Salonika Vilayets. 523
With this interest, the Albanian intellectuals from the south, who were part of Istanbul’s
intellectual power circle, received approval from the Ottoman government on 7 March 1887
for the foundation of a private school with instruction in Albanian, known as Mësonjëtorja, in
Korça (then part of the Manastir vilayet). Contrary to claims of Albanian historians, the
activities of the local Albanian-speaking population did not aim at resisting the Ottoman
institutions; rather, Albanian speakers actively lobbied in Istanbul for the construction of these
Ottoman or Albanian schools in their communities in order to oppose the Balkan regional
states and their claims. Such lobbying for the schools and education aimed in fact to complete
the task of the Albanian intelligentsia in Istanbul and Ottoman bureaucrats of indoctrinating
the population and bringing them close to the state. Such engagements were favoured by the
Hamidian regime as they added to the opposition to Pan-Slavism and Hellenism in Ottoman
Macedonia, as well as to European imperialism globally, with a “unified politico-religious
entity vis-à-vis the colonial West with its ties to Christendom.”524 These reforms in education
and an elaborate military bureaucracy accompanied by “borrowed colonialism” had the aim of
building a protective stronghold in Rumelia by the Albanian-speaking locals.525 The First
secretary (Mabeyn-i Hümayun Başkâtibi) of the Ottoman Empire, Tahsin Pasha, between
1894 and 1908 wrote that “Abdulhamid II’s guards in the top ranks were Albanians”
(Padişahin muhafazasi olarak Arnavutlar birinci safi işgal ederlerdi).526 Albanians enjoyed a
special status in the Sultan’s palace (Sultan Hamidin Arnavutlara karşi bu itimadi onun için
bir siyastin temelini teşkil ediyordu) because they were an Ottoman fortress in Rumelia
523 In this regard, I argue that there was still not present a “pan-Albanianism” among the intellectuals, but rather
local initiatives. A fact, that in Kosovo vilayeti were only seven Ottoman state-founded primary schools show
that the southern Albanian intellectuals in Istanbul supported rather their regions of origin that was often
Manastir or Yanya vilayet.
524 Kamal Soleimani, Modern Islamic Political Thought, “Islamism” and Nationalism, See:
https://www.academia.edu/31595719/Modern_Islamic_Political_Thought_Islamism_and_Nationalism
(Accessed 30.03.2019).
525 Examples of this policy were: Pashko Vasa - governor of Lebanon, Bajram Curri - captain in Pristine’s
gendarmerie, Semsi pasa - the commander of the 18th division in Mitrovica, Yakovali Riza Bey – the mayor of
Halepo, Isa Boletini served rank in the palace guard (tufekci), and many others Malisors were given entry into
the Sultan’s palace guard; or other personalities, such as Sami Frasheri, helped the reforms in education.In
addition, Avlonyali Mehmed Ferid Pasa became a Grand Vezier during the Macedonian crisis between 1903 and
1908 helping in management of the local crisis.525 According to Nuray Bozbora, “the appointed Albanian highranking
bureaucrats’s loyalty to Abdulhamid II cannot be neglected (…) even during the Macedonian crisis
developed by Serb, Bulgarian and Greek activities.” See: Nuray Bozbora, op.cit., Boyut Yayin Grubu, 1997, pp.
216; See also: Osman Köksal, Osmanlı Devletinde Sıkı Yönetim ile İlgili Mevzuat Üzerine bir Deneme, AÜ
Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi, 12 (2001), pp. 157-171.; Ragip Sarıca, Fransa’da ve
Türkiye’de Örfi İdare Rejimi. (İstanbul: Baro Macmuasi, 1941).; Naci Şensoy, Osmanlı İmparatorluğunun Sıkı
Yönetime Müteallik Mevzuatı Üzerinde Sentetik bir Deneme, İÜHFM, 13/ 1 (1947), pp. 95-114.
526 Tahsin Paşa, Sultan Abdülhamid‘in Sirdaşı (Istanbul: Yakin Plan Yayinlari, 2000), 33.
120
(Rumelide Arnavutlar, Abdülhamid siyasetinin kalesi gibi görülürdü).527 At the turn of the
century, it was common to find in Ottoman palaces Albanian-speaking individuals from
Ottoman Macedonia who were recruited on the grounds of the ‘Unity of Islam.’
2.2. FROM UNITIY OF ISLAM TO ALBANIAN NATIONALISM IN THE THREE
VILAYETS OF MACEDONIA
Although Albanianism emerged as part of Abdulhamid II’s support of the local Albanians in
the framework of the Unity of Islam, one should also bear in mind that, at the turn of the
century, Albanian nationalism was under major influence of different studies as well, done by
European travellers interested in Albanian communities throughout the Eastern
Mediterranean. Specifically, in the context of Central Eastern Europe, it has been observed
that intellectuals strived to establish “national history” as a scientific discipline, thus blurring
the boundaries between science and the national imagination.528 Influenced by Romantic
nationalism and processes of inventing different national traditions around the Balkans, the
Austrian linguist Johann Georg von Hahn, in his work Albanesische Studien (1854),
developed a “scientific claim” that “the Pelasgians were the original proto-Albanians and the
language spoken by the Pelasgians, Illyrians, Epirotes, and ancient Macedonians was closely
related to the Albanian spoken at the time.”529 Furthermore, he emphasised that “[Albanians
and] Macedonians [had in fact originated] from a Pelasgo-Illyrian tribe (Makedonern sind
pelasgisch-illyrische Volksstamm).”530 In this context, this narrative established an approach
that suggested that the ancient Greek civiliation and its achievements also had a Pelasgian,
that is “Albanian origin”. The most important feature of this “scientific claim” was the
transfer of knowledge of an emerging nationalism. Hence, there is no doubt that this narrative
influenced many Albanian intellectual personalities that saw this development as “the greatest
expansion of the Hellenic civilization and rule [that] occurred thanks to an 'Albanian' and not
a Hellen.”531 Figures originating from the ancient period, such as Alexander the Great and
527 Ibid., 33.
528 See: Monika Baár, Historians and Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 50.
529 Johann Georg von Hahn, Albanesische Studien (Jena: F. Mauko, 1854).
530 Ibid., p. 228.; According to Hahn, the Macedonians were represented by the Greeks as an alien tribe
(Makedoner ofters als Barbaren und fremden Stammes (von Griechen gezeichnet)‘‘ belonging to Barbarians
(Wenn nun aber sämmtliche Epiroten und Makedoner entweder Pelasger oder Abkömmlinge der Pelasger
heissen, wie geht es zu, dass sie auch Barbaren gennant werden? – Wir antworten einfach, weil eben die
Pelasger keine Hellenen, sondern nach hellenischer Ausdrucksweise Barbaren waren.) According to this theory,
Macedonians were not ancient Greeks but rather Pelasgian/illyrian whose descendants are Albanians.
531Noel Malcolm, Myths of Albanian national identity: Some key elements, Albanian Identities: Myth and
History ed. by. Stephanie Schwanders-Sievers; Bernd J. Fischer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002),
p. 77.
121
Pyrrhus of Epirus were enveloped in a national narrative and claimed by the intelligentsia as
Albanian men of antiquity. Thus, the late nineteenth-century Albanian intelligentsia had a
pivotal role in establishing the Pelasgian/Macedonian/Albanian heritage as the crucial subject
of Albanian literature, culture, and politics. In particular, this understanding was transformed
into a national narrative during the struggle in the three vilayets (vilayeti selase). Commenting
on this, Nathalie Clayer developed a question in the form: “Where did the borders of
‘Albania’ lie, in particular with Macedonia?”532 On the basis of this question, this sub-chapter
aims to analyse how the Eastern Question (i.e. Macedonian Question) influenced the Albanian
national movement(s) and developed understandings related to Unity of Islam or nationalist
program(s) that intervened into entangled trajectories. The study will trace the transformation
of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Weltanschauung of the Albanian
mobile intellectuals that differs from in space and time from their activism. In this regard, one
cannot analyse the Albanian national movement as a unified project developed in a vacuum,
but rather as processual constructs of multilayered understandings of national narratives and
historical intersectionalities, all of which had something in common: to influence the locals’
national affiliations on the ground.
2.2.1. ALBANIANISM IN ISTANBUL: AGAINST PAN-SLAVISM AND PANHELLENISM
We shall now take a look at a memorandum of 1877, in which the Austrian consul in Shkoder,
F. Lippich, portrayed Albanians as inhabitants of many parts of what will later be known as
Macedonia. Excerpts of it follow:
“The [Albanian] northern linguistic frontier runs from west to east,…somewhat below
Antivari, above the mountain ridge and the northwestern corner of the Shkoder lake,
following the Sem upstream above Fundina through Kuci to Vasojevic and Kolasin; the latter
two districts, although Serbian-speaking in the majority, still seem to be in part of Albanian
origin-perhaps the only instance of slavization of Albanians….In its further course, the
linguistic frontier moves from Kolasin to Gusinje and Plava, upstream the Ibar river to Rozaj,
then from Suhodol and Gulgovik to Duga Poljana, on the Rogosna plateau, west and
southwest of Novi Pazar, where it climbs the districts of Vucitern, Kurcunli and Prokoplje up
to the Serbian border and descends again to the Toplica, reaching its junction with the
Bulgarian Morava.…on the course of this river [Morava] and the Moravica….bending
westward and running along the southern slope of Karadag through the Lepenc pass. It then
532 Nathalie Clayer, The Young Turks and the Albanians or Young Turkism and Albanianism? in Penser, agir et
vivre dans l’Empire ottoman et en Turquie, ed. Nathalie layer and Erdal Kaynar (Paris, Louvain, Walpole: Peters
– Collection Turcica Vol XIX, 2013), p. 69.
122
crosses the Vardar valley near the junction of the Treska with the Vardar, and pursuing the
Treska through the sandjak of Monastir, it runs along its boundary with Dibra as far as the
northern shore of the Lake Ohrid.”533
There is no doubt that this spatial imagination influenced the Albanian intelligentsia to
construct their own imagination of Macedonia as their territory. During the period of the
Great Eastern Crisis (1875-78), on 18 December 1877 Albanian intellectuals founded the
Central Committee for Defending Albanian Rights in Istanbul in order to enforce the claims
over imagined territories, the granting of which was also foreseen by the Austrian consul.
These first Albanian political programmes were definitely developed in cooperation with the
Ottoman authorities. The group of intellectual was combined by Muslims and Christians such
as Abdul Frasheri and Vaso Pasha, which played leading roles in shaping the League of
Prizren. Their were actually published in the Ottoman newspaper known as Tercüman-ı
Şark,534 which was anticipating the idea of establishment of a single Albanian vilayet with an
aim to consist Kosovo, Manastir, Janina, and Scutari vilayets, but often also included the
Salonica Vilayet.535 This became the first meeting of what came to be known as the League of
Prizren, where parts of vilayeti selase (Macedonia) were considered as part of Albania.
During the first couple of weeks in 1878, the Istanbul Committee drafted a programme that
concerned the protection of these Albanian lands from any invasion of the Great states, as
well as support to the unified Albanian vilayet. This programme emerged during the Eastern
Crisis and Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878), when the Russian Empire simultaneously
supported Pan-Slavism. Under such circumstances, the leader of the League of Prizren and
member of the Istanbul Committee, Abdul Frasheri, wrote in Messager de Vienne that the
“Albanians serve the cause of humanity and civilization better than any other people of the
East,” and that they “[would] always be the best vanguard against Russian pan
Slavism.”536According to this article, the chief aim of Albanian intelligentsia was to construct
a national narrative that would oppose the Pan-Slavism influence in Ottoman Macedonia
(considered Albanian heritage).537 In this regard, Nathalie Clayer posits that the emergence of
“Albanianism” is directly connected to the anti-Slav reactions of Ottoman society,
respectively, after Russia expanded its influence in the Balkans. As a result, partly anti-Slavic
533Skendi cites the relevance of this memorandum as “It [the memorandum] may be held sufficiently reliable on
account of the special interest of Austria-Hungary in this portion of Albania and Lippich’s personal knowledge
of it.” See Stavro Skendi, The Albanian National Awakening, (New York: Princeton University Press, 1967), p.
32.
534Tercüman-ı Şark was issued by Şemseddin Sami Frashëri. The first number appeared on 29 March 1878.
535 Nathalie Clayer, op.cit. (Paris: Karthala, 2007), p. 463.
536See: Abdyl Frasheri in Messager de Vienne, nr. 22 (May 31, 1878) p. 5.
537 Nathalie Clayer, op.cit. 2007.
123
and partly Islamic in nature, an important sense of belonging emerged among Ottoman
Albanians.538 The impact of the Eastern Crisis on the formation of Albanianism can be traced
in the transition from the Ottoman imperial ideology to Unity of Islam.539 Namely, some saw
the League of Prizren as an organisation of Muslims, while others emphasised its’ exclusive
Albanian national programme.540 I argue that both elements were included ans presented,
since Unity of Islam and Albanianism were not opposed during the first stage of their
development. To the contrary of the Serbian and Greek nationalisms, the Albanian one, thus,
did not emerge from an anti-Ottoman struggle and at its early stage was not based on
separation from the Ottoman empire.541 One such example was the position of Albanian
intelligentsia during the Eastern Crisis, and their activism in the League of Prizren (1878). On
13 June 1878, the League submitted an 18-page memorandum to Benjamin Disraeli, the
British representative at the Congress of Berlin, announcing: “Just as we are not and do not
want to be Turks, so we shall oppose with all our might anyone who would like to turn us into
Slavs or Austrians or Greeks. We want to be Albanians.” There is no doubt that the Prizren
League constructed an Albanianism separated from the notion of the “Turk,” but retained
religion as its crucial element. In this regard, the Ottoman state and Sultan Abdulhamid II
gave an Islamic connotation to the League and Albanianism. Initially the Ottoman authorities
showed great sympathy for the League of Prizren and offered no hindrance to its formation.
This policy was supported by Albanian intellectuals as well, who in the first article of the
Kararname542 of the League proclaimed that “our [Prizren] league has come together to
oppose any government other than that of the Sublime Porte and to defend our territorial
integrity by all possible means.’’543 Accordingly, Albanians did not gather in Prizren to
oppose the Ottoman Empire, but rather to protect its border especially on the lines inhabited
by Albanians. Furthermore, Article 16 of kararname described the importance of the League,
respectively with meanings for Islam: “whoever abandons it (the League) will be treated as if
538 Ibid.
539Dimitris Stamatopoulos, The Eastern Question or Balkan Nationalisms: Balkan History Reconsidered (Vienna:
Vienna University Press, 2018), pp. 43-44.
540 Isa Blumi, Reinstating the Ottomans: Alternative Balkan Modernities, 1800–1912 (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011).
541 Nathalie Clayer, op.cit. 2013, pp. 71-72.
542 On 18 June 1878, see: http://www.albanianhistory.net/1878_League-of-Prizren/index.html (access.
26.06.2019.)
Additionaly: HHStA, Vienna, Consulate of Shkodra, Note 64, AIH, A-VI-10, pp. 73-77. Appendix to a report by
Austro-Hungarian consul Jelinek of Prizren, to Consul Lippich in Shkodra, 13 July 1878; in Aktetë Rilindjes
Kombëtare Shqiptare, 1878-1912 ed. by. Stefanaq Pollo and Selami Pulaha (Tiranë: Instituti i Historisë 1978),
pp. 40-48; and La Ligue albanaise de Prizren, 1878-1881 ed. by. Stefanaq Pollo and Selami Pulaha (Tiranë:
Institut d’Histoire 1978), pp. 55-65. Translated from the German, Albanian and French by Robert Elsie.
543 Ibid.
124
he had abandoned our Islamic faith and will be the object of our curses and
scorn.”544Additionally, in the kararname of the meeting at Marash Tekkesi (1879) in Prizren
the Islamic notion was even more emphasized the Islamic notion that “God make it to be
forbidden (mazallah) to all Albanian people (bütün Arnavud kavmi) to become part of another
state and to separate from the general Islamic order.”545 In this regard, Noel Malcolm also
describes the League of Prizren as a purely Muslim, conservative movement for the
preservation of the old order of the Ottoman state combined with “new Pan-Islamic
ideology.”546 This policy was also admitted by the highest Ottoman official, Dervish Pasha,
who thought that “the League of Albania would be useful to the Empire (quela Ligue de l
’Albanieserait utile à l ’Empire).”547 In line with this politicisation of Albanianism, Pashko
Vasa demanded the formation of a single Albanian province (composed of the provinces of
Janina, Kosovo and Shkodër) emphasising that “the division of Albania into three vilayets
was already sufficient to completely destroy the beneficent [sic] action of administrative unity
without aggravating it by a heterogeneous medley.”548 As an Ottoman bureaucrat of Albanian
origin, Pashko Vasa developed this programme in his book Études Sur L'Albanie Et Les
Albanais. This work was first published in Istanbul in 1879, printed in the press of the
newspaper La Turquie. According to Kristaq Prifti, this work was not published by the author
or the Albanian Committee in Istanbul, but by “the Turkish (i.e. Ottoman) Embassy by direct
order from the government of Istanbul.”549 Being interested in securing its borders in the
Balkans, particularly in Macedonia, the Ottoman government accepted for the embassies to
be engaged in the dissemination of Pashko Vasa’s work in Europe, publishing it in German
and English. The central idea of this work of Pashko Vasa was the recognition of the Albanian
nation by the Great Powers and the European public opinion as a nation quite separate from
its neighbours, the Greeks and Slavs. Therefore, it should exist as “united Albania into one
solo vilayet” and “inaugurated under the aegis of His Majesty the Sultan [in] an era of unity,
544Ibid.
545See: Vali Kabashi, Lidhja e Prizrenit – Organizata më e madhe politiko-ushtarake (Koha Ditore, 09.06. 2018);
BOA, HR.SYS. 214, 25, 1879
546 Noel Malcolm, Kosovo a short history (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 222; see a quote: “I
think it’s clear that the Sublime Porte and the League had the same opinion and were working to realize a
common purpose - protecting the province.”
547Kristaq Prifti, Certains aspects des rapports de la Ligue albanaise de Prizren avec la Sublime Porte selon les
documents ottomans (1878-1881), (Studia Albanica 01, 2012), p. 50; Ahmet Moukhtar Pacha, le 20 mars 1295/1
avril 1880. Le maréchal Dervish Pacha, chargé par la Sublime Porte dans les années 1880-1881 pour
réprimer la Ligue albanaise; BOA, Fon: Yildiz Esas Evraki. Doc. N° 14 88/16 88 12, Rapport envoyé au
Conseil des Ministres par Dervish Pacha, Shkodra, le 15décembre 1296/27 décembre 1880. en Istanbul.
548Pashko Vasa, The Truth on Albania and the Albanians: Historical and Critical (London: Centre for Albanian
Studies, 1999). p. 42.
549Kristaq Prifti, Botimi dhe perhapja ne Evrope e vepres se Pashko Vases “E verteta per Shqiperine dhe
Shqipetaret” (Tiranë: Studime Historike, 2002), p. 59.
125
of concord, and of fraternity for all faiths and all religions.”550 Considering this attempt to
incorporate the future Albania into the Ottoman Empire, he dedicated himself to the struggle
for recognition of his nation and Ottoman Empire and the following attempt to help his
country make the leap towards the rest of the “civilized nations.”551 With a “progressive”
Weltanschauung, he as an ardent nationalist of the 19th century evidently believed in
progress, emphasising that “with a little more civilization and better conditions, Albania not
only would have nothing to envy Switzerland, but surpass it in beauty, in poetry, and in
force.”552
Furthermore, Pashko Vasa was a member of the Istanbul Society of the Albanian Letters,553 a
society close to the Ottoman government and Abdulhamid II’s policies. 554 This society
translated his work into Turkish in the following year, 1880, 555 and gave a huge contribuione
to education in Albanian at that time. Apart from Pashko Vasa, other members of the society
stressed the importance of literacy and the alphabet for belonging to “progress and
civilisation.” Accordingly, they in the Statute of the society they stated:
“All enlightened and civilized nations, are enlightened and civilized due to the writings of/in
their own languages. And every nation which does not write in its own language, and does not
have writings of its own language, stays in darkness and barbarian. Even Albanians, while not
writing in their own language and not having an alphabet of their own languages, remain so,
and the presupposition and hope from three thousand years ago (as far as history is known) to
be enlightened and civilized by using the languages and writings of their neighbours, proved
to be useless...Without having, nor wanting, anyone better than the others between us, who
will come after us, we pray to the God of Life, to bless the existence of this/us, the Society for
the Publication of Albanian Writings.”556
550Balázs Trencsényi, Ahmet Ersoy, Michal Kopeček, MaciejGórny, Vangelis Kechriotis, Late Enlightenment:
Emergence of modern national ides (Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2006), p. 124.
551 Isa Blumi, Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State (New York: Routledge, 2011).
552Pashko Vasa, op.cit., p. 33.
553Kristaq Prifti, op.cit. 2002, p. 57.
554Ibid.
555Translated title: Pashko Vasa Efendi, Arnavutluk ve Arnavutlar, (Istanbul: 1287/1880).
556See: Kanonizmë e shoqërisë të shtypuri shkronja shqip (Konstandinopojë: Ndëshkronjës htypëtoret të A.
Zelicit, 1879) pp. 1-2; in original see: “Gjithë sa kombe janë të ndrituarë dhe të qytetëruarë prej shkronjas ndë
gjuhët të veta. Edhe çdo komb që nuk ka shkruar gjuhën e vet, edhe s’ka shkronja ndë gjuhët të vet është ndë
t’errëtë dhe barbar. Edhe shqiptarët tue mos shkruarë gjuhën e tyre dhe tu me mos pasur shkronja ndë gjuhët të
tyre, kështu gjenden edhe pa ndihma e shpresa këtu e tri mijë vjet përpara (saqë mund të njihet historia) që të
ndriçoheshin dhe të qytetëroheshinë me gjuhët të fëqinjët e të huajët u dëftue e kotë, edhe trimëria e të miratë, që
kanë duart tona në prej shokësh, që duke mishkruarë në fund secili me dorët të vet. Edhe nuk e kena, as duamë,
ndonjë prej ma tepër se shokët e tjerë, që kanë me u ba pas nesh, por i lutemi Zotit të jetesë, te vejë mbarë
shoqëria jone, Shoqëria e të shtypurit shkronjash.”
126
Along similar lines, Şemseddin Sami Frashëri, in his book Medeniyet-i Islamiye557 (1879),
elaborated that the roots of “civilisation” lie in Islamic tradition. Thus, the notion of European
civilisation in fact has Islamic roots that need to return to their source.558 According to him,
civilisation is a result of Islam.559He further explains that any nation that accepted Islam was
already part of civilisaation.560 Furthermore, in Medeniyet-i cedidenin ümem-i islamiyeye
nakli,561 written in 1883, he declared that “saving the Muslim peoples from ignorance and
once again bringing them to civilization are among the most important priorities of any
zealous person who loves his religious community and fatherland, since the survival and glory
of Islam are contingent upon this alone.”562 Therefore, every nation that is part of Islam has
the aim to “transfer contemporary civilization to the Islamic nations. In order to achieve this
goal, they used newspapers, books, pamphlets, sermons, and all available means to spread the
view that European civilization was borrowed from the Muslims, that Islam is no obstacle to
true civilization, and that most of science and technology which we see in the hands of the
Europeans today is made up of Muslim discoveries.”563 In this context, Albanians also had an
obligation to write in their own language and promote their national ideas. Semseddin Sami
Frasheri praised Abdulhamid II for allowing the Albanian people (kavim) to establish schools
in the Albanian language in order to create Albanian national literature (edebiyat-i milliye),
aiming “to counter Greek and Slavic territorial claims on these regions (including
Macedonia).”564 Hence, during its first stage, this Albanian national programme was not
opposed to Unity of Islam (İttihad-ı İslam). Accordingly, Semsedin Sami Frasheri viewed
those two concepts (Albanianism and Unity of Islam) as “different sides of the same coin (…)
consistent with Ottoman unity, which included ethnic diversity.” 565 Furthermore, he
emphasized that the ancestors of the Albanians “[had resided] in the Balkan Peninsula since
very early times that history cannot score.” 566 In the chapter about Macedonia in the
encyclopaediaKamus al-alam,” Semseddin Sami Frasheri continues to state that “there is no
doubt that the old Macedonians [were] originally Albanians (Eski Makedonyalilarin sirf ve
557Şemseddin Sâmi, İslâm Medeniyeti (Istanbul: Mihran, 1879/1296; edition from 1980).
558 Ibid., pp. 28-29.; In original “Avrupalıyı cehâletten kurtaran şey, İslâm medeniyetidir. Vahşi Avrupalının
zihnini nurlandıran öğretmenler genellikle Müslüman hocalardır.”
559Ibid.; In original “Medeniyeti sâdece İslâm dininin semeresi ve mahsûlüdür deriz.”
560Ibid. pp. 25-26.; In original “Her hangi bir kavim İslâm dinini Kabul ettiyse, bu medeniyet dairesine dahil
oldu. Bu medeniyet İslâm dininin semeresi (ürünü) dir.”
561Şemseddin Sami Frashëri, Medeniyet-i cedideninümem-i islamiyeyenakli, in Güneş, Vol. 1, No 4, 1883–1884,
pp. 179–184. Translation from Turkish and introduction by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu.
562 Ibid.; See also: Charles Kurzman, Modernist Islam, 1840-1940, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),
563 Ibid.
564 Nathalie Clayer, op.cit. 2013, pp. 72.
565Ibid.
566 Şemseddin Sami Frashëri (Samy-Bey Fraschery), Kamus al-alam I, Istanbul, 1306/1889, p. 86.
127
halis Arnavut bulunmus olduklarinda suphe kalmaz).”567 Therefore, for many Albanians the
rest of Rumelia (consisted of Albania and Macedonia) was the core of their national narrative.
Thus, an autonomous Albania meant “maintaining the commitment of the Caliph Sultan to
conservative Muslim Albanians.”568Abdulhamid II did not support the idea of autonomy, but
has been seen as indirectly responsible for the forging of Albanianness.569 George Gawrych
has already stressed how, soon after the end of the Oriental Crisis (1876-1878), Abdulhamid
II and some of his councillors came to consider the “Albanians” as the pillar of the Ottoman
presence in Europe, referring generally to the “Albanian Muslims,” who were numerous in the
border regions with Montenegro, Serbia, and Greece, the idea of the imperial authorities being
to reinforce their loyalty to Ottoman rule and to Islam.570
Sultan Abdulhamid II also wanted to bind this emergence of Albanianism to religious notions
of the Unity of Islam (Ittihad-i Islam) and simultaneously undermine the development of
national-separatist tendencies. Therefore, Abdulhamid II’s support of the Albanianism and the
organised resistance of the Prizren League (1878), which tried to give an Islamic spirit to its
resistance,571 was an attempt to bind Albanians not to an independent national movement but
to religious feelings. In this regard, Sultan Abdulhamid II wanted to identify himself as the
“father (baba) of Albanians” in order to “establish an enlightened rule in his domains, and he
had some definite ideas about Albania and Albanians.”572 In Kosovo in particular, local
officials requested to employ troops to assist the government functions and to bring
“civilisation” (medeniyet) and “humanity” (insaniyet) to the wild regions of Macedonia and
Albania.573 As mentioned above, the main supporter of such ideas was former Grand Vizier
Mehmed Esad Safvet Pasa, who on 12 April 1880 submitted a memorandum advocating for
forming a separate policy for people living in the periphery, especially Albanians.574 This
policy was also supported by the highest Ottoman official, Dervish Pasha.575 This promotion
of Albanianism closely linked to strong common “Islamic” values was important as a
response to Hellenism and Pan-Slavic regional threats.576 The aim was of course to counter
567 Ibid., p. 117.
568 Ibid. p. 14.
569Nathalie Clayer, op.cit. 2013, p. 71.
570 Ibid. 68.
571Nuray Bozbora, op.cit., Turkish Review of Balkan Studies, 2006, p. 47.
572 George Gawrych, op.cit. (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2006), p. 107.
573 Selim Deringil, op.cit.
574 Ibid., p. 73.
575Kristaq Prifti. op.cit. Studia Albanica 01, 2012, pp. 50;
576 Some of them worked as gunman (tufekci), part of gendarme (hadimjandarma) or commandants in different
parts of Ottoman Empire as Iskodrali Tahir Pasha, Kranjali Tahir Pasha, Kucuk Tahir Bey, Halil Bey Skeja and
128
Greek and Slavic territorial claims to these regions. In order to strengthen the Albanian
narratives in Ottoman Macedonia, between 1889 and 1896 official Ottoman salnames of the
European provinces drew on the descriptions of Semseddin Sami Bey in his Kamus al-alâm,
and depicted some Balkan regions, such as Epirus and Macedonia, as having been inhabited
since remote antiquity by the Pelasgians, the ancestors of the Albanians, on whom further
information was provided.577 The aim was of course to counter Greek and Slavic territorial
claims to these regions. Although this kind of assertion disappeared after 1896, it seems that
the growing interference of the Great Powers in Macedonia from 1897 and especially 1903
onwards sparked renewed interest among the Ottoman authorities in attributing an Albanian
identity to certain territories.
This is also the period when few Albanian intellectuals started to oppose the Ottoman policies
towards Ottoman Albania and Macedonia. One such personality was Sami Frasheri, who was
at first supporter of Albanianism as part of the Unity of Islam. This switch of loyalties
suggests that one mobile intellectual during his life-time could support several ideologies and
nationalist projections. Along similar lines, Sami Frasheri, later on formulated a programme
which would be more independent from the Ottoman government. He wrote the book
“Shqipëria - Ç'ka qënë, ç'është e ç'do të bëhetë? Mendime për shpëtimt të mëmë-dheut nga
reziket që e kanë rethuarë,” published in Bucharest in 1899.578 Indeed, this book has always
represented the main work by Frasheri, used in the construction of his mythologised image in
Albania, because it has always been seen as (one of) the first “manifesto(s)” of Albanian
political nationalism anticipating an Albanian state. This work is indicative as a main book for
formulation of Albanian national identity at the turn to the century. Actually, its aim was to
promote full Albanian autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, as a first step to Albanian state
independence. With regard to Sami’s book, its first section, titled “Pelasgians”, claims that the
Osman Pasha – the general of brigades and commandant of battalions of guardians (zuaveve shqiptare). See:
Denis Ljuljanović, “Turkonegrins” between Montenegro and the Ottoman Empire: Brothers or Others?, In:
Etnické komunity - Neviditelní, přehlížení, zapomenutí, ed. by Dana Bittnerová - Mirjam Moravcová, (Praha:
Fakulta humanitních studií Univerzity Karlovy 2019), pp. 35-57; Nathalie Clayer, op.cit. (Tiranë: Marlin Barleti,
2012), pp. 62-63; Theodor Ippen, Skutari und die Nordalbanische Kuestenebene, (Sarajevo: Daniel A. Kajon,
1907), pp. 41-42.
577 Şemseddin Sami Frashëri (Samy-Bey Fraschery), op.cit., Istanbul, 1306/1889
578 Bülent Bilmez, Shemseddin Sami Frashëri (1850–1904): Contributing to the Construction of Albanian and
Turkish Identities, in We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, ed. by. Diana
Mishkova (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009)., pp. 341-371.; Translation: “Ç'ka qënë, ç'është e
ç'do të bëhetë? Mendime për shpëtimt të mëmë-dheut nga reziket që e kanë rethuarë” or in English “Albania -
What It Was, What It Is and What Will Become of It? Reflections on Saving the Motherland from Perils which
Beset It.”
129
“Albanians are the oldest people of Europe and direct descendants of the Pelasgians.”579 He
emphasises that the Albanians are Pelasgians and the tribes (fise) their branches - Illyrians,
Epiriots, Macedonians, and Thracians. He underlines the positive side of the centuries-long
isolated life of Albanians remote from civilisation in “barbarian times:” “Albanians preserved
their language and their nationality not because they had letters, or knowledge, or civilization,
but because they had freedom, because they always stood apart and didn’t mix with other
people or let foreigners live among them. This isolation from the world, from knowledge,
civilization and trade, in one word - this savage mountain life allowed the Albanians to
preserve their language and nationality.”580 This romanticist image of isolated “barbarian” life
might remind us of Rousseau’s idea of the “noble savage,” which is also displayed, though
implicitly, when Frasheri admires Albanians for being brave warriors. Nevertheless,
Frasheri’s main goal is the modernisation of Albania, which is compatible with that of the
Ottoman government, which had actually been attempting modernisation of the empire,
including Albania. However, he distinguishes Albanians and Turks as totally different
entities. Sami Frasheri points out that the Turks:
“do not have any more right to live like this than these other savage peoples, yet even today
they continue to live as freeloaders. They no longer have such rights. Up to now, they have
created neither a state nor a government, as other countries have. They prefer to live in
savagery. They will fall and must perish so that humankind can survive. But what have we
done to them that, in their fall, they want to take us down with them? What do we have in
common with them? Did we arrive with them? No, not at all. We are not Turks, nor did we
arrive from the wilds of Asia. We are the oldest people of Europe. We have more rights to
live in Europe than any others.”581
His argument that the Albanians are the “oldest people of Europe” and the view of the Turks
as a “savage people” belonged to a Zeitgeist of politically formulated “national superiority”
and of nation-state projects. Thus, there were broadly two types of claims in the formulation
of these projects. First, the claim that the nation had existed in the same territory “from time
immemorial.” Second, that the ancestors of the nation settled permanently in their current
location, establishing a decisive presence and adding an important contribution to
“civilisation.” Accordingly, Sami Frasheri also stressed that Albanians achieved this during
579 Sami Frashëri, Shqipëria ç’ka qënë, çështë e çdo të bëhët? (in translation: Albania - What It Was, What It Is
and What Will Become of It? Reflections on Saving the Motherland from Perils which Beset It), (Tiranë:
Mesonjetorja e parë, 1999), pp. 3-6.
580Ibid., 17-18.
581 Ibid.
130
the time of Alexander the Great.582 In this context, he revealed Alexander’s story and a wish
to realise an imagined “Greater Albania,” while Albanians, he claimed, should have “the one
and only goal (…) to preserve Albania and not let it be divided up by foreigners, to preserve
[their] language and national identity, to confound all the intrigues of [their] foes and to
impede the spread of Greek and Serbian languages and ideas which are destroying [their]
foundations and uprooting the Albanians and their country. Everything detrimental to this
goal must be fiercely combatted by all true Albanians and by the Albanian league. Everything
conducive to this goal must be embraced by them and unhesitatingly supported.”583
2.2.2. ALBANIANISM IN THE DIASPORA: HOW THE ALBANIAN INTELLIGENTISA
IMAGINED ALBANIA AND MACEDONIA
Although the Frashëri family (Abdyl, Naim, and Sami) have been accepted as three of the
founders of Albanian nationalism, historians often downplay the role of Mithat Frasheri, who
was an Ottoman bureaucrat in Palestine and one of the leading figures of Albanian
nationalism. He was the son of Abdyl and nephew of prominent Albanian nationalists
Semsettin Sami (Sami Frasheri) and Naim Frasheri, whose activist career began in the years
leading up to the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) takeover of power. Although he
abandoned the ideals of the Ottoman Empire after 1908, as after 1898, his uncle Sami
Frasheri, however, did not mean to give up on integrationist models of living all (Ottomans)
together.584 Before the Young Turkish Revolution and its centralisation politics since 1910,
Mithat Frasheri supported integrationist ideas of Albania inside the Ottoman Empire. During
that period, he worked for the Ottoman administration in the vilayet of Salonika from 1905 to
1910, where he published the weekly newspaper Lirija and edited a monthly magazine
entitled Diturija. In this magazine he praised Albanian Istanbul society established by his
uncle Sami Frasheri and promoted cultural, literary, and scholarly interests in Albanian
history. 585 In this sense he continued his uncles’ anti-Slavic and anti-Greek politics by
emphasising that “after the war with Russia (the San Stefano and Berlin Treaties), the Slavic
side threatened the Albanian territories, while the Greek side posed a threat of assimilation by
582 Ibid.
583 Ibid.
584 Isa Blumi, Publishers, Hitmen, Diplomats, and Dreamers :Switzerland's Ottoman-Albanian Diaspora,1899-
1920, in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, Zürich, Schweiz, Band 52, 2002, p. 318.
585 Diturija, 1 Januar 1909, Selanik, Nr. 1, p. 5; See: N' eshte pra se sot sqipes' i degohete zeri, kete ja kemi hua
asaj shoqeris' s' Stambolit qe ka qen' e para pune kombiare.
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prohibiting use of the language and ruining the nation.”586 Responding to those threats, he
declared Albanian dominance over those nations. Mithat Frasheri particularly emphasised that
“among all the nations living in Turkey, Albanians played the most important role. After more
than 25 years of war between Turkey and Skenderbeg, Albania became part of Turkey not as
a conquered place, rather as a friendly and equal nation.”587 Additionally, he stated that
“Turkey had only a symbolical authority over Albania, because the local government was in
charge over the country. The locals, the children of this place were Albanians. This means
that Turkey didn’t have any power over Albania.” 588 Furthermore, he appreciated the
“excellent role of Albanians occupying a crucial position in Turkish history. Albania was a
place that could deal on its own, living in liberty; Albanians were also always the first in the
whole Empire, looking at Turkey as their own place, not just for work and profit, but also for
ruling the Empire.”589 Apparently, he suggests that this particular role of the Albanians should
be played “from the Shar mountains to Basra, from the Black Sea to the Red one. This whole
market [was] open to the Albanians to rule over it.”590 Moreover, this dominance could not be
achieved without strong rootedness in written literature. Thus, following his uncle Sami, he
conveniently labelled the practice of establishing an Albanian alphabet as a civilisation
mission that would enlighten Albanians. Accordingly, the invention of the alphabet would
help “(Albanians) to know both dialects (…) and bring them to the spoken level.”591 Thus, he
was one of the editors of the yearly almanac Kalendari Kombiar, published since 1897 in
Sofia (Bulgaria). The articles in this almanac held moderate positions, where Frashëri
advocated for Albanian unity, for development of education in Albanian, and opposed foreign
power intervention in Macedonian affairs. In this regard, Kalendari Kombiar promoted the
586 Diturija, 1 Januar 1909, Selanik Nr. 1, pp. 4-5; See: Pas luftes'se Rusise, pas tratatit te Shent Stefanojt dhe te
Berlinit ne rezik i madh u tregua pcr vendin tene ng' an' e Slavevet. Ger m' ahere Shqiperija kish rezik te madh
ng' an e grekeret qe perpiqeshin te na humbasine guhene dhe te na prishine kombesine.
587 Diturija, 1 Mars 1909, Selanik Nr. 3, p. 33; See: Nga kaqe kombe qe jan' ne Tyrqi Shqipetaret jan' ata qe
kane lojture me te madh rol!. Pas njezet e pes vjet lufte nene flamur te ndricim te Skenderbeut, dhe pas nje
kundreqendrimi te ndercim. Shqiperija hyri nene sunim te Tyrqise, jo si nje vent i mundure, po si nje komp shok
dhe baras.
588 Diturija, 1. Mars 1909, Nr 3, p. 33; See: Tyrqija vec emrin kish mi vendin tene, se qeveri e vendit ka mbeture
kurdohere ne duar te shqipetarevet, te femijevet te vendit, qe kane mbajture ger fort afre mevethesin' e tyre, aqe
sa qeveri e Tyrqise s' kish asnje fuqi ne Shqiperi.
589 Diturija 1. Mars 1909, Nr. 3, p. 33; See: Nje veshtrim i cpejte n' istori te Tyrqise na tregon fort bukure radhen
e shkelqyere qe kane mbajture Shqipetaret. Shqiperija jo vetsm ka qen' e zonja te mbane vethen' e saj te lire dhe
te pa poshteruare, po dhe ka diture qe te jet' i par' i kombevet ne te tere mbreterit, duke shikuare gjithe Tyrqine
si nje vent te hapure per te, ku jo vetem ka punuare, ka fituare, po ka urdheruare dhe mbreteruare.
590 Diturija, 1 Mars 1909, p. 36; See: Tani Tyrqija e ter' eshte hapure per ShqipEtarE: qE nga mal' i Sharit e ger
ne menge te Basres, qe nga det' i Zi e ger ne det i Kuq, i tere ky shesh eshte i celure: Ie te jet'i zoti dhe te refehet
i pare te mbreteroje dhe te urdheroj.
591Diturija, 1. Dhjetor 1909, Nr. 11 and 12, p. 146; See: Duhete pra qe te dime te dy djalektet dhe per kete pune
Geget lipset qe te kEndojne librat toskerisht dhe Toskete librate gegerisht, me nje menyre qe te dy kEee foljet t' i
dukene si te tijate dhe jo vetem t'i kupetoje, po dhe te mundin ti flas njeriu.
132
idea of the ancient Macedonians as ancestors of the Albanians. According to one article from
1898, “the Albanians had the great hero Alexander the Great as part of their past, who
conquered the whole world (…) however, the greatest among the Albanians was Skenderbeg,
who fought bravely against the Turks.”592
This “invention of tradition” was not a new concept, used to claim ancient heritage and
current territories. The newspapers were just one form of forging that consciousness for
national and imperialistic projects. Thus, Albanian intelligentsia tried to construct this myth in
order to enforce national consciousness at the local level among the mass. Oftentimes explicit
claims were made to the heritage of “Alexander the Great of Macedonia, who conquered the
whole Balkans that became inhabited by the Pelasgians, the forefathers of the Albanians.
Then, yes, Alexander the Great was Albanian.”593 Apart from the heritage, it was common to
make claims to the legitimacy of the territory. Therefore, it was also proclaimed that “half of
the territories of Albania contain[ed] Macedonia together with the vilayet of Thessaloniki.”594
The composition of national and ethnic identities and their use of meta-narratives to establish
political legitimacy via an authentic and continuous past that belongs solely to one group can
encounter propaganda, not just in the form of newspapers but also in the form of text books
and national books that bring about political formulations. In this regard, it was promoted
Illyrian past that was overlapped with ancient Macedonia. Thus, among the Albanian
intellectuals was promoted an idea of the Albanians as the descendants of the Macedonians
who lived under Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Romans. This was a tool to legitimise
political aims to create greater Albania based on its “ancient borders” and the “oldest people
of Europe.” One of the special promoters of this national myth was the uncle of Mithat,
brother of Sami Frasheri, named Naim.595 With this purpose, Naim Frasheri wrote text books
592Kalendari Kombiar, motidyte, 1898, Sofje, pp. 66; „/shqipetaret kane ndriture ne kohet t' Aleksandit te Madh
kane mundure te tere boten e qe dihesa here ; ne kohet te Iliros u dane dermen Romanevet, deme pastaj
Filipi,Perseja, Genço ja kane Ieftuare trimerist kunder ushterise, qe dergonte Roma ; pom' i madhinjeri qe ka
nxjere Shqiperia este Skenderbegu. Qe Ieftoj me trimërite çudiçme kondra Tyrqvet. Po keto punerat t embeda, qe
kane bere Shqipetaret jane si vetem, de skaneduruare. Ne e dençiner te mentcim, njeris'munttedote se ka
kombmë te Zguare se Shqipetaret : Ali Pase Tepelena mundi kaqe Vjet Porten (Babialine) vetem me fjale“
593Kalendari Kombiar, 1900, pp. 15; „/323 Para Kristit vdiq Aleksandr' i madh, mbret' i Maqedonise, n' ato kohe
ni jo vetem Maqedonia po e tere Sinisi e Badhkaneve tis mbuluare nga Pellazgete, nipet e te cilet jemi ne
Sqipetarete, pra de Aleksandr' i madh is Shqipetar.“
594 Ibid., 1900, pp. 17; “Bullgaret kerkojne otonomine e Maqedonise. Fjala Maqedoni mer de Yskyb, Dibre,
Korçe etj., dmth gjysmen e Shqiperise; pra komitete bulgare kerkojne qe Maqeuouia dmth gjysma e Shqiperise e
tere vilajet i Selanikut te behete gjysme me vethe, de kestu qe dite te baskohet elehtazime Bu1garine. Ahere
Shqiperija do te mbetete qe pip i nguste- si breze vgiti – ane detit.”
595 Naim Frasheri wrote also text books as Histori e Pergjithshme per Mesonjetoret e Para/General History for
the First Schools published in 1886 and used until 1914. His further works: Mesimet/Lessons”;
“Shqiperia/Albania”; “Istoria e Skenderbegut/History of Skenderbeg”; “Istori e Shqipërisë/History of Albania.”
133
for Albanian schools and about the history of Albania and Skenderbeg. His writings were very
important in the Albanian national movement that aimed to “educate” the local population
regarding the consciousness and awareness of Albaniansim.
The other author that contributed to Albanianism was Faik Bey Konica (1875-1942). He was
one of the leading Albanian intellectuals during the early 20th century and was one of the first
Albanians who promoted Albanian independence from the Ottoman Empire. Visar Dodani
described him as “the first Muslim Albanian who became brave enough to say: ‘Muslim
brothers, leave the Turks! We are Albanians and not Turks, while the Sultan is a deceiver.”596
Konica, openly supported the idea of independent Albania and he published a periodical
Albania in Brussel. In one of its issues, he emphasises that “our motherland needs us in order
to continue our progress down the civilisational path.”597 Why was it important for Konica to
be part of Civilisation? In the same paragraph, he answers: “Albania wants light, opening
schools in Albanian in order to give our children education in their mother tongue. This is
important because the foxes can come to teach them another language which would lead to
the loss of our motherland. Therefore, we should know that all civilised nations did in this
way learn their own language and worked for a holy mission.”598
Also, in his Memoirs from 1899 he points out: “[W]here a school exists, there in effect is a
nucleus for propaganda; and collaborators arise and take it on themselves to distribute
publications. At Korça, quite some time ago, Albania was read in the cafes because from the
moment an Albanian school existed, the Turkish government could not stop people reading
Albanian.” 599 As it can be concluded, for Faik Konica learning and reading in Albanian was a
civilisational mission to bring Albanians to progress and prosperity as part of civilisation that
opposed the barbarity of the east.
Similar ideas were presented by Giuseppe Schiro, who was an Italian subject born in Sicily. In
his book, Gli Albanesi e la Questione Balkanica, written in 1904, he supported the idea of
Italian involvement in Albania. For him, there should not be any Albanian-Ottoman
“cooperation to safeguard Albanian interests as for him it was counterproductive to achieving
596 Visar Dodani, Memoriet e mija, (Constanza: Albania, 1930); “i pari musulmane qe kuxoj te bertase: vellezer
musulmane, hiqni dore nga turku! Ne jemi shqipetare musulmane, nuk jemi turq. Sulltani eshte kursar.”
597 Albania, 25 April, 1897, Brussel, p. 18; “/memedheu ka nevoj te madhe prej nesh (…) te vazhojme perparime
ttona ne kete kaqe te bukur rruge qyteterie”
598 Ibid., Pp. 19; “/shqiperia do drite; te hapim shkolha shqipne per tere Shqiperine, qe veghelia te mesojne ne
ghuhet e tyre; te mospresim tevijne te huaj te te na mesojne dhelperit' e tyre per dem, e per humbjen e memedhut
tone. Keshtu kane bere dhe bejne ghithe kombet e qyteteruara. Eshte detyre e ghithe Shqipetareve te perpiqen per
kete te shenteruare pune.”
599http://www.albanianhistory.net/1899_Konitza/index.html (Accessed 18.09.2018)
134
Albanian independence.”600 Contrary to him, Girolamo de Rada – a prominent Albanian from
Calabria –was opposed to the (idea of) Italian involvement in Albania. He was a supporter of
Albanian nationalism, and simultaneously a defender of federal and multicultural Italy and
Ottoman Empire.601 His popularity has been fostered through various adaptations of Italian
federalism and ideas of Carlo Cattaneo that Italy should rather preserve its multicultural
society. However, after the Italian unification in 1861, he became disappointed in the Italian
statist threat to Italo-Albanian cultural and religious specificities. He concluded that the Italian
nation-state has not been friendly to Albanians.602 Therefore, he advocated for Albanian
autonomy inside the Ottoman Empire by strengthening of this brotherhood, according to the
English-Scottish or Austro-Hungarian examples. According to him, “it [could not] be denied
that tearing Albania from Turkey would open a wound (non puo negarsi che, per la Turchia
tutta, lo sbranamento dell’Albania fu una ferita).” In this regard, the Albanians in the
Ottoman Empire “want[ed] peace in Europe and Albania, entailing that Albanians should not
abandon their position under the Sultan’s rule (noi volevamo, e il dicemmo, per la pace
d’Europa e il bene della Skjiperia, che questa non ci staccasso dal Sultano.).”603 This comes
as no surprise, since Girolamo de Rada generally relied heavily on the Italo-Albanian
experience in post-Risorgimento years, disappointed in the nation-state project. Perhaps this
experience influenced him to support the autonomous status of Albania inside the Ottoman
Empire, but not its independence. 604 Thus, one can conclude that the Albanian national
movement was not unified, but rather discussed, negotiated, and contested. Oftentimes its
intellectuals were in cooperation with Ottoman authorities, but sometimes also clashed and
opposed the central policy. The lesson to be learned here is that those national movements
were not developed in a vacuum, but rather they had a trans-national and trans-regional
dynamic that was changing depending on the situation and context. In this regard, it is very
important to contextualise events and to try to understand the decision making of mobile
600 Gueseppe Schiro, Gli Albanesi e la Questione Balkanica (Napoli: A spese dell'editore Ferd. Bideri, 1904).
601 Artan Puto and Maurizio Isabella, From Southern Italy to Istanbul: Trajectories of Albanian Nationalism in
the Writings of Girolamo de Rada and Shemseddin Sami Frasheri ca. 1848-1903, in. Maurizio Isabella,
Konstantina Zanou, Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century eds. by Maurizio
Isabella, Konstantina Zanou (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pp. 171–188.
602 Ibid.
603 Fiamuri Arberit/La Bandiera dell’Albania, 30 September, 1883, No. 2, Corigliano Calabro, pp. 1-2.
604 Fiamuri Arberit/La Bandiera dell’Albania, 30 March, 1884, No. 6, Corigliano Calabro, p. 4; See:
“O Sultano, non dare il tuo assenso
Ti serberemo noi stessi la Skjiperia
Noi non andremo col Montenero,
Ne con Serbo, necon Austria,
Non con Turco, non con la Grecia,
Vogliamo di noi stessi l’autonomia.”
135
intellectuals. The actors involved were not only the Ottomans and Albanians, but even more,
the main battle for Macedonia was between Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia for the allegiance of
the majority Christian Orthodox population.
2.3. BALKAN STATE COMPETITIONS AND AGENTS OF NATIONALISM AND
IMPERIALISM
In contrast to the Ottoman and Albanian discussions in the three vilayets, who were focused
mostly on majority Muslim population in these regions, the conflict among the Orthodox
Christian population initially began through educational and religious issues. This discussion
among the Orthodox Christian population in the Ottoman Empire began between supporters
of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople - who were Greek-speaking (and also
Slavic-speaking or bilingual) communities that identified themselves as Greek; and supporters
of the Bulgarian Exarchate, who promoted a Bulgarian national consciousness. This
competition was soon joined by Serbia in the 1870s, where some members of the Serbian
intelligentsia declared that the Serb language and culture extended much further into the south
(Macedonia) and that Serbia should formulate its own policy.605 These claims over Macedonia
also triggered Serbia to join the competition. The break of relations among the different parts
of the former Balkan Alliance (established in 1867, as showed in the previous chapter) in the
1870s, just intensified their competition towards Macedonia during the Age of Empire. The
policy of liberation from the “big Asiatic Mongol” and inclusion of the idea of Macedonia in
one common Balkan or South-Slavic state was changed by the rivalry of the “civilizational
agents of Europe” and fights of the “Orthodox brothers.” Their imitation of the Great owerst,
acceptance of “colonisation of the mind” and implementation of “surrogate hegemony”
towards the Ottoman Empire produced the “Macedonian Question(s)” as a part of the wider
“Eastern Question.” This period of the “Age of Empire,” the American historian of modern
Europe, Holly Case, also named “the age of questions.”606 Indeed, the Age of Empire was
simultaneously the age of questions. It seems that between the Congress of Berlin (1878) and
the Balkan Wars (1912-13), the Balkan states were involved in “solving” these questions
titled “Macedonian”. Thus, they developed colonial policies and imperialist projects, like their
“European tutors.” While the Great Powers competed over Africa, Asia, or parts of South
America, the Balkan states clashed around competing nationalist policies, each of which
imagined Macedonia as an integral part of its future “greater state” and “nation.” In this
605 Milos Milojevic, Odlomci istorije Srba i srpskih - jugoslavenskih - zemalja u Turskoj i Austriji, (Beograd:
1872).
606 Holly Case, op.cit.
136
regard, in the 1870s, the Macedonian Question(s) became a central issue in Balkan politics. In
mapping this region as part of their greater nation-state(s), its intelligentsia used education
and gangs as tools in order to influence the local population on the ground. Between the state
and locals there were intermediating political actors who have been defined by Charles Tilly
as “political entrepreneurs” and “specialists in violence.”607 According to him, the political
entrepreneurs were in fact connectors and organisers of collective violence whose specialty
consisted of organising, linking, or dividing a distinct group or networks, or they helped to
integrate locals or groups into larger nationalist coalitions.608 They were often mediators
between the state (regional level) and rural population (local level) in a trans-regional context.
Such examples include members of intelligentsia, priests, teachers, or other promoters of
education who were employed at the village schools across Ottoman Macedonia. Their
“mission” was to install “national pride” in the hearts of pupils and to campaign for the locals
to join the political committees or the nation-states they served. In the following sub-chapters
I will show the role of the mobile intellectuals and intelligentsia, the priests and teachers
respectively as “political entrepreneurs” in influencing the local population for their political
and nationalist interests.
2.3.1. GREEK CREATION OF NATIONAL SPACE
In the Greek case, its intelligentsia tried to construct a myth of their ancient Hellen descent,
even among the Orthodox Slavic speakers in the Macedonian villages. The idea of “Ancient
Macedonian nationhood” was also included in the national mythology of the Greek education
platform and its school system.609 In particular, it was developed as a reaction to the Bulgarian
Exarchists who insisted on usage of the Bulgarian language and education. These rivalries
between the Greek and Bulgarian intelligentsia and priests, which sometimes were members
of the same community or served the same church, initially took the form of educational and
ecclesiastical competition. As a result, it furnished the conflicting Greek- and Bulgarianoriented
parties, also known as the Patriarchists and the Exarchists, with a clearly defined
cause to shape the local population according to the state interests. One of the tools was
undoubtedly education, which enabled the spread of nationalism as “imagined community”
and sense of belonging to common space as “imagined geography.”
607 Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 40.
608 Ibid.
609 Anastas Vangeli, Nation-building ancient Macedonian style: the origins and the effects of the so-called
antiquization in Macedonia, Nationalities Papers 39 (1), 2001, pp. 13-32.
137
If we take into consideration Miroslav Hroch’s chronological stages of nation building
processes of small nations developed through three phases like “scholarly inquiry,” “patriotic
agitation,” and “mass movement,”610 then one might conclude that this process fits in the
Macedonian case. According to Julian Brooks, “intellectuals were the ones doing the
‘scholarly inquiry,’ often as students in neighbouring ‘free’ countries or in Western Europe or
Russia. Upon their return, they embarked as teachers on programs of ‘patriotic agitation’
through the forum of community schools.”611 The millet system of the Ottoman Empire612
enabled intellectuals and teachers to develop their “patriotic agitation” and to bring the local
population into a “mass movement.” In other words, the nationalist teachers or political
entrepreneurs could now pursue their imaginations and were willing to ‘enlighten’ the locals.
In general, during the 1880s, despite the Bulgarian advance in Macedonia, the Greek state was
opposing military action until the mid-1890s. Instead, Greek intelligentsia decided to
strengthen the Greek educational institutions and the Patriarchist churches in Macedonia, and
in this way to influence the consciousness of the locals.613 Education was an instrument to
raise in these communities a national consciousness in the form of bounded “imagined
community.” According to these intellectuals, “Macedonia was part of Hellenic civilization,
the birthplace of Alexander the Great, and for centuries an integral part of the Byzantine
Empire.”614 In fact, the Greek nationalists imagined Macedonia as an integral part of “Greater
Greece”, based on the Megali Idea. In this respect, the Greek government provided several
books espousing the glory of Ancient Macedonia and Alexander the Great, such as The
Prophecies of Alexander. 615 The distribution of such books was often provided by the
assistance of the political entrepreneurs who worked in manifold schools in Ottoman
Macedonia. According to Greek statistics, “between 1878 and 1885 the number of Greek
610 Phase A) Groups in the ethnic community start to discuss their own ethnicity and conceive of it as a nation-tobe:
scholarly enquiry into and dissemination of an awareness of the linguistic, cultural, social and historical
attributes of the nation-to-be
Phase B) A new range of activists try to “awaken” national consciousness and to persuade as many members as
possible of the ethnic group: (1) development of a national culture based on the local language and its use in
education, administration and economy, (2) civil rights and self-administration, (3) creation of a complete social
structure – beginning of a national movement
Phase C) A mass movement is formed which pursues these aims: a fully-fledged social structure of the would-be
nation comes into being.;
See: Miroslav Hroch, op.cit.
611 Julian Brooks, Education Race for Macedonia, 1878-1903, The Journal of Modern Hellenism, Vol 31 (2015),
pp. 24-25
612 Millet system enabled actually to nations and religious communities to established the schools in their
languages.
613 Basil C. Gounaris, op.cit. 1993, p. 8
614 Ibid. p. 36
615 Karakasidou, op.cit. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 96
138
schools in Macedonia increased by 7 percent and from 1878 to 1905 by 81 percent.”616 Only
after the establishment of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO), did
the Greek nationalists respond by military action, that is, by establishing the secret Greek
nationalistic organisation Ethniki Etaireia in 1894. It was founded by a number of nationalist
officers who advocated for the realisation of the Megali idea. As in the case of the Bulgarian
and IMRO bands, a large number of Greek bandsmen were refugees from the three vilayets.
However, one should not think that these Greek parties (Ethniki Etaireia, the Greek
government, and Patriarchate) had a uniformed national programme. On the ground, these
institutions, based in Ottoman territories (in Istanbul or Macedonia), often rivalled those
based in Athens. According to historian Evangelos Kofos, Greek government consuls and the
Patriarchate’s bishops were “more frequently than not, at loggerheads.”617 On 14 April 1898,
the newspaper The Times also reported:
“They [the Bulgarians] enjoy the advantage of simple organization, for the Exarchate alone
directs the propaganda, while in the case of their rivals disputes between the Consulates and
the spiritual authorities over the application of funds often exercise a paralyzing effect. The
Greeks in general have committed the error of assuming a combative and repressive attitude
towards the other nationalities instead of devoting all their attention to the organization and
the development of their own movement.”618
As in the Albanian case, highlighted above, the Greek case in Ottoman Macedonia was also
multi-layered, contested, and often leading to clashing of rivalries inside the same
communities. Competition between rising nationalisms, but also within nationalist
movements was often shaped according to the current needs and interests of various members
of the organisations and institutions. Thus, the controversies between the ecclesiastical and
educational parts, also between the state and brigandage, often resulted in clashes and support
of various interests.
2.3.2. THE BULGARIAN NATIONAL REVIVAL (BALGARSKO NATSIONALNO
VAZRAZHDANE) AND THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION
The beginning of the Bulgarian national revival is considered to be marked by the work of
Saint Paisius of Hilendar, who opposed Greek domination into Bulgarian cultural life and
religious practices, in his well-known work “Slavic-Bulgarian History” (Istoriya
Slavyanobolgarskaya), which appeared in 1762. This is considered as the first work of
616 Gounaris op.cit., 1993, p. 285
617 Evangelos Kofos, Dilemmas and Orientations of Greek Policy in Macedonia: 1878-1886, in Macedonia Past
and Present published in Thessaloniki by the Institute for Balkan Studies, in 1992. See page 143.
618 Brooks, op.cit. p. 38; “The Situation in Macedonia,” The Times, April 14, 1898.
139
Bulgarian historiography, where Paisius focused on Bulgarian medieval past with an aim of
reviving the spirit of the Bulgarian community. Based on this book, which gave importance to
education in Bulgarian, many Bulgarian intellectuals started publishing textbooks in
Bulgarian.619 These books were often based on Bulgarian songs, mostly the epic poems of
mediaeval Bulgarian empires. The collecting was assessed by intellectuals such as Kuzman
Shapkarev, - Lyuben Karavelov, Ivan Bogorov, Rayko Zhinzifov (considered also as
Macedonian writers), Nesho Bonchev and others. Additionally, these works were also
supported by priests who established a Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 and reinforced the
“invented tradition” based on the Bulgarian mediaeval empires.620 The Exarchate, in other
words, is considered a direct product of the culmination of the Bulgarian nation building
process on the memory of mediaeval Tsardom.621 The struggle for an independent church
proved vital for the formation of a new “imagined community” that was to establish a new
Bulgarian Tsardom. 622 The centre of the Exarchate was in Istanbul, and the Bulgarian
intelligentsia was also active in the Ottoman imperial capital, rather than areas with large
Bulgarian-speaking populations in the Balkans. Istanbul was the centre of the movement for
ecclesiastic independence, but also for the development of the Bulgarian “scholarly inquiry”
and “patriotic agitation.” In fact, in Istanbul the Bulgarian intelligentsia developed a
Bulgarian national programme based on the mediaeval imagination of Bulgarians. Such
personalities were Ivan Bogorov (1818-1892), who published Tsarigradski Vestnik’, (1860)
and promoted Miladinov’s contribution of Bulgarian folk songs who were actually folk
literature collectors in the region of Ottoman Macedonia; and Petko Slaveikov (1827-1895)
619 Leo Wiener, America’s share in the regeneration of Bulgaria. (1840-1859.), Modern Language Notes. Vol.
Xiii, No. 2, Baltimore, February, 1898, p. 33.
620 “The Bulgarian Exarchate was created by an edict of the Sultan, and the first Bulgarian Exarch (Antim I)
became the natural leader of the emerging nation. An imperial ferman issued on March 12, 1870, had recognized
the establishment of a semi-autonomous Bulgarian Church in Constantinople, with an Exarch, a rank that fell
somewhere between Archbishop and Patriarch in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The ferman was the culmination of
a protracted struggle that had started in the late eighteenth century, led by influential lay members of the
Bulgarian community in Istanbul and by clergy frustrated by what they perceived to be an openly Greek bias and
domination in the church organization.”
621 Yosmaoglu, op.cit. pp. 55; Stefan Rohdewald points out that this was not only the case with Bulgaria, but also
with other nations in the region. See: “Die überregionalen Heiligenkulte der Südslaven des Mittelalters und der
frühen Neuzeit waren oft nicht auf ein Volksgruppe ode rein Staatswesen begrenzt.” In. Rohdewald. op.cit. 2014,
p. 20.
622 Boyko Penchev, Tsarigrad/Istanbul and the Spatial Construction ff Bulgarian National Identity in the
Nineteenth Century, Nexus associate fellow 2002 – 2003, p. 1 See:
https://www.academia.edu/9595622/TSARIGRAD_ISTANBUL_AND_THE_SPATIAL_CONSTRUCTION_O
F_BULGARIAN_NATIONAL_IDENTITY_IN_THE_NINETEENTH_CENTURY
140
who published newspapers such as Gayda (1863-1867) 623 and Macedonia (1866-1872),
promoting a national consciousness among Bulgarians as a continuity of Samuil’s empire.
Although it was one of the centres of the Bulgarian national movement, Istanbul was often
represented in a negative way. In the book Pisma na edno desetgodishno dete, koeto sega
pruv put e doshlo v Tsarigrad,624 written by Peter Slaveikov in 1864, Istanbul was depicted as
the centre of the Bulgarian-Greek dispute.625 Furthermore, Slaveikov took part in the struggle
for an autonomous Bulgarian church and later became a teacher in the newly established
Bulgarian Exarchate. He was also the first author who coined the term “Macedonian
Question” (Makedonskiyat vipros) in an article written in te newspaper Makedoniya. He
published this article on 18 January 1871 defining the irredentist policy:
“The whole humanity moves toward the self-rule, and not toward the oppression, but the
point is that the self-rule will be achieved only through union in one body. Today all nations
recognize this need and are in a hurry to achieve it; are we going to be the only ones to go in
the opposite direction? Others unify, although they have been separated for ages, like Pruss
and Bavarians, Piemontians and Napolitanians, and we want to separate now, to separate
although we are from uniform element and we have been united until now. Isn’t that wise and
commendable?”626
Influenced by European ideas of that time, he also imagined an independent Bulgarian state
that would also include Macedonia. For him, Macedonia was the core of the mediaeval
Bulgarian kingdom in Ohrid, an “invented tradition” that should serve to the present
“imagined community.” Thus, he defines this process with the following words:
623 The first published poem by Bulgarian poet and national revolutionary Hristo Botev "Maytze si" ("To My
Mother") was printed in the Gayda newspaper, where he emphasised a strong desire for the imagined motherland
with the words:
“Time and again I've imagined, mother, “Мnogo az, male, mnogo mectayah
that we would find glory and joy together; šastive, slava da vidim dvama,
I felt so strong - how I aspired - sila usešah – šo ne želayah?
now dig a grave for my desires. No za vsi želbi prigotvi yama.
(…)
Father, sister, brothers, mine - Baš I sestra I bratya mili
I want to embrace you, full of love, az da pregrna iskam bez zloba,
then may the blood freeze in my veins pak togaz neka izmraznat žili,
and let me rot within the grave.” Pak togaz neka izgniya v groba!”
624 Boyko Penchev, op.cit, pp. 2-3 Translation: Letters of a Ten-Year-Old Boy, Who Travels to Tsarigrad for the
First Time
625 Ibid. “The story is about a young boy asking his father if there were any Bulgarians who owned houses in
Istanbul/Tsarigrad. The answer is “Yes!” Then, “But where are their wives?,” insists the boy. The father answers
with the words: “Most of them are married to Greek women, that’s why no Bulgarian women can be seen there.”
626 Makedoniya, 18 Januar, 1871, Istanbul issued by Peter Slaveikov. Translated into English in:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:The_Macedonian_question (Accessed 26.04.2019.)
141
“We (Bulgarians) know that this country (Macedonia) has been subjected to major changes of
its population. After much mixing of its population with new settlers, in the end came the
Bulgarians, who have stretched their power far out, and have created a kingdom in Ohrid, in
the homeland of some of the most zealous Macedonists. They have lived in those places for a
long time, and they have merged the complete population into themselves. Who can tell us
now what kind of blood flows through the veins of the Macedonists? Who can tell us that they
are not of Bulgarian blood, but of the blood of the old Macedonians? Actually they cannot
answer this question without becoming funny and shallow.”627
Accordingly, the other Balkan nations such as Greeks and Serbs, did not allow the
formulation of a Bulgarian nationalist program.628 In this regard, Slaveikov wrote the article
“Dvete kasti i vlasti,”629 published in the Makedoniya newspaper630 and was arrested by the
Ottoman authorities due to his relations with the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee
in Bucharest, as will be discussed below. He often had assistance from another prominent
figure, Kuzman A. Shapkarev (1834–1909) who was born in Ohrid in Ottoman Macedonia
and was a folklorist, ethnographer, author of textbooks and ethnographic studies, and a
significant “regenerator” of the Bulgarian (or Macedonian) “invented tradition” based on
mediaeval Bulgarian empires.
In the Macedonian historiography, he is quite properly hailed among the greatest and most
diligent collectors of Macedonian folk art based on mediaeval stories. However, he wrote the
following textbooks that consisted ‘Bulgarian’ prefixes such as: “A Bulgarian Primer”
(1866), “A Big Bulgarian Reader” (1868), “Mother Tongue” (1874), “Short Book of
Religion” (1868), “Short Land Description” in other words “Geography” (1868), all
627 Makedoniya, 18 Januar, 1871, Istanbul
628 Ibid.
629 The newspaper was banned because of this text published in Macedonia, on 25 July 1872, broj 18, p. 1 See
the National Library of Bulgaria “St. Cyril and Methodius” in Sofia:
http://reginapi.ilib.libsofia.bg/isisbgrp/ssp/lister.asp?content=../Fullt/3585/1872/3585_1872_BR_*.pdf&from=1
&to=18&index=1872&cont=%D0%9C%D0%90%D0%9A%D0%95%D0%94%D0%9E%D0%9D%D0%98%D
0%AF&type=%D0%91%D0%A0%D0%9E%D0%95%D0%92%D0%95
630 In the 1860s promoted pan-Slavic ideas. See articles:
‘Bilgari I Srbi’ from 13. April 1968; also in the National Library of Bulgaria “St. Cyril and Methodius” in Sofia:
http://reginapi.ilib.libsofia.bg/isisbgrp/ssp/lister.asp?content=../Fullt/3585/1867-1868/3585_1867-
1868_BR_*.pdf&from=6&to=52&index=1867-
1868&cont=%D0%9C%D0%90%D0%9A%D0%95%D0%94%D0%9E%D0%9D%D0%98%D0%AF&type=%
D0%91%D0%A0%D0%9E%D0%95%D0%92%D0%95
‘Yuzhnit Slavyani, Panslavizm I Rusizmit’ from 22. June 1868, see the National Library of Bulgaria “St. Cyril
and Methodius” in Sofia: http://reginapi.ilib.libsofia.bg/isisbgrp/ssp/lister.asp?content=../Fullt/3585/1867-
1868/3585_1867-1868_BR_*.pdf&from=6&to=52&index=1867-
1868&cont=%D0%9C%D0%90%D0%9A%D0%95%D0%94%D0%9E%D0%9D%D0%98%D0%AF&type=%
D0%91%D0%A0%D0%9E%D0%95%D0%92%D0%95
142
published in Istanbul. 631 He once emphasised also that his books were written
“comprehensibly for the Bulgarian Macedonians (po-vrazumitelno makedonskit Bilgarin).”632
In this respect, he insisted in using the term Bulgar next to Macedonian. According to him, the
ancient ethnonym ”Macedonians was imposed on the local Slavs and began to replace the
traditional one Bulgarians.” 633 In a letter addressed to Marin Drinov in 1888, Kuzman
Shapkarev writes:
“But even stranger is the name Macedonians, which was imposed on us only 10–15 years ago
by outsiders, and not as some think by our own intellectuals.... Yet the people in Macedonia
know nothing of that ancient name, reintroduced today with a cunning aim on the one hand
and a stupid one on the other. They know the older word: ‘Bugari.’”634
Shapkarev, like Peter Slaveikov, was a collaborator of Georgi Rakovski’s revolutionary
organisation Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (Bilgarski revolucionen centralen
komitet) or BRCC. While Shapkarev and Slaveikov were based in Istanbul, the members of
this organisation, such as Vasil Levski known also as Kunchev, Lyuben Karavelov, Georgi
Rakovski or also Subi S. Popovic and Hristo Botev were based in Bucharest. The organisation
was founded in 1869 among Bulgarian patriotic emigrant circles in Romania. The decisive
influence for the establishment of the Committee was exerted by the Svoboda newspaper,
which Lyuben Karavelov began to publish in Bucharest between 1869 and 1873. He was
elected as chairman of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee in the spring of 1870.
Karavelov also prepared the first programme of the organisation, which imagined the
liberation of Bulgaria based on French revolution ideals and democratic principles circulated
around the European intellectuals at that time. In parallel to it, an important role also played
the Internal Revolutionary Organisation (Vtresnha revolucionna organizaciya) or IRO, which
was a Bulgarian revolutionary organisation founded by the Bulgarian revolutionary Vasil
Levski around 1870s. This association is an example of networks of revolutionary committees
that was built up in the town of Lovech. The foundation of this organisation demanded the
631 Desislava Lilova, Barbarians, Civilized People and Bulgarians: Definition of Identity in Textbooks and the
Press (1830–1878), in We the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe ed. by Diana
Mishkova (Budapest-New York: CEU Press 2009), pp. 179-206. See:
https://books.openedition.org/ceup/895?lang=de; Kuzman Shapkarev was a contributor of many Bulgarian
newspapers and magazines - "Tsarigradski vestnik", "Gayda" (Bagpipe), "Macedonia", "Pravo", "Savetnik"),
"Balgarska pchela" and others. The son of Kuzman Shapkarev - Kliment Shapkarev was one of the leaders of
IMRO.
632 Kuzman Shapkarev, Balgarska Citanka, (Istanbul: 1868).
633 Ibid.
634 Makedonski pregled, IX, 2, 1934, p. 55.
143
transfer of the Bulgarian revolutionary activities from Romania to ‘Bulgarian lands.’635 Apart
from it, these intellectuals (Levski, Karavelov) wanted a joint programme and charter, and
voted on the merger of “the two organisations under the name of BRCC at a general meeting
held in Bucharest in May 1872.”636
Next to Svoboda, patriots like Karavelov and Botev started to publish a second newspaper in
1873, Nezavisimost (Independence), where they were influenced by Orientalist discourses
circulating around Europe at the time. In this newspaper they stated that the “Turks [were]
incapable of any development” and that there was “great Asiatic opulence.”637 The reason for
their backwardness was the “Turkish religion, which [was] against any development and this
kind of religion [had] deep roots among the Turkish population.”638 In this respect, Karavelov
and Botev wanted to represent Bulgaria as part of the broader European civilisation against
the “barbaric Turks.” One of the tools used for this purpose were definitely newspapers and
books, and education and schools, as has been seen in the Greek and Albanian cases.
Accordingly, the core of the education and preserver of Bulgarian national consciousness was
in the notion that “Bulgariana had independence of their church since 10th century (bilgarite si
imale cherkovna nezavisimost oshe v X. vek).”639 They also clearly emphasised that this
church was always “present in Thrace and Macedonia as well (namirat v Trakiya I
Makedoniya).”640 This “imagined geography” that should construct an “imagined community”
through institutions, organisations, and education, required a “patriotic agitation” for a “mass
movement.”
The members of the church and BRCC as political entrepreneurs were the driving force
towards a Bulgarian mass movement of mediaeval revival. In this sense, Lyuben Karavelov
wrote an article on the national and church struggle of the Bulgarian people against the
Phanariots and certain Serb patriots who in the 1870s started propaganda against their
Bulgarian “brothers”. Karavelov wrote:
635 “In 1871, Levski prepared the Charter of the organization in the spirit of his own political views: liberation of
Bulgaria from the Ottomans through a nationwide revolution and establishment of the country as a democratic
republic with guarantees for the equality of all of its citizens regardless of their ethnicity or religion.”
636“The dissolution of the committee network around Sofia and the death of Levski dealt a hard blow to BRCC
and its work. The attempt to find a successor to Levski was unsuccessful, the Svoboda newspaper was banned by
the Romanian authorities and Karavelov was forced to flee Romania for fear of being extradited to the Ottoman
Empire.”
637 Nezavisimost, Bukurest, 3 Mart, 1873, broj 24, pp. 185; “turskoto tupoumie I turskata nesposobnost za
razvitie I za napredok (…) mnogochislenite aziatski roskoshi/mnogobrojna azijatska raskos.”
638 Nezavisimost, Bukurest, 9 mart, 1873, broj 25, pp. 193; “turskata religiya e protivna na siki edin napredok, a
taya religiya e pusnala dulbok korin mezhdu turskoto naselenie.”
639 Nezavisimost, Bukurest, 16 mart, 1873, broj 26, pp. 205
640 Ibid., pp. 207
144
“The justified unrest and the severe persecution and hatred against the Greek clergy which
arose in the Danubian parts of Bulgaria some years ago, are also being repeated in the
Western Bulgarian areas, which are called Macedonia, in accordance with the wish of the
Greek learned men. Numerous facts show that the struggle in these parts is more cruel, and
more energetic, and more fierce. Naturally fierce oppression and violent tempests call for
fierce and violent resistance. And, in point of fact, we know of no other Bulgarian or other
Eastern Orthodox land that has suffered as much from the blessed Phanariots and the
Hellenistic Klephti (propagandists) as Western Bulgaria.”641
Karavelov here breaks out directly with “Hellenistic” policy in Macedonia and accusing the
“Greeks” for violence. Along with the “Greeks,” he accused several “Serbs” for “Serbian
propaganda.” Interestingly, in this attempt, he does not accuse the Serbian state, but rather
Milos Milivojevic, as a Serbian nationalist, by stating the following about him:
“Our readers are already aware of the fact that the Constantinople societies Bratstvo
(Brotherhood) and Makedonskata Drouzhina (The Macedonian Company)642 published an
open letter in the newspaper Pravo (Justice/Law) addressed to Mr. Marinovic643, in which
they condemned the activities of the former Serbian ministry and complained of Serbian
propaganda and propagandists, who sow discord between the Bulgarian and the Serbian
peoples and breed not brothers and friends, but enemies and adversaries. Almost all
independent Serbian newspapers answered this letter and assured us that the honest and
genuine Serbian patriots were not taking part in this farce, and that none of the Serbian
ministries had given assistance to the group of Milos Milojevic. Recently, we received a
private letter from Belgrade, which read in part as follows: 'I can never praise a person who
undertakes to attack or to criticize people unfamiliar to him and of whom he has never
demanded any explanation. I refer to the open letter to Mr. Marinovic. It is true that for a long
time now Mr. Milojevic has been founding Serbian societies, which, in his own words, have
the task of disseminating Serbianism not only in Macedonia and Thrace, but also along the
shores of the Mediterranean, i.e. in Spain and Africa (Mr. Milojevic believes that the
Spaniards and the Algerians are Serbs); it is true that several of Milojevic's followers are
preaching retrograde ideas in Macedonia, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”644
641 Nezavisimost, Bucharest, No. 19, February 23rd, 1874; See the translation in:
http://macedonia.kroraina.com/en/ban/nr4.html (Accessed 13.04.2019)
642 Both are Bulgarian societies in Constantinople
643 “Jovan Marinovic (1821-1893) was a Serbian politician and diplomat that introduced several enlightened
reforms in the Serbian political system. As a close collaborator of the powerful Minister Ilija Garašanin, young
Jovan Marinović climbed/rose rapidly and became the leader of the Serbian Conservatives, eventually becoming
Prime Minister of the Principality of Serbia. Educated in Paris, Marinović was a sophisticated gentleman, who
believed in European culture and reforms as a way of enlightening the Serbian peasant society. Between 1861
and 1867 Marinović was anew the first aide of Prime Minister Ilija Garašanin and Prince Mihailo Obrenović,
during their ambitious policy of forming a wider Balkan alliance and fomenting a general Christian uprising
against the Ottomans. Marinović became Prime Minister on November 3, 1873, under a Liberal-Conservative
coalition and kept the portfolio of Foreign Minister (November 3, 1873, to December 7, 1874) as well.”
644 Nezavisimost, Bucharest, No. 21, March 9th, 1874
145
Hristo Botev also wrote an article against Milojevic’s article “Bulgarian Espionage and
Inquisition.” As a response, Hristo Botev pointed out:
“You adduce facts with which you accuse the Bulgarians and their Exarchate of using
espionage and inquisition to Bulgarize the poor, unfortunate Serbians in Turkey, and you say
we do not answer your facts but swear instead. Well, how are we to answer facts which you
yourselves base on the philological madness of Milos Milojevic, i.e. that Serbians have lived
in the Balkan Peninsula since time immemorial, that only a handful of 200,000 Bulgarian-
Tartars came here and, in a short time, Bulgarized all these Serbians? How are we to answer
these facts when their philological madness is clad in political tendencies, i.e. when you and
your government are striving to ensure that there will really be only 200,000 Bulgarians, or, to
use your words, Tartars, while the rest are Serbianized, i.e. Slavicized?”645
Botev, in comparison to Lyubo Karavelov, accused the Serbian state policy for attempting
“to deceive us [Bulgarians] with the good intentions of ‘the South-Slavonic Piedmont.’”
According to Botev, this South-Slavonic/Slavic Piedmont, which is Serbia, considered “the
Bulgarian people as Tartars, who, in order to be liberated from the Turks, should first be
Serbianized.”646 Here one can also trace the “nesting Orientalism” of the Balkan states, where
Serbian intelligentsia considered that the “Bulgarians,” together with the “Turks,” were part
of the Orient. Thus, in Botev’s view, the Serbian state tried to “civilise Bulgarians” through
“Serbization.” However, other Bulgarian intellectuals did not agree with Botev’s approach
and during the April Uprisings in 1876647 claimed cooperation with the “south-Slav brothers.”
In this regard, Bulgarian intellectuals also discussed their ideas, contested decisions,
645 Istok, Beograd, June 20th, 1875 See: http://macedonia.kroraina.com/en/ban/nr4.html#155;
Botev also addressed few questions to Serbian nationalist “Tell us, if you please, is there not in Belgrade a
society of patriots (which socie-ty we called 'scum') under the chairmanship of the 'philological ass' Milos
Milojevic, and does that society not send money, books and teachers to purely Bulgarian villages and towns in
Macedonia and to some parts in North-western Bulgaria? If it does, what stands behind these enormous
sacrifices, is it to enlighten their brothers, or to sow proselytism among them? Tell us, is this society not founded
by the Tempter, and is it not, both morally and materially, supported by your 'Piedmont' government? If it is so,
is not its purpose to prove in action that only Serbians live on the Balkan Peninsula? Answer all these vital
questions, and then we shall prove to you in the next number of ‘Zname’ (a Bulgarian newspaper) why we attack
'Serbia, Russia and everything that the people themselves desire', and we shall prove to you that the people do
not want what you and your government are doing to them, and no longer listen to those who but yesterday
cheated them.” See: Hristo Botev, Works, Authentic Edition), vol. II, Sofia, 1960; p. 219-222; the original is in
Bulgarian. Translation is here: http://macedonia.kroraina.com/en/ban/nr4.html
These ideas were supported as well by important personalities of Bulgarain National Revival (Balgarsko
natsionalno vazrazhdane) in Macedonia were Nako Stanishev and Ilyo Markov.
See: Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, op. cit. 2003, pp. 89-94.
646 Ibid.
647 During the Batak massacre in 1876, the Ottoman irregular troops or bashibazouk mainly Pomaks (Slavic
Muslims), were sent to Bulgarian Christian villages. The massacres, or known also as the “Bulgarian horrors,”
named by William Gladstone in a pamphlet. Gladstone also gave voice to what would remain the liberal
European public opinion of Ottoman Turks, who were, in his memorable words, “upon the whole, from the black
day when they first entered Europe, the one anti-human specimen of humanity.” Yosmaoglu, op.cit. p. 22.; See
about the April Uprising: Fikret Adanir, op. cit. 1979, p. 78.
146
strategies, and policies. On the one hand, Botev was against the Serbian policy, while on the
other few other Bulgarians supported the Serbian government and its assistance in their
attempts against the Ottomans.
Along these lines, the events that took place during April were reported on in a newspaper
titled Bulgarian voice (Bilgarski Glas) (1876-77), published in Bolgrad in Romania. In its
first issue from 17 April 1876, it is stated that the aim of Bulgarians should be “the liberated
state that can help us to express our free aspirations towards the political life of our
brothers/brethren on this side of the Danube.”648 This brotherhood called for a unity of all
Slavs that should disregard? the Macedonian issue/Question? This project was to be realised
by “lending a brotherly hand to Bosniaks and Herzegovians, Serbs, and Montenegrins, which
aims to bury Turkey.”649 These events can be approached analytically through the lenses of
post-colonial theory that perceived this “Pan-Slavic unity” as part of “civilised Europe”
versus the “barbarian Asiatic Turks,” who should be expelled from Europe. In this sense,
another source emphasises that “Asiatic Turks can change their character only if they accept a
European civilisation through melding with other European nations by abandoning the wild
Mohamedanian Kur’an and their superstitious laws.” 650 The same discourse we find in
another newspaper of that time, New Bulgaria (Nova Bilgariya), whose publication started in
1876. Its first issue maintains that the aim of Bulgarians should be “to throw out the Turks
from Europe by giving liberty to all Slavs (izgonat Turcite iz Evropa, i togava, namstvo da
dadat svoboda na Slavyanete).”651 Another article stated that “the Turks brought the Tatars
and Cherkes to Bulgaria to humiliate the Bulgarian homes and Christian churches.”652 Thus,
the only solution to expel them was by a call to “fight, Bulgarian brothers! God [was] helping
the Christians (na boi bratiyaa Bulgari! Bog veche chudesno pomaga na hristiyanite).”653
One can deduce that the colonial discourse was highly present in Bulgarian media, which was
shaped by the Zeitgeist that brought imperialist policy to the small nations. This imperialist
policy imagined the Slavs as one body, by pointing out that “all Montenegrins took the
648 Balgarski Glas, 17 April, 1876, Bolgrad, broj 1, pp. 1; “svobodna drzhava da mozhem svobodno da
iskazvame nasheto narodno stremlenie kam politicheskiyat zhivot za za nashite otvut Dunava bratya.”
649 Balgarski Glas, 8 May, broj 4, pp. 13; “neka podadem bratska ruka na boshnyakit i hercegovcit, srbinit I
chernogorcit I po skoro da otidem nie pri procesit na pogrebenieto na Turciya.”
650 Balgarski Glas, 18 May, broj 5, pp. 17; “aziyatecit (turci) samo togova mozhe da promeni svoiyat harakter I
da prieme evropeiskata civilizaciya, kogato toi sa pritopi mezhdu drugite narodi, t.e. kogato se izbavi ot diviyat
muhamedov koran I negovite suevrni zakoni.”
651 Nova Balgariya, 5 May, 1876, Bukurest, broj 1, pp. 1
652 Ibid.
653 Ibid., pp. 2; “Turcite dovedoh goli tatari da im pravit Bulgarite kushi (…) turcite dovedoh haiduti cherkezi da
im napravat kushi Bulgarite (...) Turcite hulyat, psuvat hristovata charkova; narichat hristiyanite bezvrni gavuri.
147
weapon yatagan; all the Serbs [had] guns; the Herzegovians and Bosniaks organized their
gangs; and the Bulgarians [were] joining them to fight the Turks. The Russian cannon [would]
be heard at the end of the world as well. Russia [was] strong and great [was] the Slavic
family.”654
But paradoxically, this policy also led the Slavs (in this case, the Serbs and Bulgarians) to
compete against each other over Macedonia. Therefore, one should take into consideration
that the imperialist policies of the Balkan states were not developed in a vacuum, but rather
were generated and formulated out of many political, economic or ideological options with
the Great Powers and locals on the ground. In this respect, the intelligentsia often worked to
“globalise” the problems among the Great Powers, and to install national consciousness
among the local population. They were often mediators between the local and global levels,
acting in a trans-regional context. For example, among the best known Bulgarian intellectuals,
who promoted the April Uprising in Europe, and cooperated strongly with the locals, were
Marko Balabanov and Dragan Tsankov.655 They sent a joint memorandum to all Great Powers
to inform them about the situation in the Ottoman Empire, looking for their understanding in
the realisation of Pan-Slavic brotherhood. Their backgrounds were typical of Westerneducated
Bulgarian nationalists, and their careers were made by championing the Bulgarian
national cause. To carry out this project, they also supported the role of Russia,656 because
they believed that only “Russia [could] seal the Eastern Question (Russkata pechat vrhu
vistochnit raboti).”657 Balabanov also edited the newspaper XIX Vek published in Istanbul
until May 1876. Like his colleagues, he also used Orientalist discourses and claimed that “the
654 Nova Bilgariya,17 November, 1876, Bukurest, broj 44. pp. 171; Skoro pak she izvadi Chernogoreca yatagana
si; skoro she grabni Sirbina pushkata si; skoro she sya stekit I pak hercegovski I boshnashki cheti, skoro she zape
bilgarina pod liskata znamya… drago mi e na polto s turchin da se bia. Skoro she pripne kazashkiya vihrohod
kony, she zagrmi Ruskiyat top I she e chue do kraya na sveta; Silna e Rossiya, velika e slavyanskata familia.
655“Tsankov (1828-1911) was a graduate of the first Bulgarian-language school in Gabrovo and he later studied
at the Odessa seminary, high school in Kiev, and then philology in Vienna. He then established the Community
of Bulgarian Literature in Constantinople in 1856 (a forerunner to the Bulgarian Literary Society Brăila), the
influential magazine ‘Bulgarian Booklets’ (Bulgarski knizhitsi) in 1858, and the journal ‘Balgaria’ in 1859, then
worked on and off in Ottoman administration and as a teacher. Balabanov (1837- 1921) studied in Athens,
Heidelberg and Paris before becoming a lawyer and editor of the Constantinople newspaper ‘Century’ (Vek) in
1870. There, he wrote in support of the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate (Bulgarian Orthodox Church) and
autocephaly from the Greek Orthodox Church, which was achieved in 1872.” See also: Mehmet Hacisalihoglu,
op.cit. 2003.
656 XiX vek, see: Rossiya i Slavyanet; Not long afterwards, “Tsankov, along with the former Foreign Minister
Marko Dimitriev Balabanov and the prominent Conservative politician and former Minister of Finance Todor
Stoianov Burm v, set up a proRussian newspaper, the Svetlina (Light), using Russian funds.738 The three men
also signed a written compact promising to support the Russian government, both now and when they eventually
returned to power.739 The Russians now had their own personal Opposition party to Battenberg and Karavelov,
complete with their own newspaper.”
657 XiX vek, 1. May, 1876, Carigrad, broj 18
148
Christian population in the Turkish Empire [were] without doubt by civilisation stronger than
the East.”658 However, after the results of the Congress of Berlin, often Bulgarian intellectuals
represented these parts of the Ottoman Empire (i.e. Macedonia) as a misfortune:
“It seems that of all (the) Christian peoples in the East only the Macedonian Bulgarian people
have been unfortunate and doomed to receive the present fatal blow; in short, let us conclude:
no war was waged for Macedonia, no Russian aid existed for Macedonia! (…) Macedonia, I
repeat, the cradle of Slavdom, the country of the holy Slav enlighteners Cyril and Methodius,
is in peril of falling under a worse oppression than before.”659
Accordingly, many of these intellectuals, during the Kresna-Razlog events, April Uprisings,
the San-Stefano Treaty, and Congress of Berlin saw and imagined Macedonia as “the cradle
of Slavdom.” Hence, after the ideas of “south-Slav unity” and “Greater Bulgaria” failed, some
of the Bulgarian intelligentsia shifted sides and imagined Macedonia exclusively as
Bulgarian. In the newspaper Bulgarin, a report stated that “the events in Macedonia are
Bulgarian uprisings (Makedoniya – bilgarskto vostanie)” and “our movement will not be a
brotherly connection of hearts with the living population in Macedonia, but also the
connection of our Macedonian brothers with this part of the population (living in
Bulgaria).”660 In this respect, the uprisings in Macedonia were represented by these political
entrepreneurs as an “uprising in Bulgaria (vstanyata v Bilgariya),” because the rebels were
part of the same “folk living in Macedonia (vistaneto na nashite ednorodci v
Makedoniya).”661
Regarding promoting this idea of complete unity, another important newspaper, Celokupna
Bilgariya, was edited in June 1879, which emphasised that “the first aim [was] to support and
educate the people regarding our efforts towards a union (nashi vestnik e da podrzha I da
odgoyava tezhneniata na naroda ni kim obiedinenie).”662 This was one of the turns for the
Bulgarian intelligentsia, because they did not give importance only to military actions, but
also to education. In schools, Bulgarian intellectuals tried to define imagined map of Bulgaria.
Books and newspapers often taught that Bulgaria consisted of “Northern Bulgaria, Southern
658 XiX vek, 24. April, 1876, Carigrad, broj 17; Hristianskit narodnonaseleniya v turskata drzhava, shiha bez
vsako sumnie da su po moschni za civilizaciata na Vistok.
659 Maritsa, Plovdiv, No. 9, August 25, 1878
660 Balgarin, 9 November 1878, Gyurgevo, broj 105, pp. 2; nashi dvizhenie ne samo che she se postigne s bratsko
srce ot vsichkiti zhivushi v Makedonia, no dazhe she se podkrni ot dvut, zashoto e dvizhenie obsho na stranata
(…) s nashiti bratya makedonci.
661 Balgarin, 16 November 1878, Gyurgevo, broj 107, pp. 2
662 Celokupna Balgariya, 20 June, 1879, Tarnovo, broj 1, pp. 1; This newspaper was edited by the above
mentioned Petko Slaveykov. He issued also the newspapers Osten (1879), Tselokupna Balgariya (1879),
Nezavisimost (1880-1883), Tarnovska konstitutsiya (1884), Istina (1886), Sofiyski dnevnik (1886) and Pravda
(1888).
149
Bulgaria as Eastern Rumelia, and Western Bulgaria or Macedonia (Severna Bilgariya, Juzhna
Bilgaria ili Ist. Rumelia i Zapadna Bilgaria ili Makedoniya).”663
One of the promoters of such ideas in schools and education was Vasil Kanchov, who was an
important political entrepreneur in Ottoman Macedonia. He was a teacher in the Bulgarian
Men’s High School of Thessaloniki (1888–1891), later replaced to a position of an director in
Serres in one Bulgarian schools, and in the period of 1894-1897 became a chief school
inspector of the Bulgarian schools in Ottoman Macedonia.664 He wrote two important books
about the three vilayets, “Makedoniya: Etnografiya i statistika” (1900) and “Orohidrografija
na Makedoniya” (1911). In the latter he states:
“It is impossible to mark the precise borders of the area of Macedonia, since it is not limited
with strict geographic features, nor is it administratively separated from the other areas. Only
in the ethnographic sense does Macedonia have somewhat defined borders, since the
Bulgarian tribe is settled in the entire country, and rarely exits its limits.”665
According to him, Macedonia as “imagined geography” and Bulgarians as “imagined
community” did not have borders and limits, thus, in order to “determine [the borders of
Macedonia]” one should “follow mainly the general perception of the population.” In his
opinion, this population was “local Bulgarian population.”666 These imaginations in fact
construct a Lebensraum policy that promotes violence by activating boundaries and stories
and by coordinating destructive campaigns against locals who are not seen, in this case
Bulgarians. One such institution that produced such knowledge was the Saint Cyril and
Methodius School or also known as Bulgarian Men’s High School in Solun, which officially
started with its work in 1880, supported by the local Bulgarian community and the Bulgarian
Exarchate. 667 Among the the teachers and initatior of this high school were noted various
Bulgarian (and Macedonian) political entrepreneurs such as Vasil Kancov, Kuzman
Shapkarev, Konstantin Velickov and Grigor Prlicev. Furthermore, these political
entrepreneurs and the new schools directly contributed to the emergence of a political
movement demanding independence of Macedonia from the Ottomans by training the
leadership cadres of IMRO, an outcome not necessarily foreseen by the Bulgarian upper
classes who pioneered the scholastic leap forward. IMRO would become one of the principal
663 Ibid., pp.4
664 See Vasil Kanchov, Orohidrografija na Makedoniya (Sofiya: Balgarskoto knizhovno druzhestvo, 1911), also
can be read here: http://www.promacedonia.org/vk/index.html (Accessed 18.09.2018)
665 Ibid., p. 18.
666 Ibid.
667 Ipek Yosmaoglu, op.cit. pp. 73; Stefan Rohdewald, op. cit. 2014.
150
political forces leading the insurgency against the Ottoman Empire and would maintain its
influence (and retain its violent tactics) during the interwar years. Nearly all the founders of
IMRO - Damian Gruev, Anton Dimitrov, Ivan Hadzi Nikolov, Hristo Batandzhiev, and Petar
Poparsov - were school teachers, trained either in Bulgaria or Macedonia.668
Although from the one side the IMRO’s members were educated intellectuals, from the other
side the movement also blended bandits from this region. Some of the local dissidents from
Ottoman Macedonia were convinced they could obtain their goals only through armed
struggle, and not only education. In this regard, political entrepreneurs often overlap with this
significant type of political actors, whom Charles Tilly terms “specialists in violence.”669
These violent specialists constituted the core group that formed the IMRO in Salonika in
1893. They were closely connected with the political entrepreneurs of the Bulgarian Men’s
High School of Thessaloniki and the Exarchate. In this regard, there was cooperation between
church, schools, and bands. However, in the second half of the 1890s, the “Bulgarian” bands
proliferated and already started separations inside the organisation, joined by conflicts with
the Bulgarian government and Exarchate as will be discussed in the next chapter. As in the
Greek and Albanian cases, this movement was neither unified nor “purely” nationalist. In fact,
it forged discussions between ideas of imagined Macedonia as part of Bulgaria, an
independent state of Macedonia, or supra-national Balkan unity.
2.3.3. THE SERBIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT AND THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION
In the 19th century, the Serbian policy towards the Ottoman territories was based on a
mediaeval narrative that emerged into the imagination of Ottoman Macedonia as a territory
that was the “heart” of the mediaeval Serbian Empire. The two Serbian Uprisings (in 1804
and 1815) facilitated the construction of this narrative among the Serbian intellectuals. In this
sense, Ilija Garasanin, a statesman and inventor of Greater Serbia (Velika Srbija), wanted to
achieve this revival of the Serbian state and Serbdom in such a manner that it could not be
said that the Serbs demanded something they had never had. Accordingly, the mediaeval
Serbian state was the mould on which its modern counterpart was to be built. Hence, this
building of “a new Serbian empire,” Garasanin said, “must now be completely cleared of
ruins and raised above ground; then, on this firm and stable historical basis, we must begin
668 Studied or being teachers Gotse Delchev, Dame Gruev, Todor Aleksandrov, Andrey Lyapchev, Ivan
Mihaylov, Petar Darvingov, Anton Ketskarov and others; See: Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, op.cit. 2003; Gul Tokay,
op.cit.
669 Charles Tilly, op. cit. 40
151
upon and extend the new building.”670 Serbian intelligentsia gave to these uprisings a national
element, although it was in fact rather local than national,671 and constructed a narrative about
Serbdom in Ottoman Macedonia. Furthermore, a series of internal rebellions in the Ottoman
Empire followed by the territorial loss of some of the Empire’s provinces like Greece
(independent as of 1830) or Serbia (autonomous as of 1835), enabled many Serbs to develop
cultural and national activities in the Habsburg and Ottoman provinces, more precisely in
Macedonia. Thus, Serbian intellectuals had already established a National Foundation (Matica
Srpska), founded in Pest in 1826, and later moved to Novi Sad in the Habsburg Empire. In
this regard, cities like Vienna, Budapest, or Novi Sad had become shelter places for the
promotion of Serbian national culture and Serbian nationalism, but these ideas did not remain
only on the side of the Danube in the Habsburg Empire.
The ideas of belonging to one and the same nation would were spread also in the other
Ottoman provinces where the local population spoke (a) south-Slavic language(s). After
obtaining its independence at the Congress of Berlin (1878), Serbia clashed with the
Bulgarian national developments in Ottoman Macedonia. After 1878, the independent
Serbian state tried to achieve territorial expansion in the territories that they called “Old
Serbia (Stara Srbija)”672 and “South Serbia (Juzna Srbija).”673 Between the Congress of
Berlin and the Balkan Wars, the Serbian state and its intelligentsia tried in various ways to
oppose the Bulgarian policy in Ottoman Macedonia or as their intellectuals termed it,
“Southern Serbia.” Hence, the annexation of Eastern Rumelia by Bulgarian Principality in
1885 disturbed the balance of power in the Balkans, especially between Serbia and Bulgaria.
In this regard, Jovan Ristic published an article in the newspaper Nova Ustavnost, explaining
that “Bulgaria annexed a large and rich province with a population of eight hundred thousand,
the balance of power in the Balkans is immediately destroyed. If the Balkan states [did] not
rise in protest against Bulgarian aggrandisement, they had to think of means of restoring the
equilibrium in their favour. Serbia [would] seek compensation in Old Serbia and northern
Macedonia:
670 Djoko Slijepcevic, op.cit., p. 146; Ferdo Sisic, Jugoslovenska misao, (Beograd: Balkanski Institut, 1937), pp.
91-92.
671 About the Serbian Uprisings and the Serbian history see: Holm Zundhausen, Istorija Srbije od 19. Do 21.
veka, (Beograd: Clio, 2008).
Holm Sundhaussen argues that “it is more appropriate to speak of peasant uprisings than of a revolution.” See:
Holm Zundhausen, Istorija Srbije od 19. Do 21. veka, (Beograd: Clio, 2008), p. 76.; Phillip Longworth does not
shares the same thought that nationalism played a significant role in these events: Philip Longworth, Making of
Eastern Europe, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), pp. 176–177.
672 Stara Srbija was a term used mostly for Kosovo vilayet (latterly Kosovo)
673 Juzna Srbija was a term used mostly for Manastir and Selanik Vilayet (latterly Macedonia)
152
“We need not do anything rash, but we must keep this danger [of increased Bulgarian activity
in Macedonia] before our eyes and be prepared to remove it. We must not allow anything that
we—still more, anything that our forefathers— have acquired to be lost.”674
Jovan Ristic was one of the leaders of Serbian diplomacy, specialised in Macedonian issues.
After he was appointed in Istanbul in 1861, he became Prince Mihailo’s close advisor in many
issues related to Serbian foreign policy. As a member of the Society of Serbian Slavdom
(Drustvo Srpske Slovenosti), he was involved in the promotion of the Serbian language in the
Ottoman Empire. During his time, quite active was the Department for Churches and Schools
in Old Serbia (Odbor za crkve i skole u Staroj Srbiji),675 established in 1868 to promote
education in Serbian and to preserve “the Orthodox faith in Old Serbia (sacuvanje
pravoslavlja u Staroj Srbiji.)”676 One of its founding members was Jovan Ristic.677 After
Bulgaria annexed Eastern Rumelia, Serbia declared war to the Bulgarian state, which was
decisively lost by Serbia. 678 Following this disappointment, the Serbian policy towards
Macedonia acquired a new momentum in 1886, with the establishment of another Society
named Saint Sava679 (Drustvo Sveti Sava), whose goal to protect the Serb people (srpski
narod) in Ottoman Macedonia (Old and Southern Serbia) and to suppress Bulgarian politics
and the Bulgarian Exarchate church’s influence.680 Svetomir Nikolajević was elected its first
president, who was known for his moderate views of the Greek claims in Macedonia, but held
harsh views against the Bulgarian developments in Ottoman Macedonia.681 Other founding
674 Djoko Slijepcevic, op.cit, p. 159
675 Slaviša Nedeljković, Delovanje Odbora za škole i učitelje u srpskim oblastima u Makedoniji od 1868. do
1876. godine, Vardarski zbornik 8 (2011), 283–305
676 Ibid.
677 Ibid.
678The Serbo-Bulgarian war lasted two weeks in November 1885. More about this war see:
https://www.kcns.org.rs/agora/srpsko-bugarski-rat-1885-godine-uzroci-istorijskog-nesporazuma/ (Accessed
18.06.2020.)
679 “Saint Sava was a Serbian prince and Orthodox monk, the first Archbishop of the autocephalous Serbian
Church, the founder of Serbian law, and a diplomat. Sava, born as Rastko, was the youngest son of Serbian
Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja (founder of the Nemanjić dynasty), and ruled the appanage of Hum briefly in
1190–92. He then left for Mount Athos, where he became a monk with the name Sava (Sabbas). He is widely
considered as one of the most important figures of Serbian history. Saint Sava is venerated by the Serbian
Orthodox Church as its founder on January 27. Many artistic works from the Middle Ages to modern times have
interpreted his career. He is the patron saint of Serbia, Serbs, and Serbian education.;” See: S. Rohdewald, op.cit.
pp. 512-522.
680 Stanoje Stanojevic, Narodna enciklopedija srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenačka, (Novi Sad: Izdavacka knjizarniza
Zorana Stojanovica, 1929), knjiga 1, p. 575; Fikret Adanir, op.cit. 1979.
681Notes about Svetomir Nikolajevic “Jedan je od osnivača Radikalne stranke, Društva Svetog Save i beogradske
masonske lože „Pobratim“. Rektor je Velike skole izmedju 1888-1890.”
153
members were such individuals as Ljubomir Kovačević, Miloš Milojević, Milojko
Veselinović, and Jovan Hadzic-Vasiljevic.682
These members, who can also be considered as political entrepreneurs, established a journal
titled Brotherhood (Bratstvo). Its first issue contains many texts about “Southern Serbia,”
especially about cities such as Veles, Prilep, Ohrid, and Thessaloniki (Solun). This issue
maintained that “Macedonia was conquered by the Bulgarians in the 9th century, when Serb
brothers began a clash among themselves.”683 Furthermore, the city of Prilep was glorified:
“[A]ll Serbs heard of the capital of the Marko Kraljevic (nema valjda Srbina, koji nije cuo za
Prilep, prestonicu Marka Kraljevica, sina Vukasinova).” 684 Moreover, the issue also
mentioned the southern borders of the Serbian Tsardom during the time of Tsar Dusan (juzne
granice Dusanova carstva)685 and that “Macedonia belong[ed] to an old Serb glory of the
Serbian state.”686 Hence, a text written as a “geographic and ethnologic survey in Macedonia
and Old Serbia (geografsko-etnografski pregled Macedonije i Stare Srbije)” was promoted.
687 A map was also added to it, where Macedonia was presented as an old Serbian territory.688
The aim was to emphasise that “Macedonians [did] not have anything to do with the Greeks.
Macedonians are not of Greek origin. Macedonians speak the Serbian language and celebrate
Serbian heroes, kings, and tsars.”689
In this issue of the journal Bratstvo, a poem, also known as ‘Serbian folk poem,’ was also
dedicated to Saint Sava.690 The editor of this journal was Jovan Hadzi-Vasiljevic, who was a
prominent Serbian historian and ethnographer of that time. As an official of the Ministry of
682 Mihailo Vojvodić, Milorad M. Radević, Društvo Svetog Save: dokumenta 1886-1891, (Beograd: Arhiv Srbije,
1999).
683 Bratstvo, Kraljevska drzavna stamparija, Beograd, 1887, p. 21; “koristeci se srpskom neslogom I
pocepanoscu, (Bugari) osvojise Macedoniju I drzase je do propasti bugarske drzave 971 godine.”
684 Ibid. p. 36
685 Ibid. p. 109
686 Ibid., p. 111; “Macedonija je deo stare slavne srpske drzave I narod njen.”
687 Ibid., p. 187
688 Ibid.
689 Ibid. p. 189; “sadanji Macedonci nemaju niceg srodnog sa Grcima. Macedonci nisu porekla grckog.
Macedonci, narocito zapadni, zbore srspski, slave, pevaju srpske junake, kraljeve i careve.”
690 Bratstvo, p. 105. Found als in: http://www.lektire.me/prepricano/sveti-sava-analiza-pesme_669 (Accessed
21.02.2020).
“Zbor zborila gospoda rišćanska
Kod bijele crkve Gračanice:
Bože mili, čuda velikoga!
Kud se đede car-Nemanje blago,
Sedam kula groša i dukata?
Tu se desi Nemanjiću Savo,
Pa govori gospodi rišćanskoj:
Oj Boga vam, gospodo rišćanska!”
154
Foreign Affairs of the Serbian state, he served from 1898 to 1904 in Ottoman Macedonia, in
the cities of Bitola and Skopje. He was also a secretary of the Society of Saint Sava and
worked for the “national enlightenment of Serbs in the Ottoman Empire.”691 The high value of
his work is due to it being based on field research, especially in the regions of Old Serbia and
Macedonia (South Serbia). To these works belong books as “Prilep i njegova okolina”
(1902); “Južna Stara Srbija, istorijska, etnografska i politička istraživanja” (published in two
parts in 1909 and 1913); “Četnička akcija u Staroj Srbiji i Maćedoniji” (1928) and “Skoplje i
njegova okolina” (1930). In the book about Prilep, he points out that “among the cities and
centres in our southern parts that are under the rule of the Turks, Prilep is the most important
one. (…) Prilep is a very important political and cultural centre and great city.”692 Also the
book emphasised that “Bulgarians used our indolence and incapability, started to count our
regions as their own.”693 Thus, the mission of the Serbian state should be “suppression of the
Bulgarization in the glorious city of Prilep (da se bugarstija I u veliko-slavnom gradu Prilepu
suzbije).”694
In the book about “Southern Serbia” titled “Južna Stara Srbija, istorijska, etnografska i
politička istraživanja I-II”, Jovan Hadzi-Vasiljevic clearly states that “Southern Old Serbia is
the nucleus of Serbian state life in medival ages.”695 There is no doubt that the mediaeval
Serbian kingdom was a “nucleus” for the further imagination of Ottoman Macedonia as part
of Serbian state. The most prominent historian of that time, Ljubomir Kovačević was
appointed to promote this idea in the Serbian educational system and among the population in
Ottoman Macedonia. In this regard, together with Ljubomir Jovanović, he wrote the wellknown
two-volume edition of History of the Serbian People for the Secondary Schools (in
original: Istorija srpskog naroda za srednje škole).696 He also wrote on “monumental history”
691 Jovan Hadži-Vasiljević Južna stara Srbija: istorijska, etnografska i politička istraživanja. (Beograd: Nova
štamparija Davidović. 1913)
692 Jovan Hadži-Vasiljević, Prilep i njegova okolina, (Beograd: Nova Elektricna Stamparija Petra Jockovica,
1902, p. 1; “izmedju gradova I centara u juznim predelima nasim pod Turcima, Prilep se istice kao prvi po
vaznosti svojoj. (…) Prilep je sa svojim predelima bio vrlo vazan politicki I kulturni centar. U ono vreme Prilep
nalazimo kao velikoslavni grad.”
693 Ibid., p. 3-4; “jer je Bugarima, koristeci se prilikama I nasim nehatom, pa I neumenjem, vec u narav preslo, da
nase krajeve u onim stranama onamu u svoju sferu racunaju kao svoje opisuju.”
694 Ibid., p. 212
695 Jovan Hadži-Vasiljević op.cit. 1913, p. 7; “ovaj, s razmerno dosta prostran, teren ispitivanja nazvali smo
Juznom Starom Srbijom; tako smog a nazvali s toga sto su oblasti na tom terenu, koje u ovim knjigama
opisujemo, za vreme srpskog drzavnickog zivota u Srednjim Vekovima sacinjavale sa okolnim oblastima jezgro
Kraljevine Srbije…”
696 Ljubomir Kovacevic, Ljubomir Jovanovic, Istorija srpskog naroda za srednje škole, (Beograd: Štamp.
Kraljevine Srbije, 1893-94).
155
for Serbian schools, glorifying Serbian rulers such as Despot Stefan Lazarevic, 697 King
Vukasin, Tsar Uros, 698 Vuk Brankovic, 699 Stefan Nemanja, 700 Stefan Prvovencani. 701
Accordingly, using monumental history, he aimed to (mis)use and (ab)use702 the past in order
to inspire the local people to attempt “great things.” Popular histories of the Kosovo Battle
(1389), personalities such as Despot Stefan Lazarevic or Vuk Brankovic, for instance, usually
belong to the monumental histories. The great men of the past are held up for admiration
among the masses and locals, and to inspire them in participating in their struggles, doubts,
and triumphs for the “nation” and the “land.” “We take heart,” Friedrich Nietzsche said, from
“the knowledge that the great which once existed, was at least possible once, and may well
again be possible some time.”703 In this context, when Ljubomir Kovacevic’s son died during
the Balkan Wars in Ottoman Macedonia (Kumanovo), Kovacevic added:
“My son, depart in peace. You have done your duty. My son, I do not weep: I am proud of
you. You have joined the heroes whose sufferings and death of old saved by millions the lives
and souls of our nation. Tell the heroes of Kosovo, Dušan and Lazar and all the martyrs of
former days, that today Kosovo is avenged.”704
Furthermore, one of the most important personalities during this period (1878-1903) was
Vladimir Karić. He was a prominent geographer of that time, who mostly inspired Jovan
Cvijic – his pupil that became the most famous geographer in the Balkans.705 Vladimir Karic
wrote several geographical books for the Serbian schools.706 During the 1880s, he also wrote
the books Serbian Lands (Srpska zemlja) in 1882707 and Serbia: Landscape, People, and State
(Srbija: opis zemlje, naroda i države) in 1887, intended to influence the consciousness of the
rural population through the school system.708 In these books, he emphasised the contours of
the Serbian claims in Ottoman Macedonia. According to him, due to the fact that Serbia had
no widespread propaganda network there, the local population started to identify themselves
697 Ljubomir Kovacevic, Despot Stefan Lazarević za vreme turskih međusobica (1402 — 1413), (Beograd: 1880)
698 Ljubomir Kovacevic, I opet kralj Vukašin nije ubio cara Uroša, (Beograd: 1884.)
699Ljubomir Kovacevic, Vuk Branković, (Beograd: 1888).
700 Ljubomir Kovacevic, Nekoliko pitanja o Stefanu Nemanji, (Beograd: 1891)
701 Ljubomir Kovacevic, Žene i deca Stefana Prvovenčanog, (Beograd: 1901).
702 About this concept of “monumental history” see: Friedrich Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie
für das Leben, (Leipzig: Verlag Panitzsch, 1874)
703 Ibid.
704 Jovan Pejicic, A Disturbing Funeral in Belgrade in 1912, For Which the Whole Serbia Cried, Wherever It
Exists (accessed 11.12.2020.): https://www.nacionalnarevija.com/en/tekstovi/br10/Sloboda%20-
%20Reci%20im,%20sine%20moj.html
705 Biljana Vučetić, Naša stvar u Otomanskom carstvu, (Beograd: Istorijski Institut 2012.)
706 Vladimir Karic, Udzbenik Zemljopisa - Geografije, (Beograd: 1879 and 1881); see; Glasnik Etnografskog
muzeja u Beogradu, (Beograd 43/1979)
707 Vladimir Karic, Srpska Zemlja, (Beograd: 1882)
708 Vladimir Karic, Srbija: opis zemlje, naroda i drzave, (Beograd: 1887),
156
with the Bulgarians or Greeks.709 In this sense, the Serbian people were behind the Greek and
Bulgarian states, which promoted their identities in the region through education and
ecclesiastic churches. In order to promote the Serbian identity in Ottoman Macedonia, Karić
was appointed Serbian Consul in Skopje in 1889 and worked to strengthen the Serbian
nationalist policy in Ottoman Macedonia. For this purpose, he was promoting the opening of
Serbian schools and churches in the region and to “strengthen Serbian national consciousness
in the Ottoman Empire (jacati srpsku nacionalnu svest u Osmanskom carstvu.)710
In Vladimir Karic’s opinion, Serbia also needed an ally that could provide a common policy
regarding the local population in Macedonia.711 For this reason, the Serbian military attaché in
Istanbul, Jevrem Velimirovic, contacted Greek representatives in 1882. In his report, he noted
that the Serbs could benefit from resolving the Macedonian issue, but needed help from
Greece to do so.712 In 1885, the son of the inventor of “Great Serbia”, Milutin Garašanin, who
was now Serbian Prime Minister, submitted a plan to the Serbian King Milan suggesting a
manner of organisation of the Serbian policy in Ottoman Macedonia, or as it was referred to
by the Serbian intelligentsia - Old Serbia and Macedonia.713
The crisis in the Balkans caused by the unification of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia in
September 1885 was an event that influenced the acceleration of the Greek-Serbian
cooperation against the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. 714 Therefore, the Serbian state
undertook measures in a more organised way to reduce the Bulgarian activities in the region
and to spread Serbian national consciousness through the establishment of several networks.
In this regard, Serbia firstly tried to promote Serbian “Macedonianism” as its first move
toward eventually Serbianising the local population of Macedonia. For this purpose, the
Association of Serbo-Macedonians (Društvo Srbo-Makedonci) was established by political
entrepreneurs from the region of Macedonia in Istanbul in 1886. Its founders had all formerly
been members of the organization such as Secret Macedonian Committee established in Sofia
in 1885. Four of its members left Bulgaria, switched their loyalties, and went to Belgrade to
support the Serbian policy. The praxis of switching sides in the Ottoman Macedonian context
709 Vladimir Karic, op.cit., 1882, p. 31
710 Mihailo Vojvodić, Stojan Novaković i Vladimir Karić, (Beograd: Clio, 2003), pp. 126-172.
711 Ibid.
712 Dalibor Jovanovski, Friendly Competition – Greek-Serbian Relations and Ottoman Macedonia in the Eighties
of the 19th Century, (Skopje: Godišen zbornik na Filozofskiot fakultet, Ss. Cyril and Methodius, 2019) p. 122.
713A quote from Ksenija Šulović, Stevan Vladislav Kaćanski (1828-1890) (Novi Sad: katalog izložbe, 2003)
714 Almost simultaneously, Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs Kontostavlos gave instructions to the Greek
envoy in Belgrade to start the talks about the delineation of a line of the sphere of interests in Macedonia.
157
was quite common. During one’s lifetime, one could support several ideologies or national
projections according to the situation and various personal, economic, tribal, or family
interests, as will be seen in Chapter Three.
One such example were the personalities gathered around the Association of Serbo-
Macedonians, who initiated their activities on 23 February 1885. In Belgrade, its members
met with one of the Serbian politicians named Stojan Novaković, who pledged his support
and institutionalised the Serbian networks in Ottoman Macedonia.715 The decision to create
such Association in Istanbul, it was taken at a meeting of the Serbian government’s members
in early August 1886.716 At the same meeting the decision was also reached to create the Saint
Sava Society based on the “Serbian sacred ruler” with the purpose of “spreading Serbian
propaganda in the region of Macedonia.”717 The latter society and its educational department
(established in March 1887) would organise the majority part of the religious and educational
work in Ottoman Macedonia, while Stojan Novaković would be appointed Serbian
Ambassador to Istanbul (1886–91), and organized the educational and cultural life through the
consulates in Kosovo vilayet (Skopje and Prishtina in 1887), Solun vilayet (1887) and Bitola
vilayet (1889). Their main aims were to educate and indoctrinate population on the ground by
installing the national consciousness through education and religious (church) activities.718
For this puropse, Novakovic was appointed as diplomat to Istanbul and thus, played a
significant role in the realisation of the ‘Serbian cause’ by establishing the Association of
Serbo-Macedonians.719 He was assisted by the two members of the Macedonian committee
named K. Grupchev and N. Evrov.720 These political entrepreneurs were partially successful
in forging the Macedonian language, based on strong Serbian linguistic influence. This
715 Ibid.
716 The aims of the programs see in: http://www.promacedonia.org/srbi/drugi.html (Accessed: 18.12.2020);
717 Stefan Rohdewald, op.cit. 2014, pp. 391-407.
718 Slavenko Terzić, Konzulat Kraljevine Srbije u Bitolju (1889-1897), Istorijski časopis (57) 2008, pp. 327–342.
719 Ibid. “The Society offered paid scholarships to those who called themselves Serbo-Macedonians. The society
organized in Serbia specialized schools for children of Macedonia and Stara Serbia and developed a propaganda
among the Macedonians working in Serbia. Only three years later, its executive body became part of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia. Its propaganda was so strong that after a sequence of student riots in the
Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki, a group of 34 students accepted the proposal of the Serbian
emissaries to go and study free of cost to Belgrade. They soon became aware of the obvious reasons behind its
program, when they were forbidden to possess Bulgarian literature. Subsequently, nearly the whole group left
Belgrade to continue its education in Bulgaria. Among that group were Dame Gruev, Petar Pop Arsov, Krste
Misirkov, Kosta Shahov, etc.”
720 Klara Volaric, Carigradski Glasnik: A Forgotten Istanbul-based Paper in the Service of Ottoman Serbs
(18951909), Master Thesis (Budapest, CEU, 2014)
158
emergence of “Macedonism” in the region was seen as a stage of the gradual Serbianisation of
the Macedonian Slavs.721
One of the important personalities of this network was the above-mentioned Milos Milojevic,
a cofounder of the Society of St. Sava in Ottoman Macedonia. He was also a prominent
politician and writer, whose work was described as “on the border between history and
literature.” Interestingly, these political entrepreneurs, such as Milojevic, were often active at
the local, regional, or global levels. They could be teachers, state agents, politicians, or
diplomats in their lifetimes. In this regard, Milojevic, along with his friend Kosta
Sumenkovic, published several books and a map: the “historical and ethno-geographical map
of Serbs and Serbian/Yugoslavian lands in Turkey and Austria (istorijsko-etnografska
geografska mapa Srba i srpskih/jugoslovenskih zemalja u Turskoj i Austriji.”) 722 Milos
Milojevic also travelled to Ottoman Macedonia, where he recorded his travels in a book
“Putopisi dela prave - Stare Srbije.”723 During his travellings between 1871 and 1877, he
released three volumes of data and maps, where he tried to prove that the “Serbs [were] the
majority and Albanians the minority population.”724
In similar ways, Milojko Veselinovic opposed the Bulgarian presence in Ottoman Macedonia.
Accordingly, he wrote several books regarding those topics, such as Pogled kroz Kosovo
(1895),725 “Srbi u Macedoniji i u Juznoj Staroj Srbiji” (1888),726 and “Granicni dijalekt
medju Srbima i Bugarima” (1890).727 In this regard, the Serbian state and its intelligentsia
tried to influence the local population of Ottoman Macedonia by travelling to these lands and
publishing books about its history and geography. In this sense, one should also note the work
of Spiridon Gopcevic,728 “Makedonien und Alt Serbien” (1889). Gopcevic’s was a famous
Serbian nationalist book about “Old Serbia” and Macedonia, arranged for German-speaking
721 Mihailo Vojvodić, Stojan Novaković et la politique étrangère de la Serbie Balcanica, 2014, xlv, pp. 229-266.
722 Miloš Milojević, Istorisko etnografsko geografska mapa Srba i srpskih (jugoslavenskih) zemalja u Turskoj i
Austriji, (Beogradu: Izdao Kosta Atanaskov – Šumenković, 1873)
723 Mirčeta Vemić, Etnička karta dela Stare Srbije: Prema putopisu Miloša S. Milojevića 1871–1877. god.
(Beograd: Geografski institut „Jovan Cvijić“ SANU, 2005)
724 Ibid.
725 Milojko Veselinovic, Pogled kroz Kosovo, (Beograd: 1895)
726 Milojko Veselinovic, Srbi u Macedoniji i u Juznoj Staroj Srbiji, (Beograd: 1888)
727 Milojko Veselinovic, Granicni dijalekt medju Srbima I Bugarima, (Beograd: 1890)
728 “Spiridon Gopčević was was a great shipowner in Trieste, then Austrian Littoral (modern Italy), but had
originated from the village of Podi near Herceg Novi, in Boka Kotorska (modern Montenegro), then a part of the
Austrian Empire. Gopčević entered the Serbian foreign service and served as diplomatic attaché in Berlin (1886-
1887) and Vienna (1887-1890). In 1891 he went back to his family estate in Trieste, where he continued to write
as a journalist for several German-language newspapers. Gopčević's views on Serbian and Albanian populations
in Kosovo and also the issue of the Arnautaš theory or Albanians of alleged Serbian (descent). This book is seen
as a work that opened the path for unprecedented Serbian territorial claims in the region.”
159
readers. As an appendix to this book a pro-Serbian ethnographic map on Macedonia was also
published.729 Other important works of this period were the records of the Bitola consul
Mihailo L. Ristic (P. Balkanski), laid out in the book “Kroz Groblje - opazanja i beleske
prilikom putovanja kroz Srpsku zemlju pod Turskom 1892. Godine”730; Branislav Nusic’s Sa
obala Ohridskog jezera731 (1892) and “S Kosova na sinje more”732 (1894); and Ivan Ivanic
“Macedonija I Macedonci – putopisne beleske”733 (1906).
In these works too, one can find plenty of contested politics between the Serbian intelligentsia
and their difficulties to deal with local compatriots who often opposed their projections.
Furthermore, these Balkan states and their mobile intellectuals promoted various national
ideas and tried to use the dissatisfaction of the locals for the installation of a national feeling
on the ground, but the locals did not work along the lines of of “nationalist” affiliation.
Oftentimes it appeared that locals manipulated the pseudo-nationalist fears expressed by their
“protectors” from Belgrade. In this regard, as the frequent shifts in the focus of these local
efforts will suggest, the activities of the local communities should not be exclusively
interpreted as “nationalist” in nature.734
In Isa Blumi’s opinion, these schools proved incapable of inculcating the loyalty Istanbulbased
officials had envisioned; rather locals often used these “colonising” institutions to
dictate the terms of state penetration in their lives and thus maintain a balance of power
between themselves and the outside world.735 The importance of includeingthe local level lies
in the fact that the reformers in Istanbul or in other cities (Belgrade, Sofia, or Athens)
frequently had difficulties in sustaining their goal to create uniformity in how the Empire’s
citizens traded, communicated, or acted.
729 Spiridon Gopcevic, Makedonija i Stara Srbija, (Beograd: Sazveždje, 2016) First published in 1890.
730 Mihailo L. Ristic, Kroz Groblje - opazanja i beleske prilikom putovanja kroz Srpsku zemlju pod Turskom
1892 g., (Beograd: 1892).
731 Branislav Nusic, Sa obala Ohridskog jezera, (Beograd: 1892)
732 Branislav Nusic, S Kosova na sinje more, (Beograd: 1894)
733 Ivan Ivanic, Macedonija I Macedonci – putopisne beleske, (Beograd: 1906)
734 See the raports of the Serbian Consulars to Thessaloniki and Sevres: Aleksej Timofejev, Istorija srpske
Diplomatije Dokumenta: Generalni konzulat Kraljevine Srbije u Solunu (1887-1902), (Beograd: Arhiv Srbije,
2016), and Aleksej Timofejev, Istorija srpske Diplomatije Dokumenta: Generalni konzulat Kraljevine Srbije u
Serezu (1897-1900), (Beograd: Arhiv Srbije, 2016).
735 Isa Blumi, op.cit. 2001, p. 15
160
2. CONCLUSION
Here I highlighted the Balkan states‘ policies and the Ottoman consolidation during the
period from 1878 to 1903, that is, after the Congress of Berlin and up to the Ilinden Uprising.
I demonstrated how the Ottoman state, especially the Hamidian regime, tried to keep its
remaining territories in Rumelia by enforcing a special policy towards the Albanian-speaking
locals who were considered by Ottoman state officials as “an Ottoman fortress in Rumelia.”
In this regard, the Hamidian regime tried to integrate and recruit them on the basis of Unity of
Islam (Ittihadi Islam). This ideological and political attempt, I argued, can be analysed within
the framework of the Ottoman counter-colonialist strategy known as “borrowed colonialism.”
Influenced by European ideas of that time, this strategy aimed to build a “civilised centre”
(Istanbul) that directed a mission civilizatrice towards Ottoman Macedonia.
Despite the reluctance of a few Ottoman scholars to recognise this parallel to European
colonialism, this study tries to demonstrate that the same notions of superiority and
civilisation found among the Great Powers also informed Ottoman reforms. By using
Ottoman and Albanian sources, I demonstrated that the ‘Albanian element,’ especially
Albanian intellectuals played a very important role in keeping the three vilayets close to its
centre – Istanbul. One of their policies was the support of Ottoman (and Albanian) schools by
the Albanian intellectuals that aimed to counter Balkan “small-state imperialism.” In contrast
to this, I showed also how the Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek sides formulated policies in
Macedonia, often by opening their own “national” and “religious” schools in order to
indoctrinate the local members of Macedonian societies. Much like their colonial counterparts
elsewhere, Serbian, Greek, and Bulgarian state schools were created to monitor and supervise
the national consciousness of the local population in Ottoman Macedonia. In this attempt,
they founded a spate of organisations and schools (Drustvo Sveti Sava, Drustvo Srbo-
Makedonci, Vtreshna revolucionna organizaciya, Ethniki Etaireia etc.) in order to inject a
national consciousness and feelings about ancient Hellenism or the mediaeval Bulgarian and
Serbian empires. What is demonstrated here by studying the various cases to indoctrinate
these people through churches or education activities are contradictory results on the ground.
In this respect, I do not conclude that these Balkan policies of the souls” were successful, but
rather that these policies were often opposed by local practices. What is more, it was often the
case that these promoters of such national meta-narratives clashed over the “indoctrination” of
certain national programmes or ideologies and were not able to realise them on the ground
161
according to their previous plans. What I here argue, it is rather that locals had also agency
and the processes were happening through negotiations – outside the vacuum.
162
3. NETWORKS ON THE GROUND: A PERSPECTIVE FROM BELOW IN
OTTOMAN MACEDONIA (1903-1908)
If we accept a definition of borderlands as inhabited territories located on the margins of a
certain state and subject to contestation by the imaginations of various power centres, then the
case of Macedonia represents a borderland par excellence. As we have seen above, Bulgaria,
Greece, and Serbia were the main claimants to the Ottoman province of Macedonia. In
anticipation of the Ottoman collapse in Europe, these Balkan rivals sought the national and
religious allegiance of the inhabitants of the province, employing both propaganda and
guerrilla tactics. Thus, from the 19th century to the present, Macedonia has also been
“continually in flux,” having its borders altered with each attempt of a
(neighbouring/regional) nation-state to claim it as part of its imagined territories. 736
Furthermore, complicating matters were the several interventions by the Great Powers into
this territory at the turn of the 20th century, alongside the (existing) involvements of the
Ottoman and Balkan states. In this regard, as I showed in previous chapters by taking into
consideration international, regional, and (less) local complexities based on top-down
approaches, this chapter will rather deploy a bottom-up approach. On the one hand, the
chapter aims to open up a discussion on the extraordinary imperial(ist) administration in
Ottoman Macedonia of the late Hamidian Period (1878-1909) from a top-down perspective,
and on the responses to this policy by different actors from a bottom-up perspective. While
the international and Ottoman state perspectives have been elaborated in several works,737 the
current literature on the Macedonian Questions has so far dealt only partly with bottom-up
perspective(s), leaving a room for the posing of various (relevant) questions. Thus, most of
this literature738 take socio-political actors such as IMARO, Chetnik Guerrilla Organisation,
Committee of the Union and Progress, etc. as ethno-nationally primordial and does/do not
analyse them as constructed entities that emerged through various complexities of negotiation
and interaction. In contrast, my research moves beyond reductive national-historic and
Eurocentric perspectives, while “giving a voice” to less researched communities that
established entanglements and transfers of a multidirectional character as their response to the
Ottoman administration. In line with the latter, Isa Blumi suggests that Ottoman Macedonians
736 Ipek Yosmanoglu, op.cit., 2010, pp.160-415,
737 See works by: Nadine Akhund, Gul Tokay, Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, Fikret Adanir etc. mentioned in
Introduction.
738 See works by: Nikola Pandevski, Kyril Drezov, Tome Boshevski, Aristotel Tentov etc.
163
(and other Balkan nations) did not have a quintessential “fixed identity” prior to the trauma of
the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913; and he warns against a teleological emphasis of their
national belonging.739 Moreover, Isa Blumi, Selim Deringil, Ussama Makdisi, and others
draw attention to the possibilities rather than restrictions of identities during the late Ottoman
Empire. In this chapter, I (try to) analse the processes that took place on the ground, the ways
in which the imagination of Macedonia was contested among different groups, gangs, and
organisations, and their respective responses. However, I maintain the awareness that
sometimes the states and revolutionaries on the ground had (mutually) differing responses as
well, participated in different programs, and lobbied for diverse and sometimes contradictory
strategies. Hence, it should not be assumed that inside the states’ politics and these
communities or gangs there was a unified, proto-, or supra-national sensibility. Rather their
ambitions were varied and contested, and the discussions on Ottoman Macedonia too often
resulted in clashes and contradictory tendencies. In this regard, the aim of this chapter is to
analyse their contested political agendas and detached strategies, to trace their networks
comparatively, and to investigate their entanglements, cooperation and interconnectivity
through various historical examples in order to deconstruct statist Balkan historiographies and
Eurocentric points of view.
3.1. INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION(S) AND LOCAL ORGANISATIONS IN
OTTOMAN MACEDONIA
At the turn of the 20th century a general Eurocentric point of view continued to be present in
the media, which presented the Muslim population of the Ottoman Empire as “barbaric” in
nature, and the Christian population as tortured under their yoke. For this purpose, there were
several interventions in the Ottoman Empire organised by Great Powers such as Great Britain,
France, Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Russia. The intervention in Ottoman Macedonia
warrants consideration in the context of the European powers’ imperial rivalries in the
Ottoman space, and of the European powers’ relations with the Ottoman Empire in the
aftermath of the Congress of Berlin (1878).
During this period, the Ottoman Empire served as a testing ground for humanitarian
intervention, where in fact many European powers were interested in the Armenian, Cretan,
and Macedonian cases in the Empire.740 In order to further attract the European public, the
739 Isa Blumi, op.cit. 2017, pp. 115
740 Ibid.
164
Macedonian and Armenian revolutionaries led various uprisings for the implementation of
their local or regional agendas. Bulgarian nationalists in particular made Macedonia the focal
point of their expansionist projects, where their imagination clashed with that of Greek and
Serbian nationalists. Towards the end of the century, Albanian nationalist propaganda,
favouring its population, came to play a further destabilising role. Such events on the ground
also clashed with the Ottoman state centralisation policy, often reinterpreted in European
media as a struggle of the local Christian population against “Ottoman barbarity.”741 Thus, the
“principes d’humanite” of the intervention in Ottoman Macedonia were evoked in diplomatic
and governmental correspondence, as well as in the press and pamphlets. For instance, the
French liberal and socialist politicians, as well as journalists and intellectuals, expressed
interest in the Macedonian Questions in various newspapers like “Le Temps” and “L’Aurore”
or French international law reviews like “Revue Générale de Droit International Public.”742
They were searching for a legitimate power for interventions into the Ottoman Empire,
because the “[Ottomans] were a presence of this offensive return of barbarism (en presence de
ce retour offensif de la barbarie).”743 Furthermore, the Ottoman centralisation project that
clashed with the local population was rather reinterpreted in the light of Bulgarian and Greek
or Christian atrocities, than a conflict for revenues as part of the aim of the Ottoman
centralisation to retrieve its peripheries (Macedonia). In one such example, written by philo-
Macedonians in France, it was emphasised that “[a]s of the present, the Christians of Armenia
and Macedonia are the most massacred subjects of the Sultan, there is a patrimonial glory of
France to protect these Christians of the Orient.”744 This protection of the Christians of the
Orient was often represented as an obligation since the Crusade times (Cette protection date
du jour même des Croisades). As a part of this obligation, there was also the façade of “a
grand moral idea that had enveloped all European nations in the unity of one religious belief.
This force had risen against the unity of the invader who came from Asia.”745
741 David Rodogno, The ‘principles of humanity’ and the European powers’ intervention in Ottoman Lebanon
and Syria in 1860–1861, in Humanitarian Intervention: A History, ed by Brendan Simms and David J. B. Trim,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011)., p. 183.
742Among the supporters of Macedonian issue were Victor Bérard in the Revue de Paris, René Henry in the
Correspondant, and Raymond Recouly in the Revue Politique et Parlementaire.
743 Victor Berard, Pierre Quillard, Francis de Pressense, Pour l'Arménie et la Macédoine, (Paris:Societe Nouvelle
de librairie & D’edition, 1904), p. 38.
744 Mais puisqu'aujourd'hui les chrétiens d'Arménie et de la Macédoine sont les plus massacres des sujets du
Sultan, permettez-moi de vous rappeler que la protection des chretiens d’Orient est dans le patrimoine glorieux
de notre France. Pour l'Arménie et la Macédoine, 1904, p. 48
745 En ces temps-là, dans la chrétienté, la force matérielle s'était mise au service d'une grande idée morale qui
avait enveloppé toutes les nations européennes dans l’unite d’une seule croyance religieuse. Cette force s'était
levée contre l'unité d'une seule l'envahisseur qui venait de l'Asie. Pour l'Arménie et la Macédoine, 1904, pp. 48
165
Numerous authors in Great Britain who had animated the debate on the Armenian Question
now participated in the related issue of the Macedonian Questions. Especially active was the
centre of philo-Macedonian agitation, known as the London Balkan Committee, which aimed
to promote discussions and form an opinion about “justice and humanity.”746 Despite this
expertise, the Balkan Committee began with many preconceived ideas and was not promoting
“justice and humanity” in a proper manner. Noel Buxton’s 1907 book named “Europe and the
Turks” stated that atrophies like those in Congo were deplorable because they were carried
out by Europeans, but that those of the Ottoman Empire were the “greatest atrocity on the
surface of the world, because the sufferers themselves [were] civilized beings.”747 Thus, he
stressed that his book was supposed to enlighten the British public about Macedonia or “the
field of the great battle between the East and West – between barbarism and civilization.”748
This Pro-Macedonian agitation against the “Ottoman barbarity” rapidly became transnational,
probably because of the previous experience of the Armenian movements who were supressed
by the ‘Ottoman barbarians.’ News and reports were published everywhere, describing the
Christian atrocities as dreadful in order to awaken readers’ interest. 749 By lobbying for
diplomatic intervention in the name of “humanity” and “civilisation,” the intervening states
acted collectively, politically, and militarily united on behalf of the Christians in the Ottoman
Empire. On 23 September 1902, when the Bulgarian speaking men crossed the Ottoman
frontier during the uprisings in Djumaya, it attracted a great deal of interest among the Great
Powers and incited them to get more involved into these events. Although the crisis was not
provoked by the local civilian population, but from the neighbouring countries, it was
popularised by the Great Powers and European media. The Ottoman forces easily suppressed
the uprising induced by neighbouring Bulgaria, but this action was denounced by Europeans
as “the barbaric actions” of Ottoman soldiers.750
The locals organised informational campaigns that suited their political purpose. For instance,
a member of a Macedonian organisation in Bulgaria (the Supreme Macedonian Committee)
sent Stoyan Mihaylovski (a local intellectual) on a tour of the European capitals to report that
regular Ottoman troops massacred women and children. Neighbouring countries and local
746 David Rodogno, Against Massacre…., p. 235.
747 Noel Buxton, Europe and the Turks (London Routledge: 2020) first published in 1912, p.130; David
Rodogno, The European powers’ intervention in Macedonia, 1903–1908: an instance of humanitarian
intervention?, in Humanitarian Intervention: A History, ed. by Brendan Simms and David J. B. Trim (e
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011), p. 215.
748 Ibid. p. 215.
749 David Rodogno, Against Massacre…, p. 236.
750 Ibid.
166
agents were aware that those massacres and atrocities would increase the possibility of
intervention from the Great Powers. These actors also knew that evidence of the Ottoman
authorities’ unwillingness or incapacity to put an end to the massacres would further increase
the likelihood of a humanitarian intervention.751 According to Biliotti, “the publication of
accounts of atrocities alleged to have taken place in Macedonia in 1902 and 1903, was purely
a strategy designed to rouse Europe to intervene on behalf of the Bulgarians.”752
3.1.1. THE GREAT POWERS AND THE OTTOMAN ADMINISTRATION IN THE
THREE VILAYETS
In Constantinople, British ambassador Sir O’Conor personally relayed to Sultan Abdulhamid
the necessity of implementing “meaningful reforms” in Macedonia. The British reported the
situation in Macedonia as “worrisome and grave.” Along these lines, the French ambassador
to St. Petersburg warned that “the Great Powers had to act in order to forestall the unrest to
come in Macedonia.”753 On 30 November, therefore, Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid issued an
irade or decree for reforms in the three vilayets of Macedonia titled Rumeli Vilayetleri
Hakkında Bir Talimat (Instructions for the Rumelian Provinces) and established the Umumi
Rumeli Müfettişliği (Rumelian Inspectorate for Reforms). The decree consisted of 18 articles,
divided into four chapters. Sultan Abdulhamid decreed that “the administration, instruction,
public works, and the judiciary in Macedonia were to remain under Ottoman control.”754
Additionally, on 8 December 1902 the Sultan appointed Huseyin Hilmi Pasha as inspectorgeneral
for the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire in order to prevent interference by
the European powers in Ottoman Macedonia.755 Nevertheless, the Ottoman overtures were not
sufficient to avoid the Great Powers’ interference in Macedonia. Two Great Powers (Russia
and Austria-Hungary) had a particular and direct interest in those territories and observed the
events on the ground. They were not satisfied with the Ottoman reinforcement of its
peripheries and observed the reforms introduced by the Sultan with extreme skepticism. The
Austro-Hungarian and Imperial Russian emissars to Istanbul, Heinrich Chalice and M.I.
Zinoviev, accepted the duty to formulate the joint plan for reforms in Ottoman Macedonia.
This plan of reforms contained six points that became known as the Vienna Plan. On 21
February 1903, the Russian foreign minister, Count Wladimir Lamsdorff, and his counterpart
751 David Rodogno, The European powers’ intervention in Macedonia…, p. 208.
752 Duncan Perry, op.cit., Durham, 1988.
753 Ipek Yosmaoglu, op.cit., Cornell University Press, 2013.
754 Ibid.
755 BOA. Y. PRK. HR. 33/63.
167
from Dual Monarchy, Count Agenor Goluchowski, presented this plan to the Ottoman
leadership. According to this plan, the Ottoman inspector-general was to serve for a
preordained time period in Macedonia with the assistance of the Great Powers, in order to
achieve his obligations according to the planned reforms. Furthermore, the gendarmerie was
to be reorganised by foreign officers (as in Crete) recruited from the ranks of the Muslims and
Christians. Furthermore, the government “had to take the necessary measures to suppress the
crimes and offences committed during the revolt and to grant amnesty to all political
prisoners.”756 Additionally, fiscal reforms were also required, together with reorganisation of
the budget, because all the expenses were to be covered by the Ottoman state. 757 This
interference of the Great Powers in Ottoman domestic affairs, brought about deep
dissatisfaction in Istanbul and paralysed the Ottoman administration in the practice in
Ottoman Macedonia. Moreover, the announcement of these new reforms resounded
negatively throughout the region as well the discontent of Istanbul caused a wave of negative
reactions in the (Ottoman Macedonian) region as well. Bulgaria questioned the moderation of
the Austro-Russian requirements, while the Serbian government criticised the lack of
guarantees for the manner in which they were to be applied. Furthermore, many actors on the
ground opposed these interventions and reforms enforced by the Great Powers and their
acceptance by the Ottoman Empire. As an expression of their dissatisfation, they organised
several protests and an uprising during 1903, and the most important event, known as the
Ilinden Uprising, ensued in August. With quick suppression of the uprising by the Ottoman
state, the Vienna Plan lay dead. The gravity of the situation caused a second set of
interventions by the Great Powers. Thus, in September, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia visited
Emperor Francis Joseph of Dual Monarchy in Mürzsteg (today Austria), where they signed a
new memorandum. In content the memorandum was identical to the Vienna Programme, and
called for the appointment of \ Austro-Hungarian and Russuan civil agent to supervise the
reforms of the administration, judiciary, and local gendarmerie in the three vilayets. The
participation of the local Christian in these institutions was to be managed by an Ottoman
statesman known as Huseyin Hilmi Pasha, the Inspector-General of Macedonia.758 According
to the Mürzsteg programme, 759 each Great Power appointed an advisory official to the
756 David Rodogno, The European powers’ intervention in Macedonia…, p. 211
757 Ibid.
758 BOA.Y.PRK.MK.12/43. 28 Kanun‐ı Sani 1318
759See: Mürzsteg programme of nine articles:
“1. In order to establish control of the activity of local Ottoman authorities concerning the application of reforms,
Civil Special Agents from Austria-Hungary and Russia are appointed to the office of Hilmi Pasha, and obligated
to accompany the General Inspector everywhere, to call his attention to the needs of the Christian population,
168
Ottoman official in charge of reforming the gendarmerie in each province. Dual Monarchy
(Austro-Hungary) appointed personnel to the sanjak of Üsküp (Skopje), while Imperial Russia
to the sanjak of Thessaloniki, France to the sanjak of Siroz, and Great Britain to the sanjak of
Drama.
In accordance with this, the Inspectorate underwent a fundamental transformation in the years
1903-1909 in line with the reform schemes for Ottoman Macedonia drawn up by the
European powers. The interventions entailed protracted and comprehensive interference in
Ottoman internal affairs, which the Great Powers considered a necessity and viewed the
Ottoman administrative capacity as “barbarous” and “half civilised.” In the following years,
signal him the abuses of local authorities, transmit their recommendations to the Ambassadors in Constantinople,
and inform their Governments of all that happens in the country. As aides to the Agents, Secretaries and
Drogmans could be appointed and charged with the execution of their orders and are authorized to tour the
districts in order to question the inhabitants of Christian villages, supervise local authorities, etc.
The mission of the Civil Agents is to watch over the introduction of reforms and the appeasement of the
populations; their commission will expire in two years starting from the day of their nomination. The Sublime
Porte will prescribe to the local authorities to grant these Agents all the assistance so that they can fulfill their
mission.
2. Since the reorganization of the gendarmerie and the Turkish police constitutes the most essential measure for
the pacification of the country, it is urgent to ask the Sublime Porte for the introduction of this reform.
Taking in consideration, however, that the Swedish officers and other people employed until presently, who do
not know the language or the local conditions, and did not render themselves useful, it would be desirable to
introduce modifications and supplements in the initial project as follows:
a) The reorganization of the gendarmerie in the three vilayets will be entrusted to a general of foreign nationality,
in the service of the Imperial Ottoman Government, to whom could be added Deputies, among the military
personnel of Great Powers, who would share the circumscriptions between them and who would act as
supervisors, instructors and promoters. In this way they would also oversee the behavior of troops towards the
population.
b) These officers will ask, if it appears necessary to them, for the addition of a certain number of officers and
under-officers of foreign nationality.
3. As soon as an appeasement of the country will be noted, the Ottoman Government will be asked for a
modification in the administrative di- vision of the territory in view of a more regular grouping of different
nationalities.
4. Require simultaneously the reorganization of administrative and judicial institutions, and it would be desirable
to open their access to
indigenous Christians, and to encourage local autonomy.
5. Establish immediately in the principal centers of vilayets Mixed Commissions formed of an equal number of
Christian and Moslems Delegates for the examination of political and other crimes perpetrated during the
troubles. The consular representatives of Austria-Hungary and Russia should participate in these Commissions.
6. Require the Turkish Government to allocate special funds for:
a) reinstatement, in the localities of their origin, the Christian
families which took refuge in Bulgaria or elsewhere.
b) help the Christians who lost their wealth and homes.
c) restore houses, churches and schools, destroyed by Turks during the insurrection.
Such commissions will decide the distribution of these funds with the participation of notable Christians. Austro-
Hungarian and Russian consuls will supervise their use.
7. In the Christian villages burned by Turkish troops and Bashi-Bazouks, the reinstated Christian inhabitants will
be free of payment of all taxes during the year.
8. The Ottoman Government will reintroduce with no further delay the reforms mentioned in the project
formulated in February of the current year as well as those which become subsequently necessary.
9. As most of the excesses and cruelties were perpetrated by ilaves (Redifs of II class) and Bashi-Bazouks, it is
urgent that the first are laid off, and that the formation of gangs of Bashi-Bazouks be absolutely prevented.”
See: Nadine, op.cit. pp. 142-144; Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, op.cit. 2003.
169
these “civilisation measures” exacerbated the situation on the ground and brought about
complications by not only further weakening the Ottoman administration, but also by
encouraging the communities involved to take advantage of it and to express their political or
national aspirations. Thus, David Rodogno stressed that “nineteenth-century international law
established a discriminatory hierarchy among European and non-European states, based on
the principle of the alleged superiority of European civilization,” 760 and in practice this
“superiority” greatly intensified the gang conflict following 1903 and brought about the
failure of the Ottoman government in 1908.
3.1.2. THE OTTOMAN ADMINISTRATION AND THE LOCAL ACTORS IN
MACEDONIA
After the Berlin Treaty (1878) Ottomans believed the survival of the Empire depended upon
the preservation of their remaining territories in the Balkans. This included strengthening of
central power and preventing Bulgarian, Greek, and Serbian activisms in Macedonia, which
had serious aspirations towards these territories, which they viewed as an issue to be exploited
when the time was ripe. Therefore, the Macedonian Question became the core cause of
tension not only among these states but prior to the Balkan Wars, amongst the Great Powers
too. One of the major Ottoman concerns was undoubtedly the establishment of the new
Bulgarian state, with its many unsettled questions. The decisive factor was the fundamental
ambition of all Bulgarians to regain the Macedonian provinces they had lost at the Congress
of Berlin. Soon after the Treaty, the Bulgarians increased their activities in the Macedonian
provinces through the influence of the Exarchate by establishing cultural ties and sending
clergy and teachers from the Principality to awaken the national aspirations of the populace,
while at the same time there were those revolutionary activists who believed the only way to
regain the lost territories was to take arms.761 In order to manage this chaos, the Ottoman state
took measures to integrate its peripheries and to extend its influence to the local population.
The Hamidian regime tried to apply a strategy in the peripheries known as “avoiding the
source of trouble (çıban başı koparmamak)” or “no discontents (sızıltı çıkarmamak).”762 The
common core of this strategy among the leaders of the Ottoman Empire was to create a
760 David Rodogno, The ‘principles of humanity’ …, p. 160.
761 A. Gül Tokay, “op.cit. (PhD thesis., University of London, 1994), pp. 2-7.
762 Kemal H. Karpat, The politicisation of Islam: reconstructing identity, state, faith, and community in the late
Ottoman state. Oxford University Press 2001. p. 237; Gökhan Çetinsaya, II. Abdülhamid’in İç Politikası: Bir
Dönemlendirme Denemesi, Osmanlı Araştırmaları/The Journal of Ottoman Studies, XLVII (2016), p. 383;
Gökhan Çetinsaya, ‘Çıban başı koparmamak’: II. Abdülhamid Rejimine Yeniden Bakış,”Türkiye Günlüğü, 58
(Kasım-Aralık 1999), pp.54-64.
170
hegemonic presence - a single authoritative rule - even in the far corners of society. The goal
was to penetrate society deeply enough to shape how individuals throughout the society
identified themselves, while the role of the state apparatus was to provide such far-reaching
domination. It included vertically connected agencies to promote the “state‘s system of
meaning and legitimacy; to make universal rules (legislative bodies); to execute those rules
(bureaucracies); to adjudicate (courts), and to coerce (armies and police).“763 However, it is
worth noting that the states did not succeed in establishing their own domination by default
without negotiating with local actors. It often happened that state apparatus ended up with
disengagement or a lack of engagement in the local arena. Thus, failures to engage in arena
struggles in even the most remote parts of the country affected the state in the capital city.764
In this context, the lack of capacity of the Ottoman Empire to penetrate into the (deep layers
of the) society in the European/Rumeli provinces, transformed Ottoman Macedonia into a
cradle of revolutionary and guerrilla organisations. Hence, the Ottoman state found itself
increasingly facing a new sort of challenge to establish a public order that ended up without
successful results. Besides, neighbouring states and locals formed revolutionary and guerilla
organisations in an attempt to transfer the fight onto an international platform. For instance, in
the 1880s, many of these organisations started to appear in Belgrade, Sofia, and in Athens
with the aim of fomenting agitation in Macedonia. Two groups existed among the Serbs, one
(the Society of Saint Sava) representing the convictions that any and all Serbian activities
should be directed from Belgrade, the other, founded by the Metropolitan of Uskup (the
Serbian Chetnik Organisation), favouring independent action. In similar ways, organisations
appeared in Sofia, Athens, and Thesaloniki, which were founded to provide Greek or
Bulgarian state agendas, or working independently for the “Macedonian cause.“ Not only
among the Christian population, but also among the Muslim communities in Macedonia, the
Albanian intellectuals demanded autonomy with a reorganization of their provinces under an
Albanian governor. In order to calm down discontent among the local population in
Macedonia, the Grand Vizier, Said Pasha came up with a series of reforms in legal, financial,
educational, and agricultural areas and reorganised the police and gendarmerie. As has been
763 Ibid. pp. 24; Joel S. Migdal, The State in Society: Struggles and Accommodations in Multiple Arenas, States
and Social Structures Newsletter, 13 (1990), pp. 2-3;
Four ideal types of state-social forces conflict:
“1. State trasforms totally society.
2. State partly transforms and enables symbolic presence of social forces.
3. Existing social forces' incorporation of the state.
4. The state may fail altogether in its attempt at penetration.”
764 Joel Samuel Migdal, Atul Kohli, Vivienne Shue (eds.) State Power and Social Forces: Domination and
Transformation in the Third World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). p. 26.
171
mentioned in previous Chapter, Said Pasha proposed reforms for the Albanian-populated
areas.765 However, the Ottoman initiatives did not satisfy the local Christian communities,
which maintained their activities with the expectation of attracting European attention and a
possible intervention. The turning point in the Macedonian developments, however, was the
Ilinden Uprising, which had always been a part of the IMRO (Internal Macedonian
Revolutionary Organisation) agenda, and which began at Saint Iliya’s Day (Ilinden) on 2
August in the Manastir vilayet.766
Hence, neither did the Ottoman reforms nor the European intervention in the form of the
Vienna Plan and Murszteg programme satisfy the local and regional actors. The Bulgarian
intellectuals and politicians were disappointed because they hoped for at least an autonomous
Macedonia with a Christian governor-general. The Greek and Serb representatives might have
expressed their satisfaction with the reforms but this did not prevent them from intensifying
their activities on the ground. It soon became obvious that conflicts on the ground were not
just between the “barbarous Ottomans” and “civilised Christians,” but also among the
Christian population itself. In this regard, the Greek government insisted that many of these
“Greek bands” in Macedonia did not feel any hostility against the Ottomans, rather they
openly stated that the hostilities were directed “against the Bulgarian bands.”767 Accordingly,
neither the “Ottoman barbarity“ nor the Great Powers‘ “civilised measures“ could bring peace
in the provinces, rather both communities, the Christian and the Muslim, once again stepped
up their activities in plain view of the Great Powers and Ottoman officials.
3.2. THE NETWORKS OF LOCAL ORGANISATIONS IN OTTOMAN MACEDONIA
The failure of the Vienna and Mürszteg Reforms led to a continuing increase in the power of
the Macedonian revolutionaries and their engagements against the Ottoman state or other
organisations on the ground. Such groups attacked the Ottoman railway’s telegraph post in
January 1903; detonated a bomb on the Salonika-Constantinople railroad line at the Perai
Station; in May 1903 a group of anarchists in Thessaloniki attacked the Ottoman Bank, while
the major uprising was staged on 2 August of the same year. As I elaborated above, neither
765 Gul Tokay, Macedonian Question, 1878-1908, in War and Diplomacy, The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878
and the Treaty of Berlin, ed. by Hakan Yavuz with Peter Sluglett (Utah: Utah University Press, 2011). pp. 15-17.
766 Ibid. p. 17.
767 Ibid., pp. 20; BBA, HRSYS 1772/30, Rifat to Tevfik, Athens, 19 November 1904. Only after 1905, Hilmi
Pasha and the rest of the local authorities started to realize that the Greek movement was going out of control
and something had to be done to prevent their insurgent activities and the support of the mainland Greeks,
including the government.
172
the Great Powers nor the Ottoman state could bring order into Ottoman Macedonia. The
reforms were not implemented according to the plans of the powerful states, rather they often
needed to be negotiated with the local population. Also, the “civilised measures” introduced
by the Great Powers in the form of reforms failed on the ground. Even the “Ottoman
barbarity” could not suppress local gangs anymore. Commenting on these developments, Joel
Samuel Migdal points out that patterns of domination on the ground are determined by key
struggles in society‘s “multiple arenas of domination and opposition.”768 Officials at different
levels of the international arena or state levels can be the key figures in these struggles -
interacting or conflicting - with an entire constellation of social forces in disparate arenas.
From the one side, the various struggles can move societies towards integrated domination
where the state enforces broad power, while from the other side the conflicts and violence
developes in the “multiple arenas of domination and opposition” that leads to dispersed
domination. This dispersed domination means that neither the state, nor any other social force
manages to achieve countrywide domination.769 In the Ottoman Macedonian context, there
were various local organisations that struggled to achieve this conuntrywide domination and
opposed the central power and the reforms introduced by the Great Powers. From their
inception, these organisations, whether pro-Macedonian, pro-Bulgarian, pro-Greek, pro-
Albanian, or pro-Serb, who had already witnessed the failure of the Armenians, made it clear
that they did not believe in the efficiency of the Vienna or Mürzsteg programs.770 In what
follows, this chapter will analyse the relations between these organisations on the ground, by
placing the actors in a trans-regional context from a “bottom-up” perspective and analysing
their activities from “inside” the organisations.
3.2.1. INTERNAL MACEDONIAN-ADRIANOPLE REVOLUTIONARY
ORGANISATION (IMARO): A BULGARIAN OR MACEDONIAN ORGANISATION?
NATIONAL OR SUPRA-NATIONAL?
After the Gorna Cuma uprising in 1902, the Dual Monarchy and Imperial Russia took the
initiative for introducing reforms in Macedonia. Abdulhamid II was aware of the imminent
imposition of radical reforms and preempted them by introducing his own programme in
December 1902. However, this programme was not directed only at “three vilayets,” but
rather to Rumelia as a whole. In this respect, Sultan introduced a new administrative unit
768 Joel Samuel Migdal, op.cit. 1994, p. 9.
769 Ibid., p. 9.
770 David Rodogno, Against Massacre, 2012, p. 230.
173
known as the Rumeli Umum Müfettisligi (General Inspectorate of Rumeli). At its head of the
Inspectorate was appointed Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha, a veteran of the Ottoman administration
who had held, among other posts, the governorship of Adana and Yemen. 771 On the other
hand, the Vienna Plan was presented by Dual Monarchy and Imperial Russia to the Ottoman
government in February 1903 and was immediately accepted by Sultan Abdulhamid II, but in
the practice, it remained a dead letter. The consensus among the Great Powers was in favour
of keeping the status quo in Ottoman Macedonia rather than supporting any ideas of
autonomy. As we have already seen, at the turn of the 20th century various state actors were
involved in Ottoman Macedonia that were analysed by several scholars. To the contrary, the
organisations on the ground were analysed less and have not been covered in detail yet, thus, I
undertake here the “bottom-up” approach and try to highlight the multiple decisions taken by
the local population. In this regard, I argue that the situation at the local level was much more
complex than what has been represented by nationalist historiographies. These “specialists in
violence” on the ground, as Charles Tilly has termed them, 772 often included military
personnel, guards, jailers, gang leanders, bandits or executioners. They were often
cooperating with states or political entrepreneurs such as teachers, priests, and intellectuals,
but also worked outside of government. Guerrilla warriors, fighters, armed guards,
paramilitary forces, bandits or any members of fighting bands, sometimes enjoyed
governmental protection, but it was also the case that they operated outside of government
that enabled them to take multiple decisions. Such examples one can find among the Internal
Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) 773 members, who were a
miscellaneous group of people that often supported various strategies and cooperated with
different states (or local leaders) for achieving distinct and blended aims. From one side, this
organisation had been often marked by an ethnic “Bulgarian” since its establishment, while
from other side, it is represented as multi-ethnical organisation that was supposed to include
various people living in Macedonia. However, in order to understand the IMARO and profiles
of its members, one should take a closer look at the genesis of the movement. At the
beginning, this movement was organised in Thessaloniki on 23 October 1893 by six local
young men from Macedonia - Andon Dimitrov, Damyan Gruev, Hristo Tatarchev, Hristo
Batandzhiev Ivan Hadzhinikolov, and Petar Pop Arsov.
771 Yosmanoglu pp. 33. Adanir, op. cit. 1979, p. 99.
772 Charles Tilly, op.cit. p. 40.
773 During its first years, this organisation had a number of names: „Macedonian Revolutionary
Organisation/Committee or Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees (between 1896-1902),
Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (1902-1905), and finally Internal Macedonian-
Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (since 1905).“
174
Furthermore, most of their members attended or were closely related to the Bulgarian School
in Solun that was discussed in Chapter Two. Out of the six founding members, four were
teachers who studied abroad. Dame Gruev, Petar Pop Arsov, and Ivan Hadzinikolov lived in
Bulgaria, where they were influenced by nationalist and socialist ideas that were popular in
Europe. In Sofia in 1891-1892, all three of them participated in “the Young Macedonian
Literary Association,”774 whose members created a magazine called Loza (Grapevine) in
1892-1894 under the leadership of Pop Arsov.775 In the beginning this group of intellectuals
insisted firstly on the implementation of Article 23; secondly, at this early stage the idea
encompassed not only Macedonia, but also Adrianople; and thirdly, there were two basic
opinions in the discussions of the goal – autonomy or direct annexation with Bulgaria. It
appears likely that at the early stages of the struggle, a desired outcome of the autonomy for
the regions of Macedonia and Adrianople was terminal unification with Bulgaria.776 In this
regard, in 1901, one of its leaders Goce Delchev, emphasised the political aims against the
Ottomans:
“...We have to fight for the autonomy of the regions of Macedonia and Adrianople as a stage
for their future unification with our common fatherland, Bulgaria.”777
Furthermore, its primary name Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees
emphasised a Bulgarian element that was also evident in its first Constitution (Ustav). In the
first chapter of the Constitution, the Organisation outlined its goals in Art. 1. “to secure full
political autonomy for the regions of Macedonia and Adrianople;” and in Art. 2. “to achieve
774 “The Young Macedonian Literary Society was founded in Bulgaria in 1891, with a purpose to defend the
local Macedonian language dialects, However, in the newspaper “Liberty (Svoboda)” that was official People’s
Liberal Party blamed the organization for separatism from Bulgarian national cause. As an response to
“Svoboda,” the members of the Young Macedonian Literary Society claimed that their “society is far from any
separatist thoughts, in which we were accused and to say that the ideal of Young Macedonian Literary Society is
not separatism, but unity of the entire Bulgarian nation.”
775 See also State Archives of North Macedonia (DARSM) in Skopje,v IV.102/1894, 94, inv.br. 280/76,
discussed also in “Novini”, 26.08. 1894, broj 94, Carigrad-Ortakoy (Istanbul)
776 Jonathan Bousfield and Dan Richardson, Bulgaria, (London: Rough Guides, 2002), p. 450.
777 Dimitar Kosev, Hristo Hristov, Nikolay Todorov, Valentin Stankov, Makedonija – Sbornik ot dokumenti i
materiali, (Sofiya, Izdatelstvo na Balgarskata Akademiya Naukite, 1978) About Goce Delchev’s statment in
1901: "...Treba da se borime za avtonomnosta na Makedanija i Odrinsko, za da gi začuvame vo nivnata celost,
kako eden etap za idnoto im prisoedinuvanje kon opštata Bolgarska Tatkovina". See also State Archives of
North Macedonia (DARSM) in Skopje, v IV.101/1943 edin broj, 21.04.1903 – 21-5-1943, inv.dr. 278/76,
discussed also in “Goce Delchev List”, 21.iv. 1903, and 2.v.1943 g. on 25.06.1902, Sofiya. About Goce
Delchev’s short biography see: Fikret Adanir, op.cit. p. 119, Quote: “Es war der makedonische Revolutionär
Goce Delchev (1872—1903), der sich diese Auffassung zu eigen machte und versuchte, sie in die Praxis
umzusetzen. Delechev war im Jahre 1891, nach Abschluß der sechsten Klasse des bulgarischen Gymnasiums in
Saloniki, in die Offiziersschule von Sofia aufgenommen worden. In Sofia machte er von der Möglichkeit
Gebrauch, die sozialistische Literatur der Zeit kennenzulernen. Bald geriet er unter den Einfluß bekannter
makedonisch-bulgarischer Sozialisten, wie D. Blagoev, D. Hadzi Dimov und V. Glavinov. An den Aktivitäten
verschiedener makedonischer Gruppierungen in Bulgarien nahm er regelmäßig teil.”
175
this goal they (the committees) shall raise the awareness of self-defence in the Bulgarian
population (bulgarskoto naselenie) in the regions” and “to prepare and carry on a general
uprising (edno povsemvstvo vostanne).” 778 In this respect, one of its members Hristo
Tatarchev, emphasized the importance of the ‘Bulgarian element’ within the words:
“We discussed the aims of this organization at length and later we settled on the autonomy of
Macedonia, with the predominance of the Bulgarian element. We could not accept the
principle of the ‘direct unification of Macedonia with Bulgaria’ because we could see that this
would be opposed by the Great Powers and by the aspirations of the small neighbouring states
and Turkey. It came to our minds that an autonomous Macedonia could later be more easily
united with Bulgaria, or, if this could not be achieved, it could be the uniting link of a
federation of the Balkan peoples. The district of Odrin (Adrianople), as far as I remembered,
did not enter into our programme at the beginning, and I think that later we thought of
including the area as a part of an autonomous Macedonia.”779
Similarly, another member of the organisation, Ivan Hadzhinikolov, in his memoirs lists the
basic principles of the foundation of the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary
Committees including the moral and material help for the struggle of the Macedonian
revolutionaries provided by the Bulgarian society.780
In this respect, Tatarchev and Hadzinikolov admitted that the “Bulgarian element” and
“Bulgarian society” generally played an important role in the Macedonian society and
revolutionaries on the ground. Oftentimes, an autonomous status among its founding members
was seen as a transitional step towards a possible unification with Bulgaria. Such were one
part of these members who joined also the revolutionary organisation, known as the Supreme
Macedonian Committee (SMC) or Virhovists.781 This outcome was based on the example of
778 Ibid.; Illustration Ilinden, (Sofiya: 1936).; See also State Archives of North Macedonia (DARSM) in Skopje,v
IV.60/1902,24, v.br. 203/76, discussed also in “Delo”, Broj 24, on 25.06.1902, Sofiya
779 Illustration Ilinden, Sofia, 1936, Document No142 “From the memoirs of Dr. Hristo Tatarchev on the
foundation and aims of the Internal Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organization”; Hristo Tatarchev,
Spomeni, dokumenti, materiali, (Sofiya: Nauka I izkustvo, 1989);;Memoari na Vatrasnata Organizaciya,
Makedoniya i Odrinsko (1893-1903), 1904; Lyubomir Mletich, Materiyali za Istoriyata na makedonskoto
osvoboditelno dvizhenie, kniga IX, (Sofiya: Pecatnica P. Gluskov, 1928), p. 102 See in original:
“Raziskva se na dalgo varhu celta na taya organizaciya i posetne se sprahme varhu avtonomiyata na Makedoniya
sa predimstvo na balgarskiya elementa. Ne možehme da vzpriemem gledisheto „pryamo prisedinenie na
Makedoniya s Balgariяya”, zashoto viždahme, če tuy she sreshne golmi mačnotii poradi protivodeystvieto na
velikit sili i aspiraciit na susednit malki državi i na Turciya. Minavaše ni prez uma, če edna avtonomna
Makedoniya setne bi mogla po-lesno da se sъedini s Balgariya, a v kraeni slučay, ako tova ne se postigne, če she
može da posluži za obedinitelno zveno na edna federaciya na balkanskita narodi. Odrinsko, do kolkoto si
pripomnyamъ, prvonačalno ne vlizaše v našata programa, i mislяya če po-setne se zamisli da se vklyuči i taya
oblast km avtonomna Makedoniya.”
780 Ibid. Illustration Ilinden, Sofia, 1936, b. I, p. 4–5; http://www.angelfire.com/super2/vmroistorija/
Knigi/spomih.html; Lyubomir Miletich listed basic principles in his book: Lyubomir Miletich, La
Macédoine bulgare, (Sofiya: La Cour royal, 1918)
781 See: I. Yosmaoglu, op.cit. p. 30; F. Adanir, op. cit. pp. 111-116. Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, op.cit. 2003, p. 113.
176
short-lived Eastern Rumelia that was annexed by the Principality of Bulgaria in 1885.782
However, by that time the ideas among its other members had become contested from within
and often oppositional to each other. Their understanding of autonomy for Macedonia was a
multidimensional concept giving rise to various interpretations: some moved from the idea of
unification with Bulgaria towards advocation of harmony among different communities in one
Macedonian federation. Thus, few members belonged to a strong leftist and anarchistic
wing(s) who opposed unification with Bulgaria. In this respect, some of its members moved
away from an ethno-national concept of the Organisation and distanced themselves from the
“Bulgarian element.” In this spirit, Damyan Gruev in his memoirs insists that the goal of the
first Committee was “only a demand for the implementation of the Berlin Treaty” and that
their motto was “implementation of the provisions of the Berlin Treaty.” 783 Accordingly, the
aims of the Organisation and its members were “continually in flux” and changed
dramatically fast, especially inside the socialist circle, which supported a transformation of
the Balkans into a federal state, in which Macedonia and Thrace would enter as equal
members. In an article published in June, 1902, the IMARO revolutionaries promoted the idea
of autonomy and the slogans “Macedonia for the Macedonians”.784 In this year, one part of
the members of the Organisation changed its exclusively “Bulgarian element,” and opened it
to all Macedonians and Thracians regardless of nationality, who wished to participate in the
anti-Ottoman movement. These members actually imagined an autonomous Macedonia as a
multinational polity. Thus, if one traces back the origins of the demand for autonomy among
the Macedonian intellectuals in the Bulgarian Principality and traces the imagination of
Macedonia among a group that opposed the Bulgarian intervention, then one can more easily
782 At the beginning of XX century, they realised how useful a role the media played in their activism, therefore
they started to publish newspapers, such as Avtonomiya: Zagranichen list na Vatreshnata Makedono-Odrinska
organizatziya (1903), Revolutzyonen list: Vatreshna Maledono-Odrinska revolutziyona organizatziya (1904-
1906), Ilinden (1907-1908), Konstituzionna zorya: Organ na Makedono-Odrinskata revolutziona organizatziya
(1908-1909), books like ‘’Macedonia and Adrianople, 1893-1903 with two Maps: A memoir of the Internal
Organization’’ (Makedoniya I Odrinsko 1893-1903, s dve karti: Memoar na Vatreshnata Organizatziya) (Sofiya:
1904); Hristo Matov ‘’Osnovi na vatreshnata revolyutzionna organizatziya’’ (Sofiya, 1904), ‘’Shto byahme –
shto sme (What we were – what we are)’’ (Plovdiv: 1905, ‘’Za upravlenieto na Vatreshnata revolyutzionna
organizatziya (Sofiya: 1905), and ‘’Vastanishki deystvya’’ (Sofiya: 1906); Angel Tomov and Georgi Bazhdarov
‘’Revoluzionnata borba v Makedoniya’’ (Sofiya: 1917), memoirs that recorded the events before the Balkan
Wars, edited by Lyubomir Miletich ‘’Materiali za istoryata na makedonskoto osvobitelno dvizhenie; knjiga I-IX’’
(Sofiya: 1925-1928) and Stane Avramov ‘’Materiali za istoryata na makedonskoto osvobitelno dvizhenie; knjiga
X’’ (Sofiya: 1929) and Boyan Mirchev ‘’Materiali za istoryata na makedonskoto osvobitelno dvizhenie; knjiga
XI’’ (Sofiya: 1931).
783 Ibid. Document No 101 “Damyan Grouev on the creation of revoutionary organization in Macedonia,”
784 Tchavdar Marinov, We, the Macedonians, The Paths of Macedonian Supra-Nationalism (1878–1912) in:, We,
the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, ed. by Mishkova Diana (Budapest/New
York, Central European University Press, 2009), pp. 117-120.
177
understand the complexities on the ground. By regarding it as a trans-regional example, one
can achieve the understandings of the differentiations of these groups and organisations at the
local level. In this respect, I will analyse how these two (or more) groups viewed autonomy
and perceived Macedonia. Furthermore, I argue that there were contested and disputed
standing points and led to an inconsistent policy during the Ilinden Uprising of 1903. I will
follow Joel Samuel Migdal’s argument that the study of domination and change requires an
examination of multiple sites of political struggle promoted by different groupings.785 Partly
undermining Max Weber’s definition of state capacity, I will try to show that the practices at
the periphery of the state can also play a far more important role than previously theorised.
Here I will try to bring a point of view from the periphery in the form of a “bottom-up”
perspective by analysing different imaginations and views of the “specialists in violence” on
the ground.786 The Macedonian and Bulgarian historiography analysed these revolutionaries
through the lens of ethno-national vacuum giving them a fixed identity that fits into
Macedonian or Bulgarian nation building narratives. My aim is here to deconstruct these
narratives and to show they contained such complexities that indicated that this group of
people was more diverse than represented in the national historiographies.
3.2.1.1. IMARO – ITS “LEFT” AND “RIGHT” WINGS
In this sub-chapter I will highlight the common profile of this group of important IMARO
members (including both the leading members of the right and left wings). One should bear in
mind that there are many differences among its members, their projects, imaginations, and
their discourses. In many instances, there was also a vehement opposition between the
leaders’ imaginations and existing social realities. Some of the leaders of IMARO formed a
kind of “intelligentsia” which adopted discourses and strategies to influence the local
785 Joel S. Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
786 On the similar topic, see also: Wolfgang Knöbl and Gunnar Schmidt, Die Gegenwart des Krieges. Staatliche
Gewalt in der Moderne, (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2000); Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Gewalt. Entwicklungen,
Strukturen, Analyse probleme (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004); Jan Koehler and Sonja Heyer,
Anthropologie der Gewalt, (Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1998); Markus Koller, Bosnien an
der Schwelle zur Neuzeit. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Gewalt (1747–1798), (Müchen: R. Oldenbourg, 2004).
Helga Breuninger and Rolf Sieferle, Kulturen der Gewalt: Ritualisierung und Symbolisierung von Gewalt in der
Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Campus-Verlag, 1998).;
Furthermore see also: Hannes Grandits, Herrschaft und Loyalität in der spätosmanischen Gesellschaft. Das
Beispiel der multikonfessionellen Herzegowina (Wien, Koln, Weimar: Böhlau, 2008). See also: Eva Anne Frantz,
Violence and its Impact on Loyalty and Identity Formation in Late Ottoman Kosovo: Muslims and Christians in
a Period of Reform and Transformation, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs Volume 29, 2009 - Issue 4: p. 459.;
Wolfgang Höpken and Michael Riekenberg, Politische und ethnische Gewalt in Südosteuropa und
Lateinamerika (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Bohlau, 2001).;
178
population by applying “national” consciousness, while others supported “supranational”
projections, while others yet opposed both. Thus, the responses were various and should not
be analysed through the lenses of national historiographies that situate these mobile actors and
IMARO members in a national vacuum. Hence, trans-imperial history has the potential to
open up new questions and to contribute to a more global context by understanding these
actors in a multidimensional space of “multiple arenas of domination and opposition.”787
Here I concentrate on several events that reveal the complexities of the actors and multiple
projections of the IMARO members.
As has already been explained, the secret meeting in Thessaloniki in 1893 led to the formation
of the BMARC (forerunner of the IMARO). Its founders were young men mostly originating
from small towns in Ottoman Macedonia. Many of their members were educated in the newly
Bulgarian autonomous state, which they saw, at the very least, as a more legitimate patron of
the Slav Orthodox Christians of Ottoman Macedonia.788 Other members were also educated in
European colleges, especially in Geneva, where they came under the influence of socialist and
anarchist ideas. This group, prevalently (but not exclusively) would go on to establish the
“left” wing of the IMARO. From another side, the neighbouring states and its political
entrepreneurs offered paid scholarships to these locals, trying to construct a “Bulgarian,”
“Serbian” or “Greek” national identity in Ottoman Macedonia. In one of the examples with
the greater Serbian state imagination, it consequently led to a few student protests in the
Bulgarian Men’s High School based in Selanik, where a group of dozen students accepted a
Serbian offer to continue their studies in Belgrade. After some time, this group of students
became aware of the ulterior motives of Serbian state, as they were not allowed to possess
Bulgarian literature.789 Subsequently, majority of this group left Belgrade and continued its
education in Bulgaria. Among that group were the IMARO’s founding members such as
Dame Gruev and Petar Pop Arsov, as well as prominent Macedonian personalities such as
Krste Misirkov, Kosta Shahov,790 etc. As individuals with strong ties to the Bulgarian culture
787 Ibid.
788 Duncan Perry, op.cit. 1988
789 See: Uroš Šešum, Društvo protiv Srba 1897–1902, Srpske Studije/Serbian Studies 4 (2013), p. 73 – 103
790 Kosta Shahov promoted a supra-national Macedonianism in Sofia. On 21th October 1888 he started to
publish the newspaper Macedonia. In the first issue it is said that „we Macedonians, must not forget out
fatherland.” The aim of the newspaper was „to fight for the spiritual and cultural prosperity of the
Macedonians.“ In this respect, he wrote in the newspaper Macedonia (published between 1888 - 1912), but also
his work could be founded in Glas Makedonski (1893 - 1898), or Strannik. Furthermore, see also Borba za
svobodata na Makedonia i Odrinsko, Borba (1905) and other newspapers.
See: Kosta Shahov, Edno osvetlenie po nashite raboti, in Ot Sofiya do Kostur. Spomeni, (Sofiya: IK Sineva,
2003), pp. 38-68;
179
and Bulgarian Exarchate Church, the IMARO leaders unanimously agreed that this
proselytisation of Greek projects and Serb nationalism could not be tolerated in the three
vilayets.791 As a reaction against them a Society Against Serbs (1897) was established in
Thessaloniki by Dame Gruev, a member of the IMARO. The opening of Serbian schools in
Ottoman Macedonia and the agitation of political entrepreneurs in Belgrade was met with
protest demonstrations, fights, and riots organised by the Society Against Serbs. In this
respect, the organisation openly called for violence against Serbs and thus, in the Bulgarian
magazine in Thessaloniki named Narodno Pravo, promoted anti-Serb sentiments. Hence, in
the article on the Bulgarian educational cause in Macedonia (blgarskoto uchebnoto delo v
Makedoniya), it was stated that “the Serbs [would], with fire and sword, be annihilated from
Macedonia (Srbe treba ognyem i machem istrebiti iz Makedoniye).”792 The first victim, found
in a street in Thessaloniki with a cross in Thessaloniki, was the professor of the Serbian
gymnasium with the name Ilija Pejčinović. Few of these IMARO members also established
guerilla groups known as chetas (cheti) against the armed groups who allegedly supported the
Serbian and Greek states. These personalities were known as the centralist faction or the
“right” wing of IMARO.793 This organisation was challenged by two other societies known
as the Macedonian Supreme Committee in Sofia (Virhovni makedonsko-odrinski komitet)794
and the Bulgarian Secret Revolutionary Brotherhood (Balgarsko Tayno Revolyutsionno
Bratstvo), which was a smaller group based in Solun. 795 Actually, the Bulgarian Secret
791 Uros Sesum, op.cit.
792 Narodno Prava, 1897
793 Leaders were Christo Matov, Christo Tatarchev, Boris Sarafov and Ivan Garvanov (killed by leftist wing). At
the same time, the delegates stated that they “could not deny Bulgaria’s natural right to take care of her nonliberated
compatriots in Turkey.” They often cooperate with another revolutionary organization, the Supreme
Macedonian Committee (SMC), founded in 1895 in Sofia. See: Document No269 “Rezolyutziya na
Kyustendilskiya obsht kongres na VMORO” in Vatreshnata, pp. 857-853, in Martin Valkov, The Internal
Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization and the Idea for Autonomy for Macedonia and Adrianople
Thrace (1893-1912), Master Thesis, (Budapest: CEU, 2010)
794 Members of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee – Varhovists (1895-1903): “Trayko Kitanchev
(first chairman and under control of Bulgarian Democratic party – P. Karavelov between 1896-1899), Hristo
Stanishev (mason and leader), Boris Sarafov (leader after 1899-1901), Ivan Conchev (leader 1901-1903);” See:
F. Adanir, op.cit. 1979, p. 149; Hristo Stanishev, Dve statii po Makedonskiya Vapros: written by Eduard Boyl,
Srbija I Makedoniya; Klaus Almendinger Makedonski vapros, (Sofiya: Pechatnica P. Glushkov, 1927)
http://strumski.com/biblioteka/?id=847 (Accessed. 20.03.2020).
795 Secret Revolutionary Brotherhood (1897-1900): “led by Ivan Garvanov, who was then a teacher at the
Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki, and set up a rival organisation, called Revolutionary Brotherhood,
which entered into friendly relations with the Macedonian Supreme Committee and began setting up branches in
various towns throughout Macedonia and Southern Thrace. Inevitably, the Brotherhood clashed with the
Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees (IMARO), and there were even mutual attempts
at assassination, although nobody was actually killed. When Boris Sarafov was elected to the leadership of the
Macedonian Supreme Committee, with the help of Bulgarian Exarchate he managed to effect a reconciliation,
and in 1900, the Brotherhood was dissolved and its members joined the IMRO. Its members, such as Ivan
Garvanov, were to exert a significant influence on the Internal Organisation. They were to push for the Ilinden-
Preobrazhenie Uprising and later became the core of IMRO right-wing faction. Its members were: Ivan
180
Revolutionary Brotherhood became later part of IMARO by 1902 but some of its members,
like Ivan Garvanov, were to exert significant influence on the organisation. The assassination
of Ivan Gavranov and Boris Sarafov by the “left” wing memer Todor Panitza in 1907
deepened the differences inside IMARO. As a consequence, the congress in Kjustendil of the
right faction of the IMARO in 1908 sentenced Sandanski to death, which led to a final
disintegration of the Organisation resulted through a fight between its “right: and “left” wings.
At the beginning of the 20th century were obvious the differences between these two fractions.
The “right” wing, as well as those of the other revolutionary organisation – the Macedonian
Supreme Committee – also known as the Varhovists, also aimed at autonomy, but followed
by annexation with Bulgaria. The members of the left wing of the IMARO were rather
advocating for a supranational option that opposed the irrendentist projects (as in the case of
the right/centralist wing). The leaders of this “left” group were firstly Gotse Delchev and
Vasil Glavinov, who edited several Socialist newspapers. Gotse Delchev was born in Kilkis
(in the Selanik vilayeti) and was inspired by the first generation of Bulgarian revolutionaries
such as Hristo Botev and Vasil Levski.796 As many prominent figures born in Ottoman
Macedonia, he originated from an area with ethnically and religiously mixed population.
Coming from this background, he rather imagined Macedonia as a “muti-ethnic region” and
promoted the slogan “Macedonia for the Macedonians.”797
The same idea was shared by Vasil Glavinov. Although he lived in Sofia, he rather focused on
the political activism that imagined the establishment of state Macedonia as a republic inside
the Balkan Federation. Together with Dimitar Blagoev, he established the first Social-
Democratic group in Ottoman Macedonia in 1894. Two years later, Glavinov established the
Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Social-Democratic Union of the Bulgarian Workers’
Social-Democrat Party. Furthermore, the first Conference of Macedonian Socialists was held
near Krushevo on 3 June 1900, during which the activities of Vasil Glavinov’s political group
defined the basic aspects of the creation of a Republic of Macedonia as a part of a biger
Garvanov, Georgi Bazhdarov, Tirpen Markov, Andrei Kazepov, Georgi Hristov, Georgi Todorov, Hristo
Tenchev, Hristo Ganov, and Hristo Karamandzukov.”
See: Boris Nikolov, Mario Cvetkov, Vasil Stanchev, Ivan Garvanov: Venča se za Makedoniya, (Sofiya: Stara
Zagora, 1995); Georgi Bazhdarov, Moite spomeni (Sofiya: Sastavitel Angel Dzonev, 1929)
Hristo Karamandzukov, Rodopa prez Ilindensko-Preobrazenskoto vostanie, Spomeni I dokumenti, (Sofiya:
Izdatelstvo na Otečestvenija front 1986).
796 Maria N. Todorova, Bones of Contention: The Living Archive of Vasil Levski and the Making of Bulgaria’s
National Hero, (Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2009).
797 Klaus Roth, Ulf Brunnbauer, Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe, (Münster:
LIT Verlag, 2009).
181
Balkan Socialist Federation, that is, a “Switzerland on the Balkans” of sorts.798 Within this
framework, the IMARO left wing also moved forward in 1906 by proclaiming a new
Statute/Constitution (Ustav) pointing out new supranational goals. Its first chapters identified
two goals that aimed “to unite any and all dissatisfied elements in Macedonia and the
Adrianople Vilyaet without regard to their nationality” and “ to oppose any other country’s
intentions to divide and conquer these two regions.”799 Furthermore, in the second Chapter,
the leaders of the IMARO emphasised that they aimed also “to abolish chauvinist propaganda
and nationalistic disputes.” 800 To achieve this aim, Vasil Glavinov together with Yane
Sandanski gravitated towards the People’s Federative Party after the Young Turk Revolution
in 1908. Yane Sandanski was a prominent leader of the IMARO, inspired by socialist ideas
and federal political systems, imagining Macedonia as an autonomous region within the
Ottoman Empire.801 Thus, he struggled primarly against the Bulgarian nationalists and rightwing
members of the IMARO. In this respect, he also wanted to stop the activities of the
political entrepreneurs who promoted state nationalisms, which is the reason that brough him
to cooperate with the members of the Young Turk Movement. Sandanski gained a support
from the leftist intellectuals such as Dimo Hadžidimov and Pavel Deliradev to contact the
Young Turks’ Committee. Furthermore, since the beginning of the 1908, the socialists from
Adrianople supported Yane Sandanski against the “right wing” and began to propagate the
idea of a “constitutional Turkey” in their newspaper Odrinski Glas.802 On the first day after
the Young Turk Revolution, he joined the Young Turks leader of Nevrokop in Gaytaninovo,
and travelled with him to Thessaloniki, to the centre of the Young Turks’ Committee. He was
received by Enver Bey -a hero of Young Turk Revolution. In the Ottoman public, Sandanski
was also named “King of the Mountains” and “Sandan Pasha.”803 After the Revolution,
Sandanski together with Hristo Chernopeev, worked on a creation of the leftist political party
in the Ottoman Empire, known later as People’s Federative Party,804 whose headquarters were
in Thessaloniki. Their friend, Dimo Hadzidimov, advocated for a Balkan federation with the
798 Diana Mishkova, We the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, (Budapest-New
York: CEU Press 2009), p. 122.
799Dimitar Gocev, Ideyata za avtonomiya kato taktika v programite na nacionalno-osvoboditelnoto dviženie v
Makedoniya i Odrinsko (1893–1941), (Sofiya: Izd. na Balgarska Akademiya na Naukite, 1983), p. 34
800 Ibid.
801 Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, Yane Sandanski as a political leader in Macedonia in the era of the Young Turks,
Cahiers Balkaniques, 2012
802 Ibid.,
803 Ibid; See also State Archives of North Macedonia (DARSM) in Skopje, v. IV. 67/1912, 567
804 According to the Bulgarian section of the Statute of People Federative Party (according to the Art. 1) a
member of its party “can be any Bulgarian, Ottoman citizen of age over 20, who accepts the party's agenda and
participates in one of its local organisations.” Ibid.
182
“other ‘nationalities’ of Macedonia” outside Bulgaria too. For him the answer lay not in the
dissolution of the Ottoman Empire but in “regional self-government within the empire” as
well as “self-government for districts within regions; and for local communities within
districts.”805 Other important members were Hristo Chernopev, Todor Panitsa, and Dimitar
Vlahov.806
3.2.1.2. NETWORKS WITH ANARCHIST ORGANISATIONS
As has been demonstrated above, these groups were far from univocal in their view or
compatible in their activities to the point that they often remained in opposition to the political
aspirations of the Bulgarian, Serbian, or Greek states. 807 However, the networks of
organisations they established can also be seen as early examples of the trans-border
communities engaged in the imaginary processes of building a homeland. One such
organisation was The Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee (MSRC),808 established
in Plovdiv in 1895 by Michail Gerdzikov,809 Petar Mandzukov,810 Petar Sokolov,811 Slavi
805 Houri Berberian, Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian
and Ottoman worlds, (Berkley: University of California Press, 2019), p. 132; See the sources: Dimo Hadzidimov,
Nazad kim avtonomija: http://www.promacedonia.org/mpr/documents/hadjidimov.html and
http://www.strumski.com/books/Dimo_Hadjidimov_Nazad_kym_Avtonomiqta.pdf (Accessed: 23.02.2020)
Dimo Hadzidimov, Makedonskoto osvoboditelno delo, 1900: http://macedoniahistory.
blogspot.com/2009/06/dimo-hadzidimov-makedonskoto.html (Acessed: 24.02.2020)
806 Dimitar Vlahov, Memoari (Skopje: Nova Makedonija, 1970), p. 356
807 Bernard Lory, Schools for the destruction of society: school propaganda in Bitola 1860-1912 in Conflicting
Loyalties in the Balkans: The Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire and Nation-Building, edited by Hannes
Grandits, Nathalie Clayer and Robert Pichler (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011).
808 Program of the Organisation:
“I. Palna nezavisimost i nay-široka svoboda za Makedonskiya narod, za da si naredi toy sam kakvoto običa
upravlenie.
II. Poneže Makedoniya se naselyava ot razni narodnosti, Komitetet zayavyava, če nma da protežira nikoya ot tih
otdalno v vrada na drugith; toy nama da pooshrgva nacionalniyat im antagonizъmъ, a щe se trudi da gi
organizira vъ edno cѣlo, za sъsipvaneto na turskata vlastь vъ Makedoniя; i vednъžъ tova postignato, toй
prѣdostavя na samitѣ tѣhъ razrѣšenieto na vъprosъtъ; da se prisъedinяtъ li kъmъ nѣkoя otъ sъsѣdnitѣ dъržavi,
ili da si obrazuvatъ svoя nezavisima oblastь.
III. Pri razrѣšavanieto na tozi vъprosъ, Komitetъtъ ne dopuska nikakva čužda namѣsa; toй iska naselenieto samo
da se proiznese bezъ nѣkakъvъ vъnšnenъ natiskъ.
IV. Za nepriяteli Komiteta sčita ne samo turskitѣ vlasti, no i vsički oniя lica, koito po nѣkakъvъ načinъ prѣčatъ
na rabotitѣ mu i prѣmo ili kosveno nanesatъ vrѣda na narodъtъ i negovoto osvoboditelno dѣlo.
V. Mirnoto tursko naselenie, ne samo, če ne se sčita za nepriяtelь, no naprotivъ - щe zavisi otъ Komitetъtъ da
prieme, ili ne, pomoщьta mu vъ slučaй, če i to bi zaяvilo želanie da dѣйstvuva zaedno sъ nasъ za sъsipvanieto
na sultanovata neograničena vlastь. Nuždna zabѣlѣžka. Lišenъ otъ vsѣkakvi šovinističeski pretencii i
patriotičeski zamisli, Komitetъtъ obѣvяva če: "na vsički šovinističeski dѣйstviя vъ Makedoniя, bile tѣ otъ
bъlgare, gъrci, sъrbi ili koito i da sѫ drugi, našitѣ komitetski rabotnici sѫ dlъžni da protivodѣйstvuvatъ, a
samitѣ dѣйci vъ tuй napravlenie щe se prѣslѣdvatъ, kato naй-golѣmi narodni vragove.”
See: Programa na Makedonskiya Taen Revolюcionen Komitet, publikuvano vъv v. „Političeska svoboda“, broy
11, (Sofiya, 1898 )
809 Michail Gerdzikov, V Makedonija i Odrinsko,
http://www.promacedonia.org/bugarash/mg_ht/m_gerdzhikov.htm (Accessed. 20.03. 2021)
183
Merdzanov, Varban Kilifarski,812 Dimitar Ganchev, Pavel Shatev,813 and Konstantin Antonov
(a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee, IMARO, and the Bulgarian
Communist Party). In the same city, Plovdiv (Filibe), this group of people established their
first contacts with Armenian Hunchak and later with the members of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (ARF).814 According to some members of the ARF, the Armenian
organisations were inspired by those movements in Ottoman Macedonia, but the case was
also reversed, where various local organisations in Macedonia were inspired by the Armenian
groups.815 Few members of these organisations in Macedonia also made close connections
with the revolutionary expatriots and established the so-called Geneva Group, an extension of
the MSRC.816 Their first meetings occurred in Geneva in 1896-97, where some of the leading
Armenian Revolutionary Federation officers lived and were in close contact with Simeon
Radev, a well-known Bulgarian nationalist.817 It should be also noted that some members of
anarchist organisations also supported the Bulgarian state, as was case with Radev. On the
other hand, other members rather supported a supra-national state or independent Macedonia.
Gerdzhikov became a member of the IMARO along with a close friend of Gotse Delchev.
Some other members of MSRC became involved in IMARO, but also switched sides in
favour of the Supreme Macedonian Committee. Thus, as mentioned above, I argue that these
groups were not always univocal, athough sometimes cooperated or undertook the same
actions. Few actions between the Geneva Group, the Gemici and Armenian “specialists in
violence” are worthy of mentioning such as the attempt at assassination of the Sultan (1899),
the attack of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul (1900), the attack of the Orient Express in
810 Petar Mandjukov, Predvestnici na burjata:
http://www.strumski.com/books/Petar_Mandzhukov_Predvestnici_Na_Buryata_Spomeni.pdf (Accessed 21.03.
2021)
811 Description of Petar Sokolov by Pavle Shatev http://macedonia.kroraina.com/ps/ps_10.html (Accessed 22.03.
2021)
812 Varban Kilifarski together with Michail Gerdjikov, he founded the first periodic anarchistic newspaper in
Bulgaria (Svobodno Obshevstvo and Bezvlastje).
813 Pavel Shatev, V Makedoniya pod Robstvo http://www.promacedonia.com/ps/index.html (Accessed 20.03.
2021).
814 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA), Rumeli Mufettişliği Tasnıfi, Manastır Evraki (TFR.İ.MN) (1322–23,
1904–5, Cıld II), 2222-46-126 “Petrof gunlerinde hudud tecavuz etmek uzere Kostendilde Makedonya
Cemiyyeti fesadiye tarafindan açılan deftere bazi kişilerin kaydedlmeleri (1899).”
815 Garabet K. Moumdjian, Rebels with a Cause: Armenian-Macedonian Relations and their Bulgarian
Connection, 1895-1913, in War and Nationalism: The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913, and the Sociopolitical
Implications, eds. Hakan M. Yavuz and Isa Blumi (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2013). p. 136
816 See: Mihail Gerdzikov, op.cit.
817 Simeon Radev, Ranni Spomeni, Novo korigiran I dopolneno izdanie pod redakcijyata na Trayan Radev,
(Sofiya: Izd. Kuša Strelec, 1994); Simeon Radev, Tova, koeto vidya hot Balkanskata voinam Narodna kultura,
(Sofiya: Zabravenit balgari, 2012); Simeon Radev, Stroitelite na Svremenna Blgariya, Tom 1,2,3 (Sofiya:
Balgarski pisatel, 1910-11).
184
Adrianople (1901) and of boats in Thessaloniki (1903). Emboldened by various trans-regional
contacts and clearly learning from various organisations, a small group of Macedonians and
Bulgarians established an organisation in Geneva in 1898, which extended an offshoot in
Thessaloniki in 1899, and was launched by the anarchist Slavi Merdzhanov. His initial target
was the Sultan and the capital Istanbul, but after his execution by the Ottomans in 1901, the
group’s attention shifted to Thessaloniki. They were influenced by anarcho-nationalism,
which emerged in Europe following the French Revolution and at least as far back as the time
of Mikhail Bakunin and his involvement with the Pan-Slavic movement. Together with the
Armenian revolutionaries, the group organised weaponry smuggling and trafficking, set up a
modest bomb factory, and traded cannabis across the region, as recounted in the memoirs of
Petar Mandzukov, one of the members of this group.818 Their collaboration strengthened
when these “specialists in violence” planned to assassinate the sultan and bomb the Ottoman
Central Bank in Istanbul as well as its branch in Salonika. The group of Macedonian
anarchists together with Armenian speaking personalities under the leadership of Slavi
Merdzanov planned the assassination of the Sultan. However, in September 1900 the Ottoman
authorities found the members of this organisation and arrested them because they were
carrying the explosives. After this event, Merdzanov did not stop a plan to weaken Ottoman
authorities. He focused on new solutions such as to hold up the Orient Express near
Adrianople, and to gain possession of the telegraph. This group managed to place a large
quantity of dynamite on the railway line, but the railway passed undamaged. Ottoman
authorities captured Merdzanov alive, together two Armenians and one Bulgarian from
Lozengrad. These captives were taken to Adrianople and were publicly hanged in November
1901. As a revenge to these Ottoman actions, few members of this group decided to launch a
campaign of terror bombing the Ottoman Bank in Thessaloniki. This group known as Gemici
aimed to attract the attention of the Great Powers to Ottoman oppression in Macedonia. Since
there were discussed various cases here, one could realize that these groups of revolutionaries,
guerrilla warriors, terrorists, paramilitary forces or gang fighters were a diverse group of
people who supported different ideas. From one side, Mihail Gerdzikov put hope to “liberate
818Peter Mandzukov, op. cit. p. 85; Quote: „Hašišъt se dobiva ot cvetnite lюspi na edno konopeno rastenie –
Cannabis Indica, koeto se kultivira za taя cel v Mala Aziя. Meždu dvete gole- mi voĭni tova rastenie e bilo
kultivirano po kontrabanden način ot nяkoi armenci-bežanci i v Bъlgariя, imenno v Pazardžiško. Tova rastenie
vъnš- no ne se različava po niщo ot obiknoveniя konop (Cannabis Sativa), osven po tova, če ne stava tolkova
visoko. Kogato, smesen v tюtюna, se puši, hašišъt izdava edna specifična silna, ostra i nepriяtna mirizma; pri
pušeneto ne- govoto deĭstvie e po-bъrzo, po-meko i po-kratkotraĭno; upotreben vъv vid na sladko, toĭ deĭstvuva
po-bavno, no mnogo po-silno i dъlgotraĭno, a i po- raženiяta vъrhu organizma v takъv slučaĭ sa mnogo pogolemi.
Zaharta, vzeta sled hašišovo sladko, usilva mnogo negovoto deĭstvie.”; See also State Archives of North
Macedonia (DARSM) in Skopje,v IV.67/1912,570
185
Macedonia (se osvobodi Makedoniya),” 819 from other side Slavi Merdzanov wanted to
destroyed Ottoman institutions and supported terrorism. Some other locals, such as Sandanski
supported Ottoman empire and cooperated with Young Turks, while Tatarchev and Radev
wanted unification with Bulgaria. Also, during their lifetime, a same personality could support
one ideology, and latter also participate in other activities that were opposite to his primary
views. Often, they gave more importance to localities, neighbours and relatives than to
broader “greater state” projects. Sometimes, the members developed their own strategies that
opposed the state projections. During the certain period of their activities, a member of a
group could be a specialist in violence, while later enter the state hierarchy and become
teacher or intellectual in the form of political entrepreneour. From another side, one could be
at the same time political entrepreneur and specialist in violence, as will be seen also in other
cases that will be covered in following sub-chapters.
3.2.2. GREEK ORGANISATIONS: “CONQUERING THE SOULS” IN OTTOMAN
MACEDONIA
Within less than one century, the Greek intellectuals built their modern national state, defined
their national interest found in the Megali Idea, and deployed bandits over several regions to
influence the national consciousness of the locals.820 This was often carried out with support
of the state for the irredentist upheavals,821 especially implementing heroification of warriors
(agonistai) and encouraging bands to “conquer the souls.”822 The chief of the band was the
captain (capitanos) or boloukshi (boulouksis), who was at the same time the head brigand
(listarchos or archilistis) and, in the eyes of population, the brain that moved and kept the
band together. 823 Furthermore, they established a foster-brotherhood (stavradelphoi,
adelphopoitoi, vlamides, bratimoi) in order to strengthen existing bonds, uniting bandsmen
with each other within the concept of a nation. These former Greek anardats created bonds
that transcended the kinship logic and gave them a “higher” ideal of fighting for the nation
819 Mihail Gerdzikov, op. cit. p. 87
820 Basil Gounaris, Preachers of God And Martyrs of Nation – The politics of Murder in Otto man Macedonia in
the Early 20th Century,Balkanologie, IX (1-2), (December 2005), p. 33
821Johns. Koliopoulos, Brigands With A Cause: Brigandage and Irredentism in Modern Greece 1821-1912,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 239
822 Dimitris Livanios, ‘Conquering the souls’: nationalism and Greek guerrilla warfare in Ottoman Macedonia,
1904-1908, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Volume 23, 1999, pp. 195 - 221
823 Johns. Koliopoulos, op.cit. p. 260
186
and conquering other souls.824 Oftentimes these bands were recruited by the Greek foreign
ministry with the help of the Epirote Society, a state-sponsored irredentist society.825 They
were actually Greek “specialists in violence” or guerrilla bands, who did not always originally
come from Macedonia, but fought for Greece in order to conquer this region, mostly led by
regular army officers.826 One such example was Pavlos Melas, who was a Greek officer that
entered Macedonia with his band and attacked Bulgarian-speaking villages in order to
conquer their souls. This narrative of the struggle for Macedonia (1904-1908) and
“conquering the souls” of the locals was a product of an older conflict between the
Patriarchist and Exarchist churches that had started in the 1870s. As a reaction of the already
established Bulgarian bands in the region of Ottoman Macedonia, the Greek side reflected its
Panhellenic ideas by including many armed volunteer gangs, priests, and other personalities
from the Greek political and intellectual life.
The perception of the Megali Idea became more active among those policymakers and
intellectuals who increasingly looked for inspiration to British and French imperialism. The
Greek “political entrepreneurs” viewed themselves as an imperial ancient nation whose
mission in the Balkan peninsula was similar to those of France and Britain in East Asia and
North Africa, bringing “civilisation” and Christianity to populations that were seen as
backward, savage and, despite their European origins, essentially Asiatic. In fact, for a long
time the state had distributed the function to paramilitary bands and brigand groups that acted
as its unofficial representatives who should bring “civilisation.”827 Irredentist ideas were fused
with Social Darwinist arguments to produce an ideology that, according to Mark Mazower,
“verged on a sort of political messianism.”828 Indeed, “political entrepreneurs” such as Ion
Dragoumis (1878–1920), the promoter of Greek nationalism, and Neoklis Kazazis (1849–
1936), the rector of Athens University and founder of the irredentist society Ellinismos,
turned the Megali Idea into a mission civilizatrice. In this respect, several Greek bands in
Macedonia fought for Helen heritage of Alexander the Great and Greek civilisation. One of
such organisations was the Ethniki Etaireia or “National Society,” which was a secret Greek
824 Vemund Aarbakke, op. cit.; See: Historical Archive of Macedonia (IAM) in Thessaloniki, ABE: 284
825 Anastasia Karakasidou, op. cit.; See: Historical Archive of Macedonia (IAM) in Thessaloniki, AEE: biork/
148-57
826 Spyros Tsoutsoumpis, Land of the Kapedani: Brigandage, Paramilitarism and Nation-building in 20th
Century Greece, Balkan Studies 51 (2016), p., 44
827 Spiros Tsoutsoumpis, Morale, ideology and the barbarization of warfare among Greek soldiers’ in The Wars
of Yesterday The Balkan Wars and the Emergence of Modern Military Conflict, 1912-13, ed. by Sabine Rutar
and Katrin Boeckh (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018), p. 209.
828 Ibid.
187
nationalistic organisation created by young nationalist officers in November 1894 in Athens,
with the purpose to “rejuvenate the national sensibility.” 829 Soon, the politicians and
distinguished citizens of Greece joined this society and advocated the Megali Idea among the
Greek-speaking Orthodox population living in Ottoman Macedonia. Its aim was to revive the
morale of the country and prepare the liberation of the Greek people still under the Ottoman
Empire. It was established immediately after IMRO, but it came to dissolution of organisation
in 1897, after the Ottoman-Greek war. The second such organisation was the Hellenic
Macedonian Committee, founded in 1903 to strengthen the Greek position in Macedonia that
was led by a Greek publisher Dimitrios Kalapothakis. The members of this organisation were
the abovementioned Ion Dragoumis and Pavlos Melas. These “specialists in violence” were
actually known as Macedonian fighters or in Greek language as “Makedonomachoi.” They
were portrayed in the books as “the Secrets of the Swamp” (Ta Mystiká tou Váltou) of the
Greek nation.
Some of these fighters, who fought on the Macedonian front, as Spiros Tsoutsoumpis
emphasises, were “obsessed with locating the birthplace of Alexander the Great and
discovering parallels between the modern inhabitants and their ancestors. These associations
reinforced the Greek territorial claims, as well as the view of the war as a clash between East
and West, civilisation and barbarity.”830 While the state and its elite tried to produce such
Orientalist discourses and meta-narratives in order to influence the locals in the Salonika and
Manastir vilayets, the situation on the ground was a turning point for the Greek band activites
in Macedonia after the Ilinden Uprising in 1903.831 During this uprising, there were such
cases in Ohrid, Manastir, Florina, and Kostaria where Ottoman troops, accompanied by the
Greek bishop, forced the population to surrender their arms and to recognise the Patriarchate
Church over the Exarchate.832 The Greek bands were assisted by the supervision and even
silent cooperation of the Ottoman authorities, who viewed them as a counterweight against
IMARO. 833 The local Muslims also actively joined the bands and sometimes sided with the
Christians – be they Greek, Serbian, or Bulgarian – as will be seen later through various
examples. Contrary to the practices on the ground, between 1903 and 1913, the national elites
829 See the raports in Historical Archive of Macedonia (IAM) in Thessaloniki, one of them is an Annual Series,
No 2730, by Diplomatic and Consular Reports (Trade of Consular District of Salonica).
830 Ibid.
831 John S. Koliopoulos, op.cit.
832 Christopher Psilos, The Young Turk Revolution and the Macedonian Question, (PhD dissertation), (Leeds:
University of Leeds, 2000).
833 Mazarakis-Ainian, Konstantinos Ioannu, O Makedonikos Agon – Anamneseis, (Salonica: 1963)
188
of the Balkan states shared the “spirit of fighting patriotism,” classifying the Christians in
Macedonia into two categories, as “heroes and traitors, Greeks and Bulgarians, victims and
assassins.”834 In this regard, battles and sacrificies were represented within historical rights of
Greece over Macedonia. The return to the past was necessary because of the need of a metanational
narrative for immortality. Thus, according to Basil Gounaris, the arguments in
Athens were running as follows: “Ancient Macedonians were ethnic Greeks; Medieval Slavs
and Bulgars were culturally converted to Byzantine Hellenism and were ethnically
assimilated; and Slav-speaking Macedonians were not necessarily Bulgars or Slavs.
Considering their loyalty to the Patriarch and their active contribution to Greek 19th-century
irredentism, it is evident that they were ethnically Greek beyond doubt.”835
In his seminal work on the Greek struggle for Macedonia, Douglas Dakin represents the
important role that local chieftains known as klephts or haiduks, played in the conflict(s).
However, was this really so did the local actors spark conflict or rather was it a state initiative
(or intellectual) that produced meta-narratives and the claims of the Megali Idea? The cases
like Naoum Spanos, who firstly fought together with Pavlos Melas - an officer of the Hellenic
army - against the Ottomans in 1897, but in 1903 recruited fighters for the Bulgarian
chetas.836 A similar shift was true for a certain Stefos from Manastir who became vojvoda.837
From other side, few Greek band leaders such as Katehakis and Karavangelis successed in
recruiting former IMARO members for their lines, which were later reinforced with soldiers
sent from Greece. These examples show that the locals actually were not always fully aware
of their national consciousness and would adopted various identities during their lifetime, and
would switched sides if that was in their personal, family, or kinship interest. In this regard,
insisting on a “Greek identity” in Macedonia was more a byproduct of several statements,
intellectuals, and generals such as: Stefanos Dragoumis, former Minister of Foreign Afairs
and veteran sponsor of Greek irrendentism in Ottoman Macedonia; the brothers Yeroyiannis,
founders of the Central Macedonian Association; Dimitrios Kalapothakis, editor of the
newspaper Embros; an Ecumenical patriarchist who did not accept the Bulgarian Exarchic
Church; and former fellows of the Ethniki Etaireia.838 Thus, priests and educational personnel
834 Basil Gounaris, Reassessing Ninety Years of Greek Historiography on the “Struggle for Macedonia 1904-
1908, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 1996, p. 27
835 Basil Gounaris, op.cit., East European Quarterly, XXIX, No. 4 January, 1996 p. 412
836 Basil Gounaris, Social Gathering and Macedonian Lobbying: Symbols of Irredentism and Living Legends in
Early Twentieth Century Athens, in Greek Society in the Making, 1863-1913, Symbols and Vissions, ed. Philip
Carabott (Variorum: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 1997), p. 102
837 Ibid.
838 Ibid. p. 103
189
were frequently targeted for attacks. In the case of IMRO’s attacks, Serbian and Greek priests
and intellectuals had resisted the Bulgarian penetration policy, which attacked places
considered “sacred” for Greek or Serbian clerics (priests) and intellectuals, because of their
“special rights of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Rum millet (as these [had] always been
acknowledged and protected by the state up to [that moment]).”839
In this respect, some of the clerics and educational personnel behaved as the “political
entrepreneurs” who tried to install “national pride” among the political committees and local
population. Ottoman sources too confirm several acts of terror in Macedonia, performed
either by the “exarchist” or the “patriarchist.”840 Hence, this particular fight between the
“patriarchists” or “Greeks” and the “exarchists” or “Bulgarians” erupted in the period
between the Ilinden Uprising and Young Turk Revolution (1903-1908), when all Balkan
states intensified their activities and state politics of “national pride” in Ottoman Macedonia.
There is an evident fight between bands during this period, based often on clear church
(mezhep) distinction.841
In the case of the Bulgarian activities, Basil Gounaris describes their “procedure” of turning
the church or village into a “Bulgarian” one, outlined as: “a Bulgarian band would enter the
village at night, pay a visit to the priest, summon the villagers in the church, and initiate them
to their new ‘national faith.’ It would then ask the priest, the mayor, and the council members
to sign their declaration and the seal keeper (muchtar) to stamp it. If time had permitted they
would have also asked all the priests to perform the Exarchic service in concert in order to
commit them fully to the new cause and expose them in public. There was no middle way.”842
This emergence of the Exarchate and Bulgarian bands (not only the IMRO) into the southern
parts of Ottoman Macedonia reinforced the positions of patriarchist and Greek “political
entrepreneurs” to undertake measures against these “Bulgarians.” Even on the ground, joining
839 Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, The Young Turk Revolution and the Negotiations, Turcica, 2004, pp. 184
840 Arsiv Belgelerine Gore Balkanlar’da ve Anadolu’da Yunan Mezalimi: III Gayr-I Muslimlere yapilan Yunan
Mezalimi, TC BOA, Yayin No, 31, p. 241; Dihova karyesindeki kilise ve mekteb ve kabristan ve akarat-i sa’ire
Rum tarafdarlarin yedinde kalmasi taht-i karara alindigi mahallinden Eksarhaneye vurud eden…
841 Ibid., 187; Manastir Vilayeti, Mektubi Kalemi, Aded. 373, 18. June 1907; altmis kisilik bir Rum cetesinin,
Kesriye’ye bagli Osteme koyune saldirarak Bulgar Eksarhhanesine mensup dort kisiyi oldurup uc kisiyi de
yaralamalari uzerine sevkolunan mufrezenin eskiyadan uc kisi olu olarak ele gecirdigi, digger eskiyanin ise olay
yerinden kactigi.
842 Basil Gounaris, Preachers of God and Martyrs of the Nation, Balkanologie IX (1-2), décembre 2005, p. 35;
Karavangelis (Germanos), ‘’The Struggle for Macedonia. Memoirs’’, in The Penelope Delta Archive of the
Strugglefor Macedonia. Memoirs [g], (Thessaloniki: IMXA, 1984), p. 11; Dragoumis (Ion), The Note-Books of
Ilinden [g], (Athens: Ekdoseis Petsivas, 2000), p. 62. Several petitions of this kind can be found in Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences, ed., Macedonia. Documents and Material, Sofia, 1978, document n°111, pp. 571-589.
190
the “schismatic” Church was not an easy decision for locals notorious for their attachment to
tradition. Furthermore, in terms of dogma and worship practices, locals could hardly see any
difference in practicing the faith. The overwhelming majority of them could not even
understand the services at all, either in Old Church Slavonic or in Hellenic/Anscient Greek.843
In this respect, this entire “struggle for Macedonia” resembled an arena of “conquering [of]
the souls,”844 but the locals were not aware of the “Greek” or “Bulgarian” differences, rather
they identified themselves as Christians.845 There were also cases when priests served in the
Exarchic Church, but were supporters of the Patriarchists, like in the instance of the
Triandafylia (Lazen) village, where, in late August (of year 1904), a priest confessed: “Even
myself, I pretend to be a Bulgarian. During the service I loudly honour the Exarch but
whispering in my prayers I praise the Patriarch. Only God knows what’s in my soul.”846
Therefore, one should keep in mind that the situation on the ground among the locals and
priests was much more diverse and complex. It is likely that the greater portion of them did
not think inside “national” meta-narratives, rather lived their lives giving importance to
family, kinship, village, or church as Christians, and their Muslim neighbours would behave
similarly. They often lived together in the streets, also known as mahale, which were not only
an administrative entity, but also places for building social networks. Their members could be
Christian and Muslim, Greek-, Slavic-, Turkish-, or Albanian-speaking, connected into
solidarity that was sometimes stronger than religious affiliation. A notable example is that of a
Muslim neighbourhood, where the Christian, Greek-speaking family Modis lived. Despite
being in a Muslim neighbourhood, wounded Greek brigands sheltered by the Modis family
were protected and concealed by the locals in order to save their friends from embarrassment,
arrest, and punishment.847
However, others might have accepted their “struggle for Macedonia,”joined the Greek bands,
and followed the instructions of the Greek state. In this respect, some of the village priests
were in fact the second of the “two pillars indispensable for irregular warfare” and “national
843 Basil Gounaris, op.cit., décembre 2005, p. 36
844 Dimitris Livanios, op.cit.
845 Brailsford, See also Basil Gounaris, op. cit. pp.36-37. “There is evidence that priests had even killed with
their own hands their predecessors or their competitors. This was the case of the Exarchic priest pop Nikola in
the village of Perikopi (Prekopana) on Mt Vitsi, who killed his predecessor, papa-Christo, in July 1903.”
846 Basil Gounaris ed., The Autumn of 1904 in Macedonia. The Unpublished Diary of Euthymios Kaoudis [g],
(Thessaloniki: Mouseio Makedonikou Agona, 1992), p. 30.
847 Basil Gounaris, Ottoman Monastir in the Early Twentieth Century, European History Quarterly Vol. 31 No. 1,
2001, p. 53
191
indoctrination,” 848 thanks to their networks in the monasteries all around Macedonia.
Evidently, nationalist propaganda and armed clashes tended to forge ethnic groups, but this
mindset could neither be accomplished before 1912, nor could it be completed in the course
of one generation. Siding with, or even fighting for, a certain band or guerrilla group did not
necessarily imply different cultures or different genealogical and historical myths. Thus, these
bands and gangs were not yet closed social groups, but rather flexible options. Also, the fights
that produced violence and terror were most often initiated by non-locals, that is, from centres
such as Sofia, Athens, or Belgrade. Sometimes the decisions from those regional centres
influenced the locals towards participating in the raids. However, admittedly, the brutalities in
the villages of Ottoman Macedonia were also often caused by local vendettas, rather than
inspired by national wars and ethnic cleansing.849
In this respect, in 1903, the British journalist Noel Brailsford interviewed a group of Slavicspeaking
young villagers and asked if they knew who built the city, to which they replied:
“The free men, our ancestors.” “Were they Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks or Turks?” asked the
journalist. The boys responded: “No, they were not Turks, they were Christians.”850
3.2.3. THE CHETNIK MOVEMENT
The topic about the Serbian bands in Ottoman Macedonia is neither recent nor neglected in
Serbian historiography. Still, there are also other approaches that could contribute to the
studies of these organisations that were established in the period of “struggle for Macedonia.”
While, most of the studies851 approached the topic from the state-centred perspectives, I aim
to contribute from a “bottom-up” approach, emphasising the lives of the local population that
were ethnically and religiously diverse. Hence, this sub-chapter will be focused on the
848 Basil Gounaris, op.cit. 2005, p. 41
849 Basil Gounaris, op.cit. East European Quarterly, XXIX, No. 4 January, 1996 p. 421
850 Brailsford, op.cit.
851Miloš Jagodić, Srpsko albanski odnosi u kosovskom vilajetu (1878–1912), (Beograd: Zavod za udzbenike,
2009). Uroš Šešum, Srpska četnička organizacija u Staroj Srbiji 1903–1908. Terenska organizacija, Srpske
Studije/Serbian Studies v. 2 (2011) 239–258; Gligor Todorovski, Srpskata četnička organizacija i nejzinata
aktivnost vo Makedonija, Glasnik na institutot za nacionalna Istorija 1 (1968), pp. 181–204; Mihailo Apostolski,
Istorija na makedonskiot narod II , od početokot na XIX vek do krajot na Prvata svetska vojna, (Skopje: Institut
za Nacionalna Istorija, 1969); Manol Pandevski, Nacionalnoto prašanje vo makedonskoto osloboditel-noto
dviženje (1893–1903), (Skopje: Kultura, 1974); Gligor Todorovski, Srbija i reformite vo Makedonija: sredinata
na XIX vek do Mladoturskata revolucija 1908, (Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija, 1987); Vladimir Ilić,
Srpska četnička akcija 1903– 1912, (Beograd: Ecolibri 2006); Biljana Vučetić, Srpska revolucionarna
organizacija u Osmanskom carstvu na početku 20. veka, Istorijski časopis LIII (2006), pp. 359-374; Miloš
Jagodić, Srpske čete u Make-doniji 1897–1901 godine, Zbornik radova sa naučnog skupa Ustanci i pobune Srba
u Turskoj u XIX veku (povodom 170. godina od izbijanja Niške bune), (Niš: 2012), pp. 111–130; Uroš Šešum,
Društvo protiv Srba 1897–1902, Srpske Studije/Serbian Studies 4 (2013), pp. 73 – 103; Uroš Šešum, Četnička
organizacija u Skopskoj Crnoj Gori 1903–1908, godine, Zbornik Matice srpske za istoriju 93 (2016), pp. 55–70..
192
activities of the Serbian Revolutionary Organisation known as “Chetniks,” and formally as
Serbian Defence (Srpska Odbrana) and their cooperation with locals in Ottoman Macedonia. I
will also not undermine the state initiatives, since these bands later became part of the Serbian
state policies directed at influencing the Slavic inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire. As the
previous chapter elaborated, the Serbian state first tried to influence this population by
introducing cultural programmes, mostly through church activities and schools that emerged
in the three vilayets. The first Serbian organisation, Sveti Sava, was organising educational
and religious activities, while the second one was a military organisation known as the
Chetnik Organisation. For this state policy, the primary responsibility was in the hands of
political entrepreneurs such as teachers, priests, and intellectuals. Second in line were the
supposed assistants to the first, who later became “specialists in violence.” Their programme
was to awaken the national consciousness of the local population and to teach them about the
importance of Macedonia for Serbian history. In these efforts, the political entrepreneurs tried
to ingrain their imagination of Macedonia and teach about the glorious history of the time of
Tsar Dusan, who ruled the Serbian Empire from Prizren and Skopje. 852 However, this
imagination could not be imprinted easily on the local population, because Bulgarian bands
had already organised a network through which to influence the Slav-Macedonian population
for their “Bulgarian cause.” Thus, teachers were often the first targets for enemy bands who
were perceived as individuals that were “fighting a corrupted battle.”853 The next most
frequent target were the priests as representatives of the church, “without whom a school
activity could not progress.”854 In this respect, the situation on the ground turned into a
struggle of “multiple arenas of domination and opposition.” In other words, different actors
and different agendas could clash, but could also lead to negotiations between different sides.
In claiming this, I do not present an argument that different groups had determined their
primordial ethno-national identities, but rather that those groups or personalities within a
group interacted, negotiated, and struggled in multiple arenas. To understand how local,
national, regional, and probably international practices of “struggle for Macedonia” related to
one another, the focus will be on the multiple arenas in which, local, national, and regional
actors got involved and interacted, built up alliances, but also incited violence and bloodshed.
852 DAS/Beograd, ŠVK-PO 1912/13, B-2388; See also: DAS/Beograd, MID-PO 1913, R399, F12, D8, XII/828,
1366, 30.01.1913, Prizren
853 Pravilnik “organizacija bugar. Komitet. Rada” red 208, knjiga II, sveska 1/2; p. 750.
854 AC, MIDS, PPO, 1906, II – red 626, knjiga II, sveska 1/2; p. 751
“Kao sto je poznato Ministarstvu Srpska skola je otvorena u Debru prosle godine. Ni skola ni uopste nas rad u
jednom mestu ne moze napredovati bez crkve. Zato je potrebno da se u Debru otvori paraklis.”
193
3.2.3.1. PRIVATE INITIATIVE: INTERACTION OF INDIVIDUALS WITH THE STATE
From the outset, the Serbian bands, contrary to the Greek ones, were private initiatives of
individuals – the non-state project that could be analysed from the “bottom-up” approach. The
Chetnik action was in fact at first a private initiative of “political entrepreneurs” that with time
received support from the Serbian state and included guerilla activities organised by
“specialists in violence”. At the very beginning, these bands were not under central command
of their respective Serbian government. The Serbian teachers (prosvetni radnici) in Skopje
and Manastir, as well as in other places of Ottoman Macedonia, insisted to organise armed
action against other ethnicities, especially against the Bulgarians. However, the Serbian
government was not supportive of this initiative from its very beginning, especially not until
1905, when thr Serbian state decided to support chetas on the ground in order to defend the
“Serbian population” (srpsko stanovnistvo) in Old Serbia and Macedonia by establishing an
organisation named Serbian Defence (Srpska Odbrana).855
Thus, Srpska Odbrana856 started its activities in 1902, firstly under the name Macedonian
Committee (Makedonski komitet), initiated by a group of private persons (privatnih lica), such
as Milorad Godjevac – the engine of this private initiative (glavni pokretac private inicjative),
who was joined by a merchant, Luka Ćelović, and General Јоvan Atanacković. It started by
collecting material help for the local population in the three vilayets, which was threatened by
the Muslim population, especially by Albanians (narocito Arbanasa), and the Principality of
Bulgaria, which conducted its actions through one part of the IMRO.857 The Serbian Consul
Mihailo Ristic, however, opposed the actions led by the private initiators, and hence sent a
report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, demanding that the Serbian government, and not
“patriot organizations” (patriotska udruzenja), should take control in Macedonia.858 In the
very first stage, most of these “political entrepreneurs” only wanted financial and material
support by the Serbian government. However, by 21 June 1905, these private initiators
institutionalised this action by founding the Main Board (glavni odbor) based in Belgrade. In
the same year, its Supreme or Managing Board (upravni ili vrhovni odbor) became part of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Serbia, while their Main Executive Board
(izvrsni odbor) was situated in Vranj and executed operative tasks (operativno nadlezan) via
855 Biljana Vucetic, Srpska revolucionarna organizacija u osmanskom carstvu na pocetku XX veka, Istorijski
casopis, knjiga LIII (2006), pp. 359-374
856Dokumenti o spoljnoj politici Kraljevine Srbije 1903-1914, Knjiga II, supplement 1, p. 748
857 Dokumenti o spoljnoj politici Kraljevine Srbije 1903-1914, Knjiga II, supplement 3, p. 627
858 Dokumenti o spoljnoj politici Kraljevine Srbije 1903-1914, Knjiga I, sveska 1, dok. No 212
194
the General Consulate in Skopje (since 1907).859 Furthermore, it seems that this Chetnik
Organisation developed from different centres and was not unified in the beginning. For
example, several sources indicated different places for the “first action of the Chetniks.” Its
member Zivojin Rafajlovic stated that the first action was organised in the city of Vranj,
where in the summer of 1903, he deployed this band headed by Arsa Gavrilovic.860 According
to Vasilije Tbic, he was the first initiator and founder of the first cheta in the villages
Jablanica and Starca, supported by Zivojin Rafajlovic from Vranj.861 Additionally, Aleksa
Jovanovic-Koca reported that the first action of the Chetniks started in April 1904, on behalf
of vojvoda Micko Krstic in Poreč.862 Jovan Hadzi Vasiljevic pointed out that the first cheta
was actually organised by Andjelko Aleksic,863 who was sent by the Central Board (centralni
odbor) from Belgrade in May 1904 and died during this action in Cetirca near Kumanovo. For
his death, Stevan Simic – a teacher at the Serbian schools in Manastir, Skopje, and
Thessaloniki – accused the local “Serbs” from Kumanovo, who did not help this action,
because they “did not have a national organisation (nisu imali narodnu organizaciju).”864 The
shape that this “Serbian” action took on the ground was also explained by Antonije
Todorovic, a “national worker” who dedicated his life “to the idea of the unity of
Serbdom.”865 In his memoirs, Antonije Todorovic wrote:
“Оpening primary and secondary schools allowed Serbian peoples to establish themselves as
a national educational organisation in Turkey. Тhis paved the way for pushing back
Bulgarians south of Kačanik, where they had already begun to take root. In the beginning, this
work occurred only in the area of education and the church. Feeling they would not be able to
endure this fight on a purely cultural level, the Bulgarians took to other means to suppress us.
They tried to take leadership of the Christian state in the Balkans for the liberation of
Christians in the Balkans. The Macedonian Odrin Revolutionary Organisation, which
promoted liberation from the Turks with armed illegal units, was established in Sofia in 1893.
Naturally, the Christian population was delighted with this idea and acceded to the
organisation irrespective of its ethnic traits (sasvim prirodno, hriscanski se zivalj odusevljava
tom idejom i pristupa organizaciji bez obzira na nacionalno obelezje).”866
859 Ibid.; DAS/Beograd, MUD-P 1913, F15/R41, #2041, 18.05.1913
860 Biljana Vucetic, op.cit. in Živojin Rafajlović, Naša prva četa, Južni pregled 6-7 (1930), pp. 263-272
861Ibid. Vasilije Trbić, Memoari, (Beograd: Kultura, 1996), p. 34; Momčilo Zlatanović, Četnički (komitski)
pokret (1904-1912) (Vranje i Preševska kaza), Leskovački zbornik XXXII (1992), p. 85.
862Aleksa Jovanović, op.cit. Letopis Matice srpske 326 (1930), p. 128.
863 Jovan Hadži Vasiljević, Četnička akcija u Staroj Srbiji i Maćedoniji, (Beograd: 1928)
864 Stevan Simić, Srpska revolucionarna organizacija, komitsko četovanje u Staroj Srbiji I Makedoniji 1903-
1912, (Beograd: 1998), p. 140
865 Biljana Vucetic, Prilog za biografiju Antonija Todorovica (1880-1971), Istorijski Institut, Issue No 55,
Beograd, 2007, p. 265-277
866Biljana Vučetić, Sećanja Antonija Todorovića, Istorijski Casopis, knj. LV (2007), pp. 265–307; B. Vučetić,
Srpska revolucionarna organizacija u Osmanskom carstvu na pocetku XX veka, Istorijski Casopis, (2006), p. 360,
and p. 364;
195
In light of the above, it seems that at the beginning of the 1900s, many of the local inhabitants
of Ottoman Macedonia did not have a “national organisation” (read: consciousness) and
regardless of ethnicity, they joined the chetas, who they might have thought could protect
their families, kin, or villages. In order to change this situation on the ground, the Serbian
“political entrepreneurs” organised “specialists in violence” to influence the local population
regarding the construction of their national identities. The “specialists” were mostly members
of Serbian border troops, volunteers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (the Bosnian
provinces) and Montenegro, or Macedonian refugees who were educated in Serbia.867 The
most prominent leaders, such as Captain Blazaric, Bozin Simic, Vojislav Tankosic, Vasilje
Trbic, Sreten Vukosavljevic, or Major Vojin Popovic (also known as Vojvoda Vuk) also
recruited local Macedonian population into the guerrilla boards (gorski štabovi) operating on
the left and right sides of the Vardar River. Their actions were multifaceted. While some of
them, like Sreten Vukosavljevic, tried to save lives of civilians, others, like Tankosic, became
infamous for brutality and had a terrifying reputation.868
3.2.3.2. ORGANISATION OF CHETAS ON THE GROUND
During the period of “struggle for Macedonia,” the Serbian chetas kept up correspondence
with Serbian government bodies, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the consulates in
Skopje, Bitola, and Thessaloniki, and had strong support from the secret society Unification
or Death (Ujedinjenje ili smrt) that was also known as the Black Hand (Crna ruka). This
secret organisation exerted a strong influence on the military circle of National Defence
(Narodna odbrana), which was also responsible for the Serbian coup d’etat in 1903. The
members of those organisations provided important support to the chetas and participated in
the battles during the Balkan Wars (Kumanovo). 869 Their main task was to perform a
reconnaissance mission or to create diversions in the enemy rear,870 but also to try to attract
various strata of the population including foreigners871 and Muslim volunteers, possibly Turks
and Albanians with previous military experience.872 However, the result of this was that some
Muslims from Bosnia (and the Kosovo vilayet) joined these chetnik detachments as in the
867 Dmitar Tasic, Paramilitarism in the Balkans: Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania 1917-1924, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2020, p. 14
868 Ibid.
869 Vladimir Ilic, Ucesce srpskih komita u Kumanovskoj operaciji 1912 godine, in: Vojnoistorijski glasnik.
Organ Vojnoistorijskog Instituta 1-3, 1992, p. 200
870 Dmitar Tasic, Repeating Phenomenon: Balkan Wars and Irregulars, in: Les guerres balkaniques (1912-1913):
Conflits, enjeux, memories, ed. by Catherine Horel (Bruxelles: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2014), p. 29
871 Foreign Chetnik vojvodas: Bogdan Hajnc (Jugovic)
872 Dmitar Tasic, op. cit. 2014, p. 30
196
case of the Labski detachment led by Captain Vojo Tankosic.873 Of Captain Tankosić plenty
has already been written,874 therefore I will only briefly list his activities between 1903 and
1912. At the very beginning of the Chetnik action in Macedonia, he joined the Chetnik group
to influence locals’ expression of their national consciousness. At the same time, he
participated in a conspiracy against the Serbian king Alexander Obrenovic, who was
dethroned in the May Coup of the same year, in 1903. He was also active in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, which was under the rule of the Dual Monarchy and became a member of
Young Bosnia, one of the founders of the Unification or Death (Black Hand), the organisation
whose constitution he wrote, with the aim of the unification of Serbdom.875
Photo 1.876
873 Jovana D. Saljic, Muslimani u oslobodjenu Srbiju 1912/13: od mita do stvarnosti, in Prvo balkansi rat
1912/13 godine: drustvenoi I civilizacijski smisao, knj. 1, 2016, pp. 325-339
874 See: Silvija Djuric, Dnevnik pobeda, Srbija u balkanskim ratovima 1912-13, (Beograd: 1990); Jovan M.
Jovanovic, Borba za narodno ujedinjenje 1914-1918, (Beograd: No Publication Year/bez godine izdanja;)
Milutin Lazarevic, Nasi ratovi za oslobodjnje i ujedinjenje, srpsko-turski rat 1912, I, (Beograd: 1928); Vladimir
Dedijer, (Sarajevo 1914); S. Stanojevic, Srpsko-turski rat 1912, (Beograd: 1928); Milos Skaric, Cetnici i
dobrovoljci u ratovima za oslobodjenje i ujedinjenje, (Novi sad: 1925); Vojvoda Kosta Pecanac, Cetnicka akcija
1903-1912, (Beograd: 1933); Jovan Tomic, Rat na Kosovu i Staroj Srbiji, (Novi Sad,1913); Milorad Belic,
Komitski Vojvoda Vojislav Tankosic, (Valjevo: Medjuopstinski istorijski arhiv, 2005).
875 Milorad Belic, Komitski Vojvoda Vojislav Tankosic, (Valjevo: Medjuopstinski istorijski arhiv: 2005)
876 Ibid., p. 88.
197
As can be seen in Photo 1, Muslims (and Albanian-speaking individuals) were present and
actively took places in Chetnik movement. Also, one of its members (Milan Milosevic) is
wearing a plis, a hat that became a symbol of Albanian national identity. According to his
name and surname, he was ethnically Serb and Orthodox. Hence, one may ask why a member
of a “Serbian” cheta is wearing an Albanian hat, a national symbol of the “eternal enemies” of
the Serbian nation. One answer would be that people are not born with a national
consciousness and that “national identity” is rather a constructed category. At that time, the
plis was still not an Albanian national hat and people from a certain region could have
stronger family and tribal connections, rather than national. Next-door neighbours that
belonged to different communities and churches (or religions) could wear the same “ethnical”
clothes too. Rather, a better way to think of their clothing in this photograph is that they
signalled to others from which valley, region or village came.877 According to Isa Blumi, “in
many of the regions from which these men came (we know this by learning to ‘read’ the
subtle differences in design), the closest neighbour, and thus someone who would share to an
extent the same clothing patterns, may have been someone of a ‘different’ faith and
ethnicity.”878 Thus, thinking in terms of “national” at a time when locals were still not
“national” could be misleading. An illustration of this was one of the active participants of the
cheta led by Tankosic, who was a young Muslim from Herzegovina (Stolac) named Mustafa
Golubic and was trained in a chetnik school in Prokuplje. He was also a member of the Young
Bosnia organisation and guerilla fighter in Ottoman Macedonia, especially during the Balkan
Wars.879 Known as “man of conspiracy” (covjek konspiracije),880 Golubic was also accepted
into the Black Hand Organisation that was led at that time by another famous Serbian general
Dragutin Dimitrijevic Apis. In 1914, he was an active member of the action of the
assassination of Archeduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.881
Similar to Golubic’s was the life path of Smajo Ferović – an Albanian speaking Muslim –
who originated from the castle guard (dizdar) family Omeragic from Plav (nowadays
Montenegro). His grandfather, Jakup Ferri, and his uncle Hasan have in present-day Albanian
historiography been honoured as “heroes of the nation” (hero i kombit) who fought against
877 Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, Dress and Identity (New York: Fairchild Boos, 1995).
878 Isa Blumi, Reinstating…, p. 17
879 Marko Attila Hoare, Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941–1943.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
880 Sead Trhulj, Mustafa Golubic, covjek konspiracije, (Sarajevo: Zalihica, 2007); Uros Vujosevic, Prilozi za
biografiju Mustafe Golubica, Istorija XX veka, 1-2 (1993)
881 Tasic, op.cit. 2020, p. 176
198
Montenegro in 1878 for the “Albanian cause.”882 However, Smajo personally took part in the
Chetnik Organisation together with his comrade Mustafa Golubic. Hence, he was also trained
in a chetnik school in Prokuplje that prepared him for the chetnik action and Serbian Border
troops, who were responsible for the infiltration of Serbian chetniks in Ottoman territories and
building networks with local notables (krerë) of the Albanian families in the Kosovo
vilayet.883 As a person who was fluent in Albanian, (dobro govorio arnautski) he played an
important role with the Albanian notables in the Kosovo vilayet, 884 especially with Isa
Boletini -considered a hero in Albanian hisotiography - whose uncle, Hasan Ferri (Ferović),
was a very close friend of Isa. In addition to their friendship, they had family connections, as
two sisters of Smajo Ferovic were married to Isa Boletini’s sons. During the time of the
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians, one of Isa’s sons, named Bajazit, wrote to the
Ministry of the Interior as follows:
“I, as a Serb and as a son of the great patriot and Serb, the late Isa Boljetinac, regret that in
these parts [in the Mitrovica area] we have such authorities that work according to their whim
and spite, and not at all for the good of our fatherland.”885
Although his father Isa was not known as a Serb, the examples of Bajazit Boletini and Smajo
Ferovic represent the complexities of the actors on the ground who could have multiple
identities or switch sides, accept new national constructs and shift to other ideologies
according to their economic, social, or other profits. The situation on the ground was often
more complex than how national historiographies represent it through meta-narrative stories.
Along with the fact that members of chetas could switch sides, they were sometimes also
connected with their “enemies” via families, kinship, or friendships. When we try to integrate
the “bottom-up” approach, we realise that this “struggle for Macedonia” was actually a
“multiple arena of domination and opposition” that always included negotiation among
diverse sides. Thus, we should not neglect the agency of the participants, but rather integrate
their points of view and try to understand the situation via their complexities. Smajo Ferovic
was definitely one such personalities, as he was often appointed to negotiate with locals in the
Kosovo Vilayeti and to undertake initiatives on behalf of the Serbian government. In this
882 Alex Buda, Fjalor enciklopedik shqiptar. Akademia e Shkencave e RPSSH, (Tirane: 1985)., p. 261. Quote:
„FERRI Hasan (1860-1946). Luftëtar dhe udhëheqës i shquar popullor nga Plava. Mori pjesë aktive përkrah të
atit, Jakup Ferrit, në betejat e zhvilluara për mbrojtjen e Plavës e të Gucisë më 1879-1880.”
883 Politika, 15 Februar 1928 godine, strana 4, Beograd
884 Vreme, 15. Februar 1928 godine, strana 4, Beograd
885 Jovo Miladinovic, Shifting State Loyalty: The Case of an Officer Serefeddin or Milan Milovanovic, Glasnik
Etnografskog instituta 68 (3), 2020, p. 716; AJ/Belgrade, 14-181-670-45, Statement by Bajazit Ise Boljetinca
made on August 11, 1922 in the Ministery of the Interior.
199
respect, he negotiated with two famous Kosovo notables such as Hasan Husejin from
Budakova and Redzep Hadzi Abdul,886 who moved to Leskovac (Serbia) during the Young
Turk military expedition in Kosovo in 1910. They staged an uprising against the Young Turks
between 23 April and 12 May 1910 on the Caraleve Mountain and were forced to ask for
help. Smajo Ferovic offered them a possibility to move to Leskovac, and stayed in contact
with a member of the Main Board of the “Serbian Brothers” (glavna uprava – “srpske braće”
– Beograd) and the secretary of the General Consulate in Skopje, J.J. Studic.887 Furthermore,
Ferovic once wrote to the Foreign Minister of Serbia, Dr. Milovan Dj. Milovanovic, with the
words, “upon my return from Skoplje and Veles to Leskovac, I met up with Husein Budakova
and Aljus Barjaktar from Ostrozuba, who wanted me to forward a message to you.” Budakova
and Bajraktar’s message demanded more intensive activities in the Kosovo vilayet on behalf
of Serbia, “hoping and believing that Serbia trusted their loyalty and would support their
actions, because they had given themselves over to the King of Serbia.“888 Although, they had
given themselves over to the king and showed their loyalty to Serbia in 1910 and 1911, when
the Balkan Wars broke out, Hasan Husein Budakova fought against Serbia with other 400
Kosovars (me Hasan Hyseinin e Budakoves ne krye).889
Another Muslim member that joined the Serbian actions and supported the Serbian policies in
Macedonia, was the Turkish Gandarmerie Captain (turski zandarmerijski kapetan) Redzep
Abdurahman Adrovic. He was born in Djakovica (Kosovo vilayet) as the son of Abduraman
Adrovic, who moved to the Ottoman Empire from the city of Nis that became part of Serbia
in 1878. As a child from a muhacir family from Serbia, he was given the opportunity to enter
the Ottoman army and become a gendarmerie captain for five years. However, due to political
886 Generalni konzulat Kraljevine Srbije Skoplje, Jovan M. Jovanovic, 27.03.1911 g. AC, MIDS, PO, 1911, F-IX,
D-8
887 Ibid.
888 AC, MIDS, SPA, 1911, F-IV, D-6. P. 652; Secretary J.J. Studic to Minister of Foreign Affairs: “vracajuci se
iz Skoplja I Velesa svratio sam u Leskovac, probavio jedan dan I sastao se sa Huseinom Budakovcem I Aljus
Barjaktarom iz Ostrozuba, koji su me molili da Vam ovim putem podnesem njihove molbe I zelje. Dogadjaji,
koji su se poceli odigrati na jugozapadnom kraju Crne Gore I upadi Arnauta I Malisora u Tursku, veoma su
uzbudili Hasana I Barjaktara. Oni smatraju da oni ne treba vise da sede ovako skrstenih ruku, pa se u toj celji
obracaju Vami, sa molbom, da im se dozvoli da I oni sa svojim drugovima odu u svoje krajeve I pokrenu akciju
protiv danasnjeg rezima u Turskoj. Na ime te akcije, oni mole, da im se, za prvi maj, da po jedna brzometna
puska, nekoliko bombi, dinamita I potrebna municija, I oni bi se odmah krenuli za Tursku. Pojmljivo je, da se
ove njihove molbe I zelje osnivaju na nepokolebljivoj nadi I veri, da ce ih Vlada Kraljevine Srbije verujuci u
njihovu odanost, stititi I pomagati u njihovoj akciji I da ce im, na slucaj neuspeha I buduce ukazivati
gostoljubivo utociste, ne samo njima licno no svakome ko se bude pridruzio njihovoj akciji. (…) Oni su, kazu,
sebe I svoje predali Kralju Srbije I oni su u njegovim rukama. “
889 Tafil Boletini, Kujtime: Prane Isa Boletinit dhe Perballe sfidave te kohes, (Tirane: Ndërmarrja Gazetare-
Botuese Album, 1996), p. 154; “ne Diber u bashkuem me se 400 kosovare dhe per kete arsye, e pranuem
propozimin dhe u bame gati me cue nji fuqi me Hasan Hyseinin e Budakoves ne krye, Isuf Bardhoshin e Isniqit
dhe ten ji djali te axhes Isa.”
200
reasons during the Albanian uprisings in the Kosovo vilayet, he was imprisoned by the
Ottoman government and released after a few months. This became his main reason to
migrate to Serbia, because he considered “Nis as his fatherland” (Nis smatram za moju
otadzbinu). Upon his arrival, he joined the Serbian action and was engaged in the Kosovo
vilayet as a Serbian agent.890 During his stay in Serbia, he gave a “word of honor that [would]
protect Serbian interests and return a thousand times more to Serbia for all good things that
this state did.”891
In this respect, I try to give voices to these actors, who (can) lead us to rethink and question
our knowledge constructed mostly by meta-narrative historiographies. I aim to prevent these
stories from falling into oblivion and to highlight new cases that show multiple interactions
and complexities at the ground levels. Another notable instance is found in the man known as
“Turk,” named Ahmet Musa or Milos Srbinovic, who served the Serbian Defence
Organisation, while he worked as tipstaff (Serbian gavaz, Turkish kavas) in the Ottoman
Consulate in Vranj. In one of his reportd, he wrote of himself that he “[came] originally from
Kumanovo in Old Serbia” and that he was “ethnically a Turk.”892 During one of the first
Chetnik actions, he was contacted by Zivojin Rafajlovic - one of the founders of the Chetniks
and organiser of the bands. In the years of the “struggle for Macedonia,” Musa Ahmet was
transferring to Rafajlovic the entire consular post of the Ottoman Consulate in Vranj (svu
konzulatsku postu predao na kopiranje I upotrebu), as well as all the documents that the
Ottoman Consul in Vranj was sending to the Ottoman Embassy in Belgrade or the Ottoman
government in Istanbul (svu postu koju je g. Konsul slao u Beograd, Carigrad).893 In one of
890 25.03.1901, Nacelstvu okruga Niskog, Komesar policije Man. M. Mrvic p. 668
891 25.03.1901, Nacelstvu okruga Niskog, Komesar policije Man. M. Mrvic p. 668; turski zandarmerijski kapetan
Redzep Abdurahman Adrovic. “Ja sam se rodio u Djakovici. Sin sam Abduramana Adrovica, koji je se odavde,
iz Nisa, iselio onda kada je Srbija zauzela Nis. Jos za doba vladavine Sultana Abdul-Hamida, usljed izvesnih
nemira u mome plemenu, koje se zove “Sač”, ja sam, kao vidjen clan ovog plemena, bio pozvat u Solun. (…)
kao zandarmerijski oficir proveo sam pet godina – racunajuci I ovo vreme koje sam u zatvoru proveo (zbog
albanskog pokreta). Posle poduzeg razmisljanja nasao sam da mi je najbolje da emigriram u Srbiju tim pre, sto
Nis smatram za moju otadzbinu. (…) Izgledi su da ce se prilike u Arbaniji uskoro promeniti te cu se vratiti svojoj
kuci. Dajem casnu rec da cu voditi racuna o interesima Srbije a uveren sam da cu imati toliko moci da cu za
svaku ucinjenu mi dobrotu od strane Srbije, njoj – Srbiji – to hiljado-struko vratiti.”
892 AS. MIDS, SPA, 16.12.1907, F-III, D-3, knjiga II, supplement 3, p. 490
893 AS. MIDS, SPA, 16.12.1907, F-III, D-3, knjiga II, supplement 3, p. 490 “ja sam rodom iz Kumanova u St.
Srbiji I po narodnosti sam Turcin po imenu Musa Ahmet I duze vremena bio sam gavaz u turskom Konsulatu u
Vranju. U 1903 godine stupio sam u vezu sa g. Zivojin Rafajlovicem tadasnjim pesadijskim kapetanom I
predsednikom komiteta, te sam mu svu konzulatsku postu predao na kopiranje I upotrebu. Svu postu koja bi
dolazila u Konzulat a koju sam ja trebao predavati g. Konzulu ja sam prvo predao g. Rafailovicu te je on kopirao,
ponova je kovertirao I pecatio pa mi je vracao da je predam g. Konsulu. Tako isto I na isti nacin predavao sam g.
Rafailovicu I svu postu koju je g. Konsul slao u Beograd, Carigrad itd. Sva ta pisma – neka u kopiji, neka u
originalu – g. Rafailovic je predao ministru spoljnih poslova, narocito g. Sveti Simicu, a prevodio ih je sa
turskog jezika g. Trajan Zivkovic cinovnik. Taj sam posao produzio raditi 4-5 mjeseci, dok nisu u Konsulatu
201
the important documents, he listed: “1. The Ottoman Consulate in Vranj; 2. The Ottoman
Embassy in Belgrade; 3. Kosovo Vilayet; 4. Manastir/Bitola Vilayet; 5. The Ottoman Foreign
Ministry in Istanbul.”894
However, the moment that he raised the suspicion of the Ottoman authorities, he left the
Consulate and was converted to Orthodox Christianity, married to a Serbian woman from
Vranj, and baptised with the new name of Milos Srbinovic. His new father-in-law was no
other than Rafajlovic himself, who was actively organising Serbian bands in Ottoman
Macedonia. Rafajlovic enabled him to participate in a Serbian action in Skopje and “other
towns in Old Serbia in order to bring back detailed information from the ground (u Skoplju I
drugim varosima u Staroj Srbiji u cilju da donesem sto tacnije podatke odboru).”895 In this
respect, he admitted that he worked only for “the interest of our chetniks” (sve to svrsio u
korist nasih cetnika)..896 For this service, he was paid 300 dinar by the Minister of Foreign
Affairs. 897 In a similar way, Jovo Miladinovic argues the case of the Ottoman officer
Serefeddin who changed his name to Milovan Milovanovic. He points out that loyalties were
not built only around national or religious affiliation, but they were impacted by a myriad
motives such as love, momentary war settings, economic situation, etc., which would
influence individuals to switch their loyalties in order to survive in a new context produced by
war and violence – as in the case of the Ottoman officer Serefeddin.898 During the Balkan
Wars, when the Ottoman army was losing its positions in the three vilayets, Serefeddin
voluntarily joined the army of the Kingdom of Serbia.899 As in the case of Ahmet Musa
(Milos Srbinovic), Serefeddin (Milan Milanovic) also learned the Serbian language and
married a Serb woman from Pljevlja, with whom he lived in the Kingdom of the Serbs,
posumnjali u moju vernost. Kad sam to osetio ja sam se morao odmah skloniti, a posle nekoliko dana I pokrstiti.
Kumovao mi je g. Rafailovic I dobio sam srpsko ime Milos Srbinovic. U Vranju sam se ozenio Srpkinjom I
imam dvoje dece. Otvorio sam berbersku radnju kojoj sam bio vican ali bez ikakvog kapitala. Od odbora sam
dobio svega 200 dinara.”
894 11.12. 1907, knjiga II, supplement 3, p. 491; see: “1. Vranjskog turskog konzulata 2. Beogradskog turskog
poslanstva 3. Kosovskog vilajeta 4. Bitoljskog vilajeta 5. Turskog ministra inostranih dela u Carigradu.”
895 11.12. 1907, knjiga II, supplement 3, p. 492; See: “u konzulatu radio sam razne stvari u korist Srbije I uvek
sam izvestavao tadanji odbor (u Vranju). Nekoliko puta sam bio u Skoplju I drugim varosima u Staroj Srbiji u
cilju da donesem sto tacnije podatke odboru.
896 11.12. 1907, knjiga II, supplement 3, p. 492; See: “docnije smo uspeli, a po mojoj pretstavci turskom konzulu,
da se zatvore nekoliko bugarasa, medju kojima je cuveni Petar Karamanov, ucitelj u Kumanovskoj kazi, koji je
osudjen na 15 godina robije. Cesce me je zvao turski konzul, napominjuci mi, da je saznao da ce te I te noci preci
granicu srpski cetnici, I trazio je od mene da ja potvrdim tu vest, naravno ja sam sve to svrsio u korist nasih
cetnika, izvestavajuci o svemu cika Lazu biv. Magacionera komiteta odbora, koji mi je bio najblizi.”
897 18.12.1907. knjiga II, supplement 3, p. 492; See: “Resavam da se iz vanrednog kredita odobrenog
zakonodavnim resenjem od 23. 10. 1906 g. izda Milou Srbinovicu (Musi Ahmetu, Turcinu) iz Kumanova za
usluge koje je ucinio Srbiji kao kavaz u turskom Klatu I Vranju suma od tri stotine dinara.”
898 Jovo Miladinovic, op. cit. 2020
899 Ibid.
202
Croats, and Slovenians.900 Furthermore, such examples are not “unique” and “exceptional;”
to the contrary, one can trace similar cases in other settings worldwide as well. This diverse
image of actors shows that these individuals who were Ottoman personnel, but also belonged
to the Chetnik or other Serbian organisations, were an active and dynamic group, influencing
the locals, as well as influenced by the locals and often coming from the ranks of the locals.
Accordingly, their networks with the locals or with other ethnicities cannot be considered in a
vacuum as a static structure, but rather as processual constructs of multilayered identities and
historical intersectionalities. Similar to the above was the engagement of chetnik Savatija
Milosevic, who cooperated and established friendships with local Muslims (Albanians) like
Mula Zeka and Isa Boljetini.901 In the early 1900s, the Serbian state proclaimed him a robber
and hajduk, and therefore he he spent a long time hiding in the house of Mula Zeka, the
founder of the Peja League, in the Kosovo vilayet. In 1905, Milosevic died in battle as a
Chetnik, fighting for “our thing” (nasu stvar). Another notable example is found in vojvoda
Tankosic’s search for an “Albanian” who broke his besa (word of honor) during the battle in
Velike Hodze. This “Albanian” betrayed the cheta of vojvoda Lazar Kujundzija, in a group
with nine other comrades who were killed in the battle. However, interestingly, this
“Albanian” (his name has not been registered), was hiding alongside two other “Albanians”
into the house of one Serbian woman (pronasli su skrivenog kod neke Srpkinje) who tried to
save their lives.902
One should also be aware that sometimes members wiithin the Serbian organisations had
different responses as well, participating in different programs and lobbying for diverse and
sometimes contradictory strategies. Thus, it should not be assumed that the interior of their
own organisations had a unified, proto-, or supra-national sensibility. Rather the ambitions of
Serbian organisations were varied and contested, and also often resulted in clashes and
contradictory tendencies. In this respect, one should also emphasise that there was no unified
policy among those organisations and gangs. For example, the Serbian Defence boards in
Belgrade and in Macedonia (i.e. in Bitola) did not always cooperate and share the same aims.
Thus, Aleksa Jovanović-Kodza, a Serbian teacher in Manastir at that time, stressed the
differences between the Bitola board which “executed a meticulous organisation of the
movement on its terrain,” while the organisers from Belgrade “did not even bother to visit the
900 Ibid. Vojislav Šikoparija, Sećanja srpskog oficira (1900-1918) (Beograd: Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna
sredstva, 2016), pp. 237-238.
901 Biljana Vucetic, op. cit. 2006. p. 364
902 Milorad Belic, op.cit., p. 41
203
field as inquisitive travellers in order to meet the popular representatives, and most
importantly, to direct their movement to the urgent popular need.”903 Another prominent
personality, Pavle Blazaric, also known as vojvoda Bistricki, described the situation of the
chetniks on the ground as one of “no law and order,” rather led by many conflicts, especially
between vojvoda Nikola Jankovic-Kosovski and Panta Radosavljevic-Dunavski. 904
Furthermore, in 1907, the rift and conflict between the various Serbian organisations was
escalated as well. A report from 11 December 1907 states that the “executive board of the
Serbian Defence” already had difficulties in its cooperation the “with Society of Serbian
Brotherhood.”905 The representatives of the Serbian Defence urged that the Society of the
Serbian Brotherhood (Drustvo Srpska braca) should cooperate, otherwise it “[could] lead to a
discord within the Organisation” (svojim radom stvori rascep u Organizaciji) and from there
to “far-reaching consequences, as in the Bulgarian cases – the formation of many different
committees” (svojim radom stvori rascep u Organizaciji a za tim dodje do onih posledica,
kao Bugarskoj).906
Comparably, one can find conflicts between the Circle of Serbian Sisters (Kolo Srpskih
sestara),907 a women’s charitable society established to help the Serbian Chetnik Organisation
and the Society of Serbian Brotherhood.908 Moreover, in 1907 a clash between the “consulate”
and “church” sides occurred, which was led by metropolitan Vicentije and the director of the
Gymnasium in Skopje, Luka Lazarevic. A similar conflict first arose in October 1906 between
Milan Rakic, who was the then Consul in Prishtina, and the Prizren metropolitan Nicifor. 909
To mediate their reconciliation was appointed Bogdan Radenkovic, who was one of the
903 Biljana Vucetic, Some considerations on the emergence of the Serbian Chetnik Movement in Macedonia
during the last period of Ottoman rule, Zapisi, Istorijski Institut Univerziteta Crne Gore, 2015, p. 117; Aleksa
Jovanović Kodza, Vojvoda Savatije. Početak srpske četničke akcije u Maćedoniji, Letopis Matice srpsk 326
(1930), p. 128; Aleksa Jovanović Kodza, Početak srpskog četničkog pokreta u Južnoj Srbiji i Makedoniji,
Književni Jug 1 (1929) pp. 14–19; Četnički spomenik, Vojvoda Micko, život i rad, (Skoplje: 1930).
904 DAS, Izvrsni odbor Vranja, f. VII, Izvestaj Bistrickog, Pov. Br. 169, Beograd, 9/22, Januar, 1907; Pavle
Blažarić, Memoari, (Leposavić: Centar za kuturu "Sava Dečanac", 2006).
905 AC, MIDS, Izvrsni odbor S.O. u Vranju, F-H, 1907, knjiga II, supplement 3, p. 500; See: “(izvrsni odbor
Srpske odbrane u Vranju) smatra, da se sa ovakvim radom (na svoju ruku prelaze granicu) Drustvo Srpske Brace,
udaljuje od svog prvog poziva, jer se sa ovakvim radom moze kompromitovati, pa s toga I jos mnogih drugih
razloga ne bi trebalo da se bez odobrenja I sporazuma mesa u posao koji je ovome Odboru poveren. Na ovaj
nacin lako se moze stvoriti rascep u Organizaciji, a to drustvo Srpska braca treba da ima na umu, ako ne zeli da
svojim radom stvori rascep u Organizaciji a za tim dodje do onih posledica, kao sto je to u Bugarskoj, te I kod
nas da se stvore nekoliko komiteta, koji mogu biti samo od stete a nikako od neke uobrazene koristi.”
906 AC, MIDS, Izvrsni odbor S.O. u Vranju, F-H, 1907, knjiga II, supplement 3, p. 500
907 Ibid. 752; Kolo Srpskih Sestara osnivaci: Nadezda Petrovic, Dafne (Delfa) Ivanic (zena Ivana Ivanica
sluzbenika MID-a, se met her husband Ivan in Skopje, where she was a teacher between 1900 and 1903), Savka
Subotic, Milica Lukovic, Mila Dobric.
908 Ibid. 753; Drustvo Srpska Braca – rodoljubi udruzenja izbeglica iz Turske, osnovano pocetkom 1905.
Predsednik Golub Janjic, Josif Studic
909 Biljana Vucetic, Bogdan Radenkovi I Milan Rakic, Istorijski casopis, knjiga LVII, 2008 p. 415
204
founders of the secret society Black Hand and assumed to have written the frst rulebook of the
Serbian Defence. In Serbian historiography he is known as a “national worker” (nacionalni
radnik) who graduated from Galatasaray Lisesi and worked in Skopje as a teacher. To the
public he was a “loyal citizen of the Ottoman Empire,” but away from the public eye he was
an agent of the Consulate of the Kingdom of Serbia and an organiser of Serbian chetas,
appointed also to reconcile and mediate between discordant sides.910 He also cooperated
closely with the Serbian vice-consul in Thessaloniki, Milan Rakic (October 1907-October
1908), who was always “informed about the course of our affairs” (mi cemo Vas redovno
izvestavati o toku nase stvari).911 Along with Dragutin Dimitrijevic Apis, he was meeting with
Isa Boljetini and providing him with arms and weapons.912 Therefore, he was not only a
“loyal citizen of the Ottoman Empire” who tought children at school, but also a conciliator
between Serbian sides, and a cooperator with the local Albanians in the Kosovo vilayet and
organiser of Serbian chetas.913 Together with Stevan Simic, he argued that Serbia should use
all capacities to penetrate Ottoman Macedonia, because “the anarchy [would] last until the
moment when the Macedonian, in other words the Turkish or Near East Question, [was]
resolved” (a anarhije ce biti uvek do god se ne resi macedonsko odnosno tursko ili blizeg
istoka pitanje).914 Indeed, many Serbian “political entrepreneurs,” considered the Macedonian
Question crucial for the survival of Serbdom and that it should be resolved by the Serbian
state.
3.2.4. ALBANIAN KACHAKS
As has been seen, the final decades of the Ottoman rule were marked by various bands who
took to the hills to fight for the end of the Ottoman rule or to protect their villages and regions
from others’ bands. Among these members of bands, the most renowned in Albanian
historiography are such intellectuals and guerrilla fighters as the two brothers Bajo and Cerciz
Topulli, the cousins Fehim and Menduh Zavallani, and the two Orthodox Christian Albanians
Gjergj Qiriazi and Mihail Grameno, who was also a writer. Namely, Bajo Topulli and Gjergj
910 Biljana Vucetic, Izvestajji obavestajca diplomati, pisma Bogdana Radenkovica Milanu Rakicu (1907-1912),
Miscellanea, vol XXIX, 2008, pp. 153-169
911 Ibid., p. 156
912 Ibid., 2008, p. 168
913 Biljana Vucetic, op.cit., Miscellanea, vol XXIX, 2008, pp. 153-169
914 Stevan Simic , Kratovo, Ministarstvu inostranih dela Kraljevine Srbije – Beograd, 11/24.12 1904, AC, MIDS,
PPO, 1904, K – red 28; Ljiljana Aleksic-Pejkovic, Knjiga II, supplement 1, P.746; see: Bugari su bili u stanju da
naoruzaju celu Macedoniju, J.(uznku) St. Srbiju I Jedrenski vilajet, a Srbija se ustrucava da prebaci nekoliko
hiljada komada I to onih pusaka, koje stoje po starim magacinima I koje se nece nikada upotrebiti! Zar nije to
greh da hrdjaju tolike puske, a preko granice padaju glave kao bundeve? (…) a anarhije ce biti uvek do god se ne
resi macedonsko odnosno tursko ili blizeg istoka pitanje.
205
Qiriazi, in collaboration with the cousins Fehim and Menduh Zavalani, founded the Secret
Committee for the Liberation of Albania (Komitet i shqipëtarëve për lirin e Shqipërisë) in
Manastir in November 1905.915 In their Statute they proclaimed the aims of the organisation,
which prioritised “enlivening Albania through brotherhood, love, unity and the spread of
civilisation” (të ngjallurit e Shqipërisë, duke mbjellë vëllazërimin, dashurinë, bashkimin, duke
përhapur udhën e qytetërimit). As part of these values, this organisation also focused on
“progress of the nation that [was] at the moment in a very dark stage” (për mbrothësinë
kombit dhe të shpëtuarin nga zgjedha dhe errësira në të cilën gjendet sot).916 As previous
chapters have made clear, at the fin de siecle various intellectuals shared a common rhetoric
that emphasised (the opposites of) “progress” and “darkness,” “civilisation” and “barbarity.”
Its ideological father was Bajo Topulli, who was director of the Ottoman Secondary School
(idadiye). In the construction of a “colonialist” ideology toward the Turks, Topulli was greatly
supported by his brother, Çerçiz, who in the newspaper Drita (“Light”) wrote: “We
[Albanians] should not shed our blood for the Turks, because they are Tatars, Mongols that
came from Asia, and we are Europeans.”917 In the Age of Empire, being European meant
being “superior” and “progressive,” in contrast to the “Tatars” and “Mongols.” Some of these
“political entrepreneurs” also referred to the Turks as “Anadolian” and “stuborn/rude
(halldupë).”918 This “colonist” attitude was regularly iterated in almost racist tones, where
“progress” of the nation entailed “civilisation.” Its aim was to implement “development” or
“expansion,” which would again mirror the patronising, often racist discourses associated
with western European colonialism of the time. There is no doubt that members of the Secret
Committee for the Liberation of Albania perceived the Ottoman government as “barbaric”
and not legitimate to rule over Albanians, who were “Europeans.” The above mentioned
personalities tried to construct a narrative of Albanians as the legitimate nation that should
inherit “the lands of Alexander the Great.”919 In their imagination, there was a clear narrative
that Albanians are his descendants whose sole condition implied “the liberation and
915 Gawrych 2006, p. 147. The Secret Committee for Liberation of Albania was joined by Jashar Bidineka, Nuçi
Naçi, Riza be Viliçishti, Grigor Cilka, Qani be Ypi; See: Mihal Grameno, Kryengritja shqiptare, (Korçë:
Direttore, 1925) (First Published); Mihail Grameno, Kryengritja shqipetare, (Tirane: N.SH. Naim Frasheri,
1959).
916 Zaho Golemi, Çerçiz Topulli dhe çeta flamur lirie: Me rastin e 110 vjetorit të krijimit të çetës së Çerçiz
Topullit, mbrojtja.gov.al. Mbrojtja. 2016, p. 49
917 Drita, nr.17: I.; “E-drejta pra eshte, se neve pashketajdhi nuke duhete te derdhme as nje pike gjaku per Tyrqite;
se ata jane Tartare, Mongolie e kane ardhure prej Asie, e neve jemi Evropjane e nje nga me te-mbaruarate dege
te farese Kafkasiane.”
918 Nathalie Clayer, op.cit. p. 412
919 AQSH/Tirane, F.102.D.82.f.1–2
206
resurrection of Albania” (liria ishte sharti/kushti dhe ilaçi për tu ringjallur Shqipëria).920
Accordingly, the Albanian nation had the difficult task of fighting on two fronts: both against
the “barbaric” Turkish rulers, and against the “fake” Greeks who also claimed right to the
heritage of Alexander the Great in Macedonia.921 These “political entrepreneurs” tried to
construct an Albanian ethnogenesis and national identity framed by the “Illyrian” theory of
Albanian ethnical and cultural origin and the main political consequences that were likely to
arise from the implementation of this theory in the Macedonian case, since these lands were
“under Illyria.”922 Furthermore, this dispute about the ancient heritage also spread penetrated
the daily life of intellectuals and clergymen. Indeed, the Albanian teacher and parish priest,
Papa Kristo Negovani refused to hold the Orthodox Divine Liturgy in Greek, and initiated use
of the Albanian language during prayers. 923 For this activity, he was murdered on 12
February 1905 by a Greek guerilla band by order of Bishop Karavangelis from Kastoria. He
was killed in the village of Negovan, in the Manastir vilayet (Ottoman Macedonia). As a
response, some of these Albanian “political entrepreneurs” decided to establish the first cheta
in the Manastir vilayet.924 Its founders were the brothers Topulli, Bajo and Cerciz,925 who
decided to engage in guerilla warfare after leaving the comforts of their town life in Manastir.
Thus, they established the First Albanian Cheta in March 1906, at the Bektashi tekke of
Melçan, near Korça (Manastir vilayet). The Bektashi clergy was very active in the creation
and operation of this cheta, whose members took to the mountains to liberate the country. In
this respect, in January 1907, Çerçiz Topulli published an article in the newspaper Shpresa e
Shqypnisë (“Hope of Albania”):
“With this letter I want to inform all our brothers patriots/compatriots, Albanians, our friends,
and all others who are interested in the Albanian Question, that I, with my friends, left the
920 Zaho Golemi, op.cit. 2016. "Çerçiz Topulli dhe çeta flamur lirie: Me rastin e 110 vjetorit të krijimit të çetës së
Çerçiz Topullit" mbrojtja.gov.al. Mbrojtja. P. 50; see: “Me anën e kësaj letre dua të lajmëroj të gjithë vëllezërit
patriotë, shqiptarë, miqtë tanë, si dhe gjithë të tjerët që interesohen për Çështjen e Shqipërisë, se unë me gjithë
shokët e mij (duke lënë shtëpijat, familjet e gjithë pasurinë), kemi dalë ndër male si kry- engritës, kundër
qeverisë barbare tiranike, për Lirinë e Shqipërisë...qeveria kërkon e i merr me pahir pagesat e ndryshme të rënda,
jo vetëm, por edhe duke na grabitur, plaçkitur sa s’durohet dot më... Liria ishte sharti/kushti dhe ilaçi për tu
ringjallur Shqipëria...”
921 Helen Abadzi, Historical Greek-Albanian Relations: Some Mysteries and Riddles?, Mediterranean Quarterly
22(1), 2011, pp. 41-60.
922 Vladislav B. Sotorovic, Who are Albanians?, Serbian Studies Journal of the North American Society for
Serbian Studies 26 (1-2), 2012, pp. 45-79.
923 Jašar Redžepagić, Zhvillimi i arësimit dhe i sistemit shkollor të kombësisë shqiptare në teritorin e
Jugosllavisë së sotme deri në vitin 1918. (Prishtine: Enti i teksteve dhe i mjeteve mësimore i Krahinës Socialiste
Autonome të Kosovës, 1970). p. 87.
924 BOA, Rumeli Müfettişliği Makamât Evrakı (TFR.I.MKM), 28/2742, H. 29.03.1326 (1 Mayıs 1908)
925 Bajo Topulli, Topullarët e Gjirokastrës, Bajo e Çerçizi. Pararendësit dhe pasardhësit, (Tirane: Albin, 2008).
207
houses, families, and our wealth, and went to the mountains as rebels, to fight for the liberty
of Albania against the barbaric and tiranic government.”926
The establishment of the First Albanian Cheta should not be analysed in isolation from the
broader Ottoman dynamics. This cheta-building was not a unique case for Macedonia, but
rather resonated in important ways throughout the larger Eastern Mediterranean world in
Anatolia (in six vilayets, where Armenians established several bands), Libya, and elsewhere.
In order to understand their emergence, activism, and instigation of violence in a
(trans)regional context,927 one should also take into consideration their local custom, moral
values or geographic position by situating them in a wider time span. In other words, their
purpose, violence, coexistence, and cooperation with the governing elites cannot be properly
comprehended without considering the locally rooted values, perceptions, norms, and
structures. These are not separate but rather mutually empowering and influencing areas of
life.928 To place them in the local context, the establishment of an Albanian cheta was made
possible by the bleak situation in Ottoman Macedonia, influenced by factors that have already
been detailed. One of the members of the First Cheta, Mihail Grameno, known in Albanian
historiography as a writer and freedom fighter, emphasised that the “Ottoman troops and
policies of Sultan Abdul Hamid II,” together with the “Greek andartes, organised in Greece
by the Greek government, [created] a climate of terror among the Albanians by persecuting
and killing people every day.”929 As a result of this fear from the Ottoman authorities and
Greek bands, Albanian “political entrepreneurs” decided to become also “specialists in
926 “Me anën e kësaj letre dua të lajmëroj të gjithë vëllezërit patriotë,shqiptarë, miqtë tanë, si dhe gjithë të tjerët
që interesohen për Çështjen e Shqipërisë, se unë me gjithë shokët e mij (duke lënë shtëpijat, familjet e gjithë
pasurinë), kemi dalë ndër male si kryengritës, kundër qeverisë barbare tiranike, për Lirinë e Shqipërisë...qeveria
kërkon e i merr me pahir pagesat e ndryshme të rënda, jo vetëm, por edhe duke na grabitur, plaçkitur sa
s’durohet dot më... Liria ishte sharti/kushti dhe ilaçi për tu ringjallur Shqipëria...”. See: Zaho Golemi, op.cit.
(2016).
927 Albanian cheta received letters of support from Egypt, Jani Vruho “I cili me fjale patriotike na jepte kurajo,
edhe na shkruante qe per shpejti, do ten a dergonin ndihma.” “muarme edhe nga Bukureshti nje leter prej Vasil
Irakli Zografit, I cili na jepte kurajo edje na dergonte 25 napoleona nga ana e Komitetit te Romanise me qender
ne Bukuresht.” See; Mihal Grameno, Kryengritja shqiptare, Korçë: Direttore, 1925 (First Published); Mihail
Grameno, Kryengritja shqipetare, Tirane: N.SH.Naim Frasheri, 1959, p. 201
928 Jovo Miladinovic, Heroes, Traitors, and Survivors in the Borderlands of Empires Military Mobilizations and
Local Communities in the Sandžak (1900s-1920s), PhD Thesis (Berlin: Humboldt University, 2021). p. 6;
Nikolaus Buschmann and Horst Carl, Zugänge zur Erfahrungsgeschichte des Krieges: Forschung, Theorie,
Fragestellung, in Die Erfahrung des Krieges: Erfahrungsgeschichtliche Perspektiven von der Französischen
Revolution bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Nikolaus Buschmann and Horst Carl (Padaborn: Ferdinand Schöningh,
2001), pp. 11-26.
Reinhart Koselleck, Der Einfluß der beiden Weltkriege auf das soziale Bewußtsein, in Der Krieg des kleinen
Mannes: Eine Militärgeschichte von unten, ed. Wolfram Wette (München: Piper, 1992), pp. 324-43..
929 Mihal Grameno, op.cit. p. 143; “andaret greke, te organizuar ne Greqi prej qeverise greke, u kishin shtene
tmerin popullit shqiptar ne ndjekjet edhe vrasjet qe vepronin per dita kundra tyre.”
208
violence.”930 These personalities, such as Bajo and Cerciz Topulli and Mihail Grameno had
generous support from the Bektashi tekke, which was possible as the fighters were mostly
situated in the countryside and in isolated regions, far from the Ottoman authorities. Thus, the
Bektashi tekke of Melçan played an important role as it served as the virtual headquarters of
this cheta and the essential centre for spreading information on the activities between the
çeta’s leaders and the supporting population on the ground.931 Selim Pojani, a member of the
cheta, remembers the day when the patriots gathered at the tekke of Melcan:
“The meeting was opened by Baba Hysejn who held an impassioned speech abouth love for
the fatherland. He was followed by Bajo (Topulli) who said that the Ottoman Empire was a
vestige of the past and called on us to assemble and take to arms to fight for the freedom of
our country. The çeta was created. (…) The main task of our çeta was to spread information
and agitate among the peasant masses. We also distributed the books and spellers sent to us by
Grigor Cilka. The çeta agitated in the villages of Kolonja, Gora and the Plain of Korça.”932
Although the çeta tried to agitate for the “liberty of Albania” (per lirine e Shqiperise), the
peasant masses were not aware of national and ethnical differences. Mihail Grameno
describes an event in Kolivicë, at the fortress of Abidin Shaho, where Cerciz Topulli talked to
some peasants in Greek (Cerciz u therret ca fshatareve, ne gjuhen greqishte) and asked about
their relations with their Muslim neigbours (qysh shkojne me fqinjet e tyre muhamedane). An
old man replied to him that “the problem [was] in the Turks [meaning the Muslims] who are
on the throne” (jane gjith ata turqe qe kane qene kurdohere). Cerciz replied: “Right! The
greatest fault lies with the Turkish government in Istanbul, which brings about problems for
our brothers here, dividing the Christians and Mohammedans.”933 The çeta leader Cerciz
930 Mihail Grameno described this process within the words: “Nga keto frika (kryengritje e pergjithshme), turqit
kishin lene menjeane e ne qetesi te plote komitat bullgare edhe andaret greke edhe gjithe fuqine e perkujdesjen e
kishin hedhur kundra shqipetareve.” P. 202
931 Robert Elsie, The Albanian Bektashi, History and Cluture of a Dervish Order in the Balkans, (London: I.B.
Tauris, 2019), p. 147
932 See: Selim Pojani, ‘Ceta e pare nacionaliste’, in Kujtime nga levizja per clirimin kombetar ne vitet 1878 -
1912, ed. by Petraq Pepo, (Tiranë: Universiteti Shtetëror i Tiranës, Instituti i Historisë e Gjuhësisë, 1962). p. 112.
Quote: “Shkuam ne Teqene e Melcanit ku gjetem aty Baba Hysejnin me shtate a tete Dervishe, Bajo Topullin,
Riza Velcishtin, Mehmet Panaritin dhe Seferin nga Panariti. Ate dite ne Teqe "Mejdan" (Vend lutje) u zhvillua
mbledhja ku moren pjese te gjithe Dervishet qe kishin te skalitur ndjenjen kombetare ne tere qenien e tyre.
Mbledhjen e hapi Baba Hysejn patrioti i cili foli me nje elekuence dhe ndjenje te thelle patriotike plot zjarre per
dashurine ndaj Atdheut. Pas tij foli Baju e te tjere me radhe. Ceta u formua. Per kete mbledhje kane pasur dijeni
edhe plote patriote te tjere te Korces si: Orhan Pojani, Vani Cico, Thimi Marko, Grigor Cilka te cilet nuk moren
pjese per motive sigurie te kesaj mbledhje. Ceta e pare me kapedan Bajon ka qene e perbere prej 7 veta dhe kane
qendruar ne Teqene e Baba Hysejnit afersisht nje jave, e cila mbasi mori udhezimet e duhura eshte nisur per ne
Kolonje ku jane takuar me patriotin Sali Butka. Shume njerez u bashkuan dhe kam nderin te permend ne kete
shkrim edhe Dervish Kozelin. Baba Hyseni ndihmoi ngritjen e deges se komitetit " Per lirine e Shqiperise" ne
Korce dhe ne Kolonje.”
933 Mihal Grameno, op.cit. p. 163-164; “Kinit e drejte! Fajin me te math I ngarkohet qeverise turke te Stambollit,
e cila desheron qe te mos kete kurre qetesi edhe vellezeri ne vendin tene, midis te krishterevet edhe
muhamedanevet.”
209
spoke to the peasants in Greek, the old man who replied to him demonstrated only an
awareness of a distinction between Christians and Muslims. Furthermore, their everyday life
contained rather a mixture of peaceful coexistence and cooperation, than of conflicts and
violence. Closer contacts between these religiously divided groups also developed at the
markets in the town or the agricultural estates between mostly Muslim land owners and
Christian peasants, but also Christian merchants and Muslim peasants.934 While the conflict
and violence were an important component of social interactions at that time, some sources
show that at the turn to the century, the lines of violence could not be limited to national
categories or an Albanian-Greek or Serbian-Albanian antagonism. Additionally, Mihail
Grameno admitted that the “Greek people were innocent and without knowledge, but rather
the politicians, the knowledgeable, and the journalists were the sources of danger.”935 In fact,
on the ground and at the local level in late Ottoman Macedonia was seen rather a variety of
pre-national or religious identities, than ethno-national monolith ones. Also, the members of
the chetas did not always originate from the same ethnical and religious background. For
instance, Mihailo Grameno was an Orthodox Christian, while Bash Çaush was Turkishspeaking
(Bash Çaushi, nje turk).936 There was also often cooperation between bands, like in
the Albanian and Bulgarian cases, observed also by Ahmet Niyazi, an Albanian who became
symbol of the Young Turk Revolution. He emphasised that “in Resne, Prespe and Ohrid, the
Bulgarian chetas were gathered around the Albanian Toska commander Çerçiz.”937 One
should also note that Çerçiz’s cheta played one of the leading roles in the Young Turk
Revolution in July 1908. It was actually a Baba Hysejn initiative since he persuaded Çeriçiz
and Mihail Grameno to join Niyazi Bey, the leader of the Young Turks in the Manastir
vilayet. In his memoirs, Niyazi Bey described his cooperation with Cerciz as “a need to get
united and work together in order to save our fatherland.”938 For this purpose, Baba Hysejn
934 Eva Anne Frantz, Zwischen Gewalt und friedlicher Koexistenz – Muslime und Christen im spätosmanischen
Kosovo, 1870-1913, PhD Thesis (Wien: University of Vienna. Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät,
2014).
935 Mihal Grameno, p. 229; “…te ketilla bisedime (rreth kombit, shqiptaret ortodoks a jane grek) patme edhe ne
vapor kur qendruam ne Pater edhe ne Pire, edhe nga keto kuptova qe populli grek eshte I pafajshem meqene I
paditur, edhe kur udhehiqet prej njeres politikane, te ditur edhe gazetare, te cilet nuk jane gjesendi pervec tabako
prej historie.”
936 Ibid.; “Bash Çaush, nje Turk (…) kishte ikur prej ushterise ne Gjirokaster, edhe duke kerkuar, andej-ketej,
nga shqiptaret atdhetare, mundi te benje te njojture edhe t’u lutet qe ta bashkonin me neve.”(…) “pas zakonit
shqipetar e donim, nderonim edhe e ruani me teper se veten tene. Mjerisht dolli I pa bese ose me mire mbushi
detyren e tij, se ndofta per kete qellim u bashkua me neve, me dijen e kumandantit te tij!”
937 Niyazi Bey, op.cit. p. 174; “Hususiyetle Resne'de, Prespe'de, Ohri'de Bulgarların mahallî ve seferî çeteleri,
Arnavutların Toska komitalarının başı Çerçis ile birleşmiş, geniş bir çalışma yoluna koyulmuşlardı.”
938 A letter from Ahmet Niyazi to Cerciz Topulli:
“Aziz Çercis! Vatanımın uğradığı felâketi nazarı itibara alarak düştüğü taksim edilme istikametinden kurtarmak
için hayatımız bahasına silâhlanarak iki yüz erimle istibdat idaresine karşı bayrak kaldırarak balkana çıktım.
210
behaved as mediator between those two leaders. Mihail Grameno reminisces: “We had a long
discussion with Baba Hysejn on nationalist affairs and in particular about a meeting with
Niyazi Bey whose intentions were unclear to us. Baba Hysejn told us that Niyazi had the same
objectives as we did and that we ought to support him. (…) We kissed the hand of Baba
Hysejn and departed.”939 After a meeting with Baba Hysejn, Mihailo and Grameno went to
Poradec to meet up with Niyazi Bey940 who was already “anguished and tired from the Young
Turks, thus, he wanted to work as an Albanian for Albania.”941 To the contrary, Niyazi Bey
wrote that the meeting was more about “the Constitution in Rumelia and all the Ottoman
motherland.”942 However, this çeta helped Niyazi Bey to stage an uprising and turned the
situation in favour of the secret Ottoman organisation named Committee and Union (CUP),
which succeeded in bringing the Revolution in July 1908. The Albanian leaders supported
CUP for the sake of liberation, but this alliance with the Young Turks did not last long after
the 1908 revolution. Mihail Grameno reported that Çerçiz Topulli immediately started to sing
a song: “Albania, my Albania, Albania of five vilayets, why did you not fight for yourself, but
for all nations?”943 For Cerciz the imagination of Albania was an Albania of five vilayets that
Takip ettiğimiz istikamet vatanın felâketine sebep olacağından seninle en çok mücadele eden bendim. Fakat
şimdi sana elimi uzatıyorum. Bundan böyle birleşip beraber çalışmanın zamanı geldi. Arzu ettiğin şartlar içinde
nerede dilersen görüşelim, elele vererek vatanın kurtuluşuna beraber çalışalım. Çünkü sürüden ayrılanı kurt
kapar.'
Resne Millî Taburu Kumandanı Kolağası Ahmet Niyazi” See: Niyazi Bey, op.cit. p. 231-232
939 Mihal Grameno. Op.cit. p. 219
940 Ibid., p. 221; “Niaz be na priste ne Poradec. Rame ne bisedime edhe nje nga oficeret I qojtur Remzi be, hapi
programin per ten a e shtruar neve. Thote qe programi qendron ne Konstitucion te lire nje jesine (baraza) per
gjith kombet e mbreterise, dituria ne gjuhe amtare te cdo kombi, drejtesia edhe shume gjera per te permiresuar
rrojtjen e popujve.”
941 Ibid., p. 223; “Niaz beu ishte deshperuar edhe merzitur me ne fund nga Xhon Turqit, meqeneqe nuk e kishin
gjurmuar, prandaj vendosi te punonte si shqiptar per Shqiperine. Me kete program po fitonte simpathine e
shqipetareve, te cilet besonin edhe e gjurmonin. Mbi kete program, pra, na shkrojti edhe neve ae te vinim te
hasemi, per nji bashkepunim ne nje fushe me te gjere.”
942 Niyazi, op.cit. p. 326; Resneli Niyaz wrote about this meeting:
“Kendileriyle Ittihat ve Terakki'nin Rumeli'de ve bütün Osmanlı memleketinde yapmak istediği Kanun-ı Esasi
teşebbüsünü ve Meşrutî idarenin kurulmasından temin edilecek faydaları münakaşa ettik. Netice olarak Çerçis'in
zaman geçirmeden yanındakilerle beraber bana iltihak etmesi için karar verdik.” Furthermore, he states: Arnavut
komitası taraftarı olan bu ileri gelenler, bana diyorlardı ki:
„Türklerin şimdiye kadar Osmanlılık adına çalışmakta gösterdikleri umursamazlık, Toskaların yalnız başlarına
bir şeyler yapmak hevesine kapılmalarına sebep oldu. Istibdat idaresinin tesiriyle sarsılan koca memleket, şu son
senelerde ecnebi devletlerin ve vatandaşları olan azınlıkların hırs ve tamahına hedef olduklarından büsbütün
ellerinden çıkmak- tehlikesiyle karşı karşıya geldi.”
“Akşam yemeğini güneş batmadan bir saat önce yiyerek 17 Temmuzda yola çıktık. Buğradiç'ten gelen idare
heyetiyle görüştükten sonra bundan böyle Istarova'da dolaşmaya, Çerçis ile beraberlik tesis etmek için kalmayı
uzatmaya lüzum olmadığı kararını vermiştik. Ittihat ve Terakki Manastır merkezinden aldığım emirde
bugünlerde iki mühim şahsiyetin Kışrani merkezi vasıtasıyla bana iltihak edeceği tebliğ edilmiş olduğundan o
istikamete doğru gitmek mecburiye-tindeydim.”
943 Mihal Grameno, op.cit. p. 224; (…) Ishte 10 korrik, ne Ohrid (…) ku u shpal nje Koshitite e lire ne Hyqumet.
“Nuk e di edhe as qe munda ta kuptoja shkakun e asaj ftohtesire, me te cilen u prit fermani Konshtutes, jo vetem
nga ana tone, po pergjitherish nga gjithe gjindja, e perbere nga hume kombe e fe. (…) Cercizi ngrihet edhe na
mbleth te gjithe ne valle duke kenduar kete kenge:
211
included all three vilayets of Macedonia. Aligned with this, Mihailo wrote that Cerciz was a
leader of our nation, a hope for Albania (u bë pishtari i Lirisë Kombëtare, u bë “Shpresa e
Shqypnisë). He also named him as a “dragon of the war” (dragua ne lufte).944 However, I
would rather argue that this cheta action was more focused only on the region of nowadays
south Albania known as Toskëri, than on purely “Albanian” territories of five vilayets. In
addition, Mihail Grameno admits that members of this band were “gathered as representatives
of Toskëria” (u mbloth paresia e Toskerise).945 Ahmet Niyazi Bey further describes Çerçiz as
“leader of band of the Toska Albanians” (Arnavutların Toska komitası başı Çercis).946 Many
members of this so-called “First Albanian Cheta,” were actually located only in the region of
the Toska population, inhabited, as we have seen, by other ethnical members and groups as
well. The nationalist meta-narrative tried to prove this çeta as a well-organised group, unified
by common causes and misrepresented in narrow ethnonational terms. Rather than thinking of
these groups’ activities as an inevitable nationalist, nevertheless, I highlight that there were
more complicated factors on the ground (at local level) in such events that require multiple
approach of possibilities at play.
Photograph 2.947
“Shqiperi, moj Shqiperi, Shqiperi pes Vilajete
Pse s’u perpoqe per vete, por per shume milete!”
944 Ibid. P. 38; Furthermore, Mihailo also registered the role of women in their activities, emphasising, “women
were part of our movement.” On one occasion he stated that he had absolute support from his mother who used
to say that she “married Mihailo to Albania” (kam dasme se Mihalin e martova me Shqiperine!).” in page 200.
See also: Mihailo Grameno, pp. 227-228 quote: “Shum here grate, delnin perpara qe qeronin udhen me pushkat
ne dore, kur shkonim neve nga shtepia. Ne shum gjendje kritike, kur nuk munt te vepronin burrat, e mbushnin
keto kete barre te rende burrerisht e ploterisht. Me nje fjale, ishin pjesetaret te levizjes sone.”
945 Ibid., p. 175
946 Niyazi Bey, op.cit. p. 230
947 Çete lideri Çerçiz Topulli ve Mihael Grameno, See:
http://ataturkkitapligi.ibb.gov.tr/ataturkkitapligi/index.php
212
One of the ways of demonstrating this is through an analysis of the members of the bands how
they wore clothes. Although some of its members insisted on nationalist indoctrination, one
can plausibly argue that we cannot identify larger population along generic “national” lines on
account of what is assumed to be ethnic-specific styles. A better way, suggested Isa Blumi, is
“to think about their ways of clothing is that they did not possess national clothes. Rather the
photographs indicate from which region, valley, and even extended family someone came.”948
On this photograph, we see that only one member is wearing the hat called plis, which
became a symbol of Albanian national identity. What is more, this photograph demonstrates
that the clothes of other cheta members corresponded more to the region of Epirus or to
regional Macedonian clothing (and not national). It would be a mistake to assume that they all
came from the same ethno-national background, because the photograph rather suggests that
the men originated from the same region that combined different ethnic and religious groups.
Thus, they could be Albanian-speaking Muslims or Christians, but also Greek-, Slavic-, or
Turkish-speaking locals. It is not possible to identify these men so definitively as Albanians,
since these men wore also distinct caps, suggesting that the only “Albanian” (first from the
right, lying down) is the person who is wearing the plis. As for the others, they were wearing
various caps, concluding that this group of people (cheta) was composed of men with a
number of possible cultural, social or religious affiliations ranging from Greek, Albanian or
Macedonian, but also Orthodox Christian to Muslim or Bektashi dervishes.949 This image thus
reveals that a complicated social and political dynamic was at play in the Ottoman
Macedonia. In this respect, these clothes could challange the idea that this cheta was only
affiliated with the nationalist indoctrination projects who wanted to fight for “Albanian
cause.” Also, from the examples given by Mihail Grameno, this cheta comprised Turkishand
Greek-speaking personalities along with Albanian ones. Furthermore, Ahmet Niyazi
defined the cheta within a regional rather than any other context, emphasising that it was
rather a Toskë band than a wholly “Albanian” project. Rather, its members mostly (but not
always) self-identified with the family, village, and region Toskëria, rather than with an
abstract concept of “nation” that for many (but not all) did not exist yet. Therefore, the
analysis of these events should be seen from local point of view, especially if we realise that
such dynamic was animated by local codes and not defined by ethnic difference.
948 Isa Blumi, Reinstating the Ottomans, p. 16
949 Ibid.; AQSH/Tirane, F.99D.18 f.1
213
According to Hannes Grandits, a basic differentiation between the peaceful and conflict times
(war, revolt, and organised violence) must be made, because during the conflict times, people
tended to be compelled by the warring parties to clearly “take sides.”950 In this context,
following the Young Turk Revolution, we can argue that the Albanian “political
entrepreneurs” and “specialists in violence” from the regions of Toskeria and Gegeria (the
northern parts) started to cooperate closely and their cooperation took a fairly “pan-Albanian”
dimension. In order to understand these processes, one should take a closer look at regional
and local dynamics. Namely, in July 1908, immediately after the Young Turk Revolution,
Enver Pasha, who became the hero of the revolution, held a speech in Thessaloniki and
finished it within the famous words: “Vive la Nation Ottomane!” (“Long live the Ottoman
Nation!”).951 As an outcome of the Revolution, the Young Turks or more specifically the
CUP, made some crucial changes in the mode of leading the government. After the attempted
counter-Revolution of 31 March 1909, CUP started to suppress all groups that were against
centralisation. In this regard, its main politicians brought many new laws such as regulation of
labour affairs, law on vagabonds and suspicious persons, law on public meetings, prohibition
of political parties established on a national basis, etc. These laws were adopted in order to
suppress any organised protests or activities of the committees and ethno-national
organisations that could open up questions of autonomy and decentralisations.952 Thus, the
CUP introduced a law on bands on 27 September 1909, and sanctioned every kind of armed
movement and sought help from the locals in order to catch the band leaders and punish them
with death. Those who did not collaborate with the state would also be punished as “helpers
and shelterers” (muin ve yatak) of the bands.953 This interference of the Ottoman state in the
local level and the centralisation attempt, for example, provoked revolts among the Albanians
in the south and the north. The breakdown of the legislative measures and a new campaign of
state violence opened up a new space for the Albanian revolts and new “terrorist” activities in
Macedonia. The government went even further to even greater lengths in disarming the
Albanian population. According to local custom, this action was understood as provocation
and disrespect towards their local tradition.954 Hence, the disarming process of early 1910 in
particular provoked a much more severe reaction, preparing the ground for an eventual
alliance between Albanian local notables and the countries of Montenegro and Serbia. Ismail
950 Hannes Grandits, Nathalie Clayer, Robert Pichler, op.cit., p. 6
951 Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, The Young Turk Policy in Macedonia, Cause of the Balkan Wars? In War and
Nationalism, ed. by M. Hakan Yavuz, Isa Blumi (Utah: University of Utah Press. 2013), p. 108.
952 Ibid.
953 Ibid., p. 117
954 Ibid.
214
Kemal Bey, an Albanian-speaking deputy in the Ottoman Parliament at that time, described
these actions of the CUP government as “criminal attacks” against the Albanians. 955
Furthermore, Cerciz Topulli, a supporter of the CUP and Niyazi Bey during the Revolution,
immediately changed his position and called upon Albanians “not to shed a single drop of
blood for the Turks anymore.” 956 With this purpose, on 29 May 1909 he founded in
Gjirokastër a secret society called Kandilja (The Candle).
A former member of the Albanian Committee for Liberation, Menduh Zavallani joined the
new secret organisation known as the Black Society for Salvation (Shoqëria e zezë për
shpëtim) and would soon be a member of its leadership. The society established in 1909 and
founded its branches throughout the Toskeria region in Korçë, Yannina, Gjirokastër, Vlorë,
Filat, Delvinë, Përmet, Elbasan, Tiranë, Ohër/Ohrid, Strugë/Struga, Dibër/Debar, but also
Gegeria in the Kosovo vilayet (Shkup/Skopje) and Shkodër. Its headquarters were situated in
Manastir and it used a seal with the letter "Q" to mean “centre” (Qendra). Initially, the
organisation was intended to be named The Black Hand (Dora e Zezë), in line with other
various secret societies of that time. The main task of the Black Hand was to organise
uprisings in Albania and Macedonia, both seen as Albanian territories. The aim was to
struggle for establishment of one single Ottoman Albanian vilayet consisted from Shkoder,
Kosovo, Manastir and Janina.957
One of its main contributors was Nikollë bey Ivanaj, a Geg Albanian from the territories of
Montenegro, who became a link between Tosk and Geg notables. He was born in Montenegro
and studied and worked in Trieste and Belgrade. There he was inspired by “Serb, Greek, and
Bulgarian gang revolutionary activities in Kosovo and Macedonia.”958 In the period between
1905 and 1908 he published the newspaper Shpnesa e Shqypnisë in Albanian, Croatian, and
Italian in Dubrovnik, Trieste, and Rome.959 The aim of the newspaper was to broadcast “a call
955 Ibid., p. 118; İsmail Kemal Bey, opcit., 367.
956 Ryan Gingeras, Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1922 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press. 2016), p. 67.
957 Nikolle Ivanaj, Historija e Shqipenies se re dhe vuejtjet e ve veprimet e mija (Tirane 1943/45), p. 4.
958 Nikolle Ivanaj, Historija e Shqipenies se re dhe vuejtjet e ve veprimet e mija (Tirane 1943/45), p. 7; Further:
per pregaditje trolli: pör clirimin e ktyne Dhenavet,si dhe bashkimin e tyne me Shtete; Tue pase qene inspirue
(aty ne Beligrad) me veprimet cetnore rivolucjonare te Serbve, Grekve dhe Bullgarve neper Kosove, Maqedoinii
etj
Ballkanas respektiv, une, qyqari unäi shpnesojshe dhe gadi besojshe,se ende populli Shqiptar ishte i gatshim,
qysht; atähetö, pör me i ba veprimet e flijet e veta, por pär at qellim, pör liriön e vet-urdhnimin e vet.
959 Ibid. p. 10; 5 Shtator 1905 botimi i gazetes Shpnesa e Shcypniis, ni her ne jav per 4 vjet ne Ragus, Triest dhe
Rom (gjithsehit 44 numra
215
to Albanian liberty and self- determination.”960 The most important stress was placed onto the
“liberation of our homeland, [as] otherwise there [would] not be peace in the Balkans.”961
Similarly to (the work of) Pashko Vasa and Sami Frasheri, Nikollë bey Ivanaj glorified
personalities like Alexander the Great and Scenderbeg Castrioti, who ruled the region and led
uprisings against the Ottomans. In this context, he had written that “it is time to restore our
ancient greatness (…) and to break the chains - to liberate our homeland.”962 The terms
“homeland” and “liberation” implied Macedonia as well, where he emphasised that “there is
no such thing as a Macedonian Question, we can talk only about an Albanian Question.”963
Only in this way, he assumed, can Article 23 from the Congress of Berlin, which guaranteed
autonomy for Macedonia964 (i.e. Albania), be fulfilled.965 Nevertheless, when he spoke of
autonomy, he assured that it should only be the first stage towards independence from the
Ottoman Empire.”966 For this achievement, he was aware that he needed to bring under
cooperation notables from Toskeria and Gegeria. Thus, he underlined that Albanian notables
should “put in efforts towards a general Albanian Uprising that [would] unite Northern
Albania (Gegeria) with Southern Albania (Toskeria).”967 In this respect, he was in contact
with Toska notables such as the borthers Topulli, Mihail Grameno and Themistokli
960 See a newspaaper: Shpnesa e Shcypeniis (translation: The Hope of Albania), 10 September, 1905, Ragusa, p.
1.; e sidha e ka te shkurten e te kjar programin, deshirin e te thirmjen: Lirimi e veturdhnimi i Shcypniis
961 Ibid.; te kepusim vargojt – te e lirojm Atedhen (…) te sidhat deri sa mos te na jepen – paqe ne Ballkan ska me
kjen.
962 Shpnesa e Shcypeniis, 10 September, 1905, Ragusa, p. 3.; Ne kete menyr edhe me marrue e poshtnue ata te
paart te medhejt te padekunit ton, sikurse: mretin Aleksandrin e Madh, baben e tij Filipin, Pirrin e Madh,
Kastriotin etj. (…) se koha ka ardh, per me na u kthye prap, ka pak e pak, miresija, madhnija e lumenija e
hershme (…) koha esht: te kepusim vargojt – te e lirojm Atedhen.!
963 Ibid. p. 2; bile, sadhte ne kete menyr kisht me u mmarue shcim shum e nnjemnna – bevetja e Shcypniis (e jo e
Makedonijes, se te saj te bevetme, vetmas ska.
964 Shpnesa e Shcypeniis, 1 July, 1906, Ragusa, p. 2; See the text: Zborovi po Albaniji na svim ce se zborovima
zatraziti pretres i privodjenje u djelo 23. Clanka berlinskog kongresa, koji glasi: ‘sve pokrajine evropske Turske
imati ce jednu polunezavisnu administraciju, s olaksicom I pravom da mogu imati po jednu opstu Narodnu
Skupstinu.
965 Shpnesa e Shcypeniis, 1 July, 1906, Ragusa, p. 2; See the text: Zborovi po Albaniji, takozvano makedonsko
pitanje (premda ono zasebno I ne postoji, nego – skupa – albansko), koje se kroz toliko vremena ne moze nikako
a nekmoli povoljno da rijesi, zadalo je veliku brigu nasem narodu… In this case he argues “da se nasemu
vilajetu dade ona Uprava, sto je Imperatorsko Upraviteljstvo obecalo 23. Cl. Berlinskog ugovora, i time se,
jednom za svagda, I kod nas pocne uvoditi toliko I davno zeljeni poredak, mir I blagostanje.”
966 Nikollë Ivanaj, op.cit. p. 11.; Shqiperia me kater vilayetet e saj, vetem si nje aleat i Turqis, cka, po te ishte
qene e mundun, perkohsisht, do tishte qen pun e mir dhe e levörtishme pär shqiptart ende per Turqien.
967 Nikolle Ivanaj, p. 39; see; Nga Kryetart Kryesor toe Kryengritjes Kosovare, lsa Boletini, Sulejman Batusha e
Has Feri, me 300 luftär Kryengrites erdhne ne Mal te Zi, ku ndejne deri noe Marcoe 1911, kurae plasi
kryengritja e Maleve Shkodroes, qae e kishe poergatite une ne kohen qe pata shkue ne Cetinje, ne muej te
Dhetorit, 1910, per t'u pjeke me Kryetart e Kryengritsve shqiptar e per t'e organizur Kryengritjen e pergjithshme
te Shqipnies se Siperme, si ende ate te Shqipnies se Jugut, qe mandej, nga Korfuzi, me Temistokle Germenjin e
shoket e pata organizue 'dhe qe plasi me 14 Qershuer 1911. Por, pike se pari, qe lidhe besa me e fillue
Kryengritjen vilajeti i Shkodrös e i Kosoves pärnjiher, per ne muej te Prillit, 1911.
216
Germenji,968 who organised uprisings in Toskeria during the spring in 1911. On the other
hand, Ivanaj went to Montenegro in 1911 to meet with Geg notables such as Isa Boletini,
Sylejman Batusha, and Hasan Ferri in order to organise uprisings in the Shkodra and Kosovo
vilayets in April 1911.969 One can infer that a cooperation between south and north Albanians
began only after the Young Turk Revolution and the CUP’s attempts at a centralisation
policy. During this period, new local actors such as Nikolle Ivanaj and Isa Boletini played
very important roles and transformed the dynamics on the ground. While Ivanaj connected
two Albanian regions and was in constant communication between the cheta leader
Themistokli Germenji and the Geg notables, Isa Boletini was the man of action between the
Kosovo notables and the states of Montenegro and Serbia. In cooperation with these states, he
staged several uprisings against the Ottoman army between 1909 and 1912, whereby
implementation of centralisation policies was attempted. The rebels started to control multiple
roads in the mountains and between cities, intercepted the communication of the army,
attacked official authorities, etc. This became the only method to fight against the
centralisation policy of the CUP.
In 1910 Isa Boletini moved to Montenegro and stayed until March 1911, where an uprising
was organised in Malesia in the Shkodra vilayet. 970 After his stay there, on 23 March 1911 Isa
Boletini wrote a proclamation to the Albanians in the south and the Albanians from the
Shkodra vilayet to join the Albanians from the Kosovo vilayet in their uprising.971 He was one
of the leading figures against the CUP policy regarding Ottoman Macedonia. Even the
Serbian diplomat J.J. Studic wrote to Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs regarding this
conflict, stating that “we should take care of them [the Albanians] as our neighbours in Old
Serbia. We should use this opportunity to keep them closer, because they are having a violent
conflict with the Young Turks and will never unite again.”972 Nevertheless, Boletini, together
968 During the year 1911 (në Pranverë), Menduh established a cheta from around 50 people who went from
Korca to a city of Permet. There he was joined by another cheta of Spiro Bellkameni and Qamil Panariti. They
were arrested by the Ottoman government, among whom were also Mihal Grameno and Themistokli Gërmenji.
About this event see: Mikel Zavalani, Studime Historike 2, (Tirane: Akademia e Shkencave e RPSSH, Instituti i
Historisë, 1983).
969 Nikolle Ivanaj, op.cit. pp. 18-19
970 Clayer, op.cit. p. 116.
971 Gazmend Shpuza, Shpërthimi I Kryengritjes Dhe Veprimet Luftarake (Mars – Fillimi I Qershorit 1911),
(Prishtine: Rilindja Kombëtare Shqiptare, 1984).
972 AC, MIDS, SPA, 1911, F-IV, D-6. P. 652; knjiga IV, sveska 3/1; See: moramo voditi racuna o njima
(arnautima), kao susedima naseg zivlja u Staroj Srbiji, onda nebi nikada trebalo propustiti prilike da ih za sebe
obvezemo, jer oni su sa Mladoturcima krvno zavadili I izmedju njih o Mladoturaka postoji takva provalija koja
nikada ne moze sajediniti Arnaute I Mladoturke. Posle onih proslogodisnjih terora I pustahiluka oni se samo
mogu krviti a nikako izmiriti. Treba samo cuti kako zucno I bolno traze Arnauti osvetu za pretprljene sramote
217
with Qerim Mahmutbegollaj from Peja, was even developing a business with Serbia and
Montenegro of smuggling and selling weapons in the Kosovo vilayet.973 During this period of
uprisings (1909-1912), Boletini’s little corner of the world became the centre of Balkan state
rivalries. He took advantage of these opportunities to promote the agenda that earned him a
significant spot in regional politics. For this purpose, he negotiated with King Nikola of
Montenegro, as well as with Serbian state representatives, whereby he hired arms and
(arranged recruitment of) Serbian and Montenegrin population for new uprisings. One report
(from the time) informed that “many Serbs [were] among the rebels” (dosta veliki broj Srba je
medju ustanicina), and “three Montenegrins joined them in Decan” (tri crnogorca u
Decanima). 974 By building his local power base, Boletini formed stronger commercial,
political, and human cross-border networks with Serbia and Montenegro. For this purpose, he
met with Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjevic (the future king) and Prime Minister Nikola Pasic
in Prokuplje and Kursumlija in 1912.975 In this regard, he reflected his established links not
only with fellow Gegë, but also with Serbian and Montenegrin state representatives and local
Slavs with whom he would do business. The Serbian consul to Prishtina, M. DJ. Milojevic
also stated that “Albanians [were] feeling that the Turkish Empire [was] falling apart and
therefore they wanted to develop friendships with the neighbouring states of Serbia and
Montenegro by protecting their fatherland against enemies.”976 As a final result, the local
Serbs joined Albanian notables in these uprisings, which were also supported by the Serbian
(organisations) National Defence and Black Hand, where Serbian and Albanian bands,
vojvoda Tankosic, and Isa Boletini fought jointly this time against the Ottomans.977
njihovih celjadi I njih samo ih I onda viditi, da se oni nikad nece smiriti I pokloniti rezimu, kojim upravljaju
njihovi “dusmani I otpadnici vere”.
973 Zekeria Cana, Qëndrimi i Serbisë ndaj kryengritjes së përgjithshme shqiptare të vitit 1912, Gjurmime
Albanologjike - Seria e shkencave historike 35, 2005,: P. 237; AIH, Ref.I,18.VIII.1912; Nr.81/sekret, Prizren,
13.VIII.1912.
974 DASIP, MIDS, PPO, 1912, F-VI, D red, 96/III, Serbian Consul to Pristina M.Dj. Milojevic to Minister of
Foreign Affairs Milovan Milovanovic 21.5.1912
975 AIH, D-50, Nr.inv.955, Ref.I, Nr.74,5.VIII.1912; Beograd, 3.VIII.1912.
976 Dr. M. Dj. Milojevic to Jovan Jovanovic (minister of Foreign Affairs), DASIP, MIDS, SPA, 23.VII.1912, F-5,
D-3. Knjiga V, sveska 1, p. 1008; Na sastanku u Ugljaru, (Bajram) Dakljan (arnautski prvak iz djakovicke
okoline) je izjavio g. (Ljubomiru) Nesicu da oni -Arnauti- osecaju kako se turska carevina postepeno rusi I tone I
da zele za vremena vezati prijateljstvo sa svojim susedima Srbijom I Crnom Gorom, te da zajednicki brane svoju
otadzbinu od stranih neprijatelja.
977 Zekeria Cana, op.cit.; DASIP, MIDS, PPO, 1912, F-VI, D red, 96/III, Serbian Consul to Pristina M.Dj.
Milojevic to Minister of Foreign Affairs Milovan Milovanovic 21.5.1912
218
3. CONCLUSION
In this chapter I covered the period between the Ilinden Uprising (1903) and the Young Turk
Revolution (1908) and I analysed the activities of various organisations and movements on
the ground (i.e. IMRO, the Chetnik, Kacaks), which cooperated with the local population or
often originated from the local regions of Ottoman Macedonia. Here I introduced a ‘bottomup’
perspective and argued that the situation on the ground was far more complex than
represented by nationalist promoters and the state elite, which have been defined by Charles
Tilly as “political entrepreneurs.” Next to this term, Tilly named political actors on the ground
“specialists in violence.” In this respect, those specialists showed that the organisations at
local level were not ‘purely’ national, but consisted of members with different religious and
ethnical backgrounds. This argument largely aimed to deconstruct state meta-narratives and
nationalist claims that were produced by nation-states during the ‘short’ 20th century. In the
previous chapter I already demonstrated that the governing elites worked to build “imagined
communities” based on “invented traditions,” which often failed on the ground. Thus, by
moving beyond the debates on nationalism and rather adopting the approach of subaltern
studies, I considered several local organisations and actors. In this chapter I highlighted that
there were not only projects and actions initiated by states and intellectuals, but also projects
and moves undertaken by the general population as well. I argued that one could not
understand the complete situation of the Macedonian Questions, if one were not to take into
account those local contexts. By deploying various local examples from Bulgarian,
Macedonian, Serbian, Ottoman Turkish, and Albanian sources, it is shown that various
reports, memoirs, and records from the archives deconstruct the nationalist projections made
by the states. Rather, the ‘bottom-up’ perspective helps to understand actors on the ground
who often cooperated. Without integrating this viewpoint in the research, we would not know
that “eternal enemies,” such as the parties to the Serbian-Albanian conflict today, and at that
time ‘Albanians’ and ‘Serbs,’ were much more likely to interact with each other and share
their daily life in the mahale. Next to them, ‘Bulgarians,’ ‘Macedonians,’ and ‘Greeks’
cooperated as well and often opposed the Balkan state policies from Sofia or Athens. Inside
their own communities there were often various projections and contested discussions, as
showed in the case of IMARO. I also demonstrated that the Chetnik organisation, as well as
the ‘Albanian’ Kachaks, were also diverse and were not purely ‘national’ as presented in their
national historiographies. Accordingly, in the Serbian-Albanian context, more specifically the
Kosovo vilayet, I showed how these relations were much more complex and one could find
219
Muslim Albanian-speaking members (e.g. Smajo Ferovic) in Serbian chetas in Ottoman
Macedonia. In this line [of argument], among the Albanian Kachaks one also traces Greek- or
Turkish-speaking individuals who did not have ‘Albanian origin.’
220
4. ENTANGLED TRAJECTORIES: FROM THE MACEDONIAN REFORMS TO
THE BALKAN WARS
In the fin de siècle, the political situation in the Ottoman Empire was a complicated
“chessboard” where every Great Power together with the regional Balkan states took part in
the game. As we have already seen, Ottoman Macedonia had become one of the active
“chessboards” for political activism. On the one hand, Imperial Russia tried to have strong
ties with its South-Slavic “brothers,” especially by supporting Bulgarian nationalist attempts
to Ottoman Macedonia. Serbian nationalist politicians assumed that their fate would have
been sealed and hemmed in if parts of Ottoman Macedonia had been annexed to Bulgaria.
The Greek government, together with some Serbian politicians, introduced various nationalist
politics against the Bulgarian developments in the three vilayets (Kosovo, Salonika, and
Manastir). Making matters even more complicated various movements were developed
among the local population in Macedonia that did not support any of those states’ projects.
The movements on the ground reflected a different imagination of what Macedonia was and
what it should be. On the other hand, the government of Austro-Hungary carried out an active
policy among the Albanian intellectuals and population in order to win their trust and
friendship. Countering their attempts, one part of the Albanian population supported the
Ottoman government, especially Sultan Abdulhamid II, who developed a special policy
towards the Albanians and behaved as their father (figure) (baba). The other part of the
Albanian population – who mostly belonged to intellectual circles – supported the Ottoman
presence in Rumelia, but were against Hamidian policy. These intellectuals accepted their role
of collaborators with the Young Turks and even became a pivotal and active influence in this
movement.
In this regard, this chapter aims to show the complex ways in which societies in Macedonia
were transformed from different regional centres (Istanbul, Athena, Sofia, Belgrade, Cetinje,
Vienna, St. Petersburg, etc.) into a struggle over Macedonia. In order to understand both the
internal and external dynamics of this process, I will focus on the interplay between Great-
Power politics, regional states’ influences, Ottoman state reforms, and social dynamics on the
ground. In this case, I will consider how the Hamidian regime responded to the pressure of the
Great Powers and how this in turn impacted the Macedonian Questions; as well as how
several Ottoman intellectuals that established the Young Turk Movement understood the
221
Eastern Question and Macedonian situation. Firstly, I will highlight how the Ottoman
intellectuals’ vision influenced the Ottoman state and adopted a Western-style education in
order to counter pressures from the ‘West,’ and thereby safeguard the Empire’s future in the
three vilayets. Secondly, I will try to answer the question: what was the Ottoman intellectuals’
impact on the society in Macedonia? What were the outputs and social dynamics on the
ground? I am especially interested in the entanglements observable in the Ottoman
administration, but also between Young Turks and Albanian population in Macedonia. What
was the response of the Albanian intellectuals and population living in the rural areas? I will
also highlight the role played by the ‘Ottoman periphery’ (i.e. Macedonia) in shaping state
policies. What was the contribution of the peripheral actors in the central government and
how did they influence Ottoman politics? As an outcome of the main questions, I will further
develop a subset of questions that can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of
Macedonian imaginaries, especially through the examples that mirror complexities on the
ground.
4.1. HAMIDIAN REFORMS IN OTTOMAN MACEDONIA: CENTER IN THE
PERIPHERY – PERIPHERY IN THE CENTER
As has already been stated, the Great Powers, the regional states, and in part the local
population expressed discontent with the Hamidian policy in Ottoman Rumelia, guaranteed
by the Congress of Berlin (1878). To this end, the Inspectorate was established with an
imperial order, as an outcome of “The Regulations regarding the Rumelian Provinces”
(Rumeli Umumi Müfettisligi), issued on November 30, 1902. The main purpose of this
regulation was to satisfy the Great Powers’ demands for reforms in Ottoman Macedonia on
the grounds of Article 23 of the Berlin Treaty (1878). Hence, the Great Powers’ intervention
and the Ottoman establishment of the Inspectorate further changed the situation on the
ground. These bureaucratic and administrative reforms transformed the Macedonian society.
However, it is worth noting these reforms were also the results of social changes. Both the
state and society were closely interconnected and influenced each other.
The administrative board of Rumeli Umumi Müfettisligi978 was stationed in Salonica and
constantly conducted inspection tours. At the outset, its collocutor was the “Commission of
Rumelian Provinces” at the Sublime Porte, which was presided by Avlonyalı Mehmet Ferid
978 The General Inspectorate of Rumelia was an Ottoman Institution founded in order to regulate Ottoman
Macedonia and its conflicts. As a General Inspector was appointed Hussein Hilmi Pasha, who had an
administrative task to suppress bands and bring order to the provinces.
222
Pasha, who became Grand Vizier in January 1903. He was a descendant of Tepedelenli Ali,
and his family later moved to Vlora (Avlonya), where he personally became a mobile actor of
change, circulating throughout various provinces. Since many Albanians in Ottoman
Macedonia were dissatisfied with the reforms introduced, as an Albanian, Ferid Pasha played
an important role among the local Albanian population in the three vilayets. In this regard, in
order to introduce reforms in the Ottoman periphery (i.e. Macedonia), Sultan Abdulhamid II
also appointed a peripheral mobile actor in Istanbul to the position of Grand Vizier. Avlonyali
Mehmet Ferid Pasha belongs to the group of personages who played crucial roles in the
enforcement of the ‘centre-periphery’ relations. Having served in many corners of the
Ottoman Empire (Crete, Herzegovina, Bulgaria, and Konya) and in the centre (Istanbul), he
understood the necessities of both the Empire and the local populations in the provinces.
Brought to Istanbul in 1902, he was supported by German Ambassador Freiherr von
Marschall, who counted on his abilities to calm down the Macedonian situation. He declared
that “the energetic personality of Ferid Pasha [had] an upright stance against those above him
and who, as a native Albanian, could allow himself things that would be dangerous if done by
others.”979
However, he took the position of Grand Vizier in difficult times when armed conflicts
between nationalist bands were occurring and gangs were contesting to influence the
Macedonian population and recruit them for the “national purpose.” In May 1903 a terror(ist)
attack in Salonica was mounted by an anarchist group known as Gemici.980 In August of the
same year, the Ilinden Uprsing broke out and in October the Dual Monarchy and Imperial
Russia introduced the Mürzteg scheme. The Great Powers implemented reforms and divided
Ottoman Macedonia into districts based on ethnic affiliations. This decision further intensified
the rise of armed conflicts between religious and ethnic groups. Furthermore, a reorganisation
of the Macedonian gendarmerie that was supposed to include the Christian population and the
introduction of an international committee gave rise to additional violence organised in few
regions (prevalently in Kosovo vilayeti) by one part of the Albanian population who refused
to accept such decisions. The conflict escalated when Imperial Russia decided to open a
Consulate in Mitrovica (Kosovo vilayeti). In March 1903, thousands of armed Albanians
979 Abdulhamit Kirmizi, Experiencing the Ottoman Empire as a Life Course: Ferid Pasha, Governor and
Grandvizier (1851-1914), 2014, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 40, p. 47; “die energische Persönlichkeit Ferid
Paschas, der nach oben hin einen sehr steifen Rücken hat und sich als Albanese Dinge erlauben kann, die für
andere gefährlich wären.” Marschall an das Auswärtige Amt, Pera, den 3. Dezember 1902, Nr. 422, in: Die
Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette 1871–1914. Sammlung der Diplomatischen Akten des Auswärtigen
Amtes, ed. by Johannes Lepsius et al. vol. 18, (Berlin: 1924), p. 5484.
980 See chapter 3.
223
entered Mitrovica to attack the Russian Consul, Gregory Stepanovich Shcherbin,981 clashing
with the Ottoman army. During this month, an Ottoman soldier of Albanian origin shot the
Russian Consul, who succumbed to his injuries ten days later. A few months later, on 8
August 1903, another Albanian Ottoman soldier assassinated Aleksandar Arkadievich
Rostkovski, the Russian Consul in Manastir vilayet of Ottoman Macedonia.982 An Albanian
protester wounded another Russian Consul in Skopje named M. Machkoff. The active role of
Russia in the three vilayets was perceived by many Albanians as a potential Russian invasion
of the Ottoman Empire and a Pan-Slavic victory over Albanian territories.983 In order to calm
down the Albanian population and to mollify their discontent, Sultan Abdulhamid II, who had
adopted the role of their father (baba) appointed several Albanians to high positions of power
in Istanbul and in the Ottoman provinces.
This gave an opportunity to the peripheral mobile actors to gain more power and reinforce the
central government, or to work in the periphery on behalf of the centre. Thus, Bajram Curri
was appointed captain in Pristina’s gendarmerie; Semsi Pasha - commander of the 18th
Division in Mitrovica; Yakovali Riza Bey –major of Halepo; Isa Boletini held rank in the
palace guard (tufekci), while numerous other Malisors gained entry into the Sultan’s palace
guard; while Ferid Pasha became particularly notable as Grand Vizier. Sultan Abdulhamid II
addressed him with the words: “You are a native of Avlonya. Moreover, you are an Albanian.
Let not the good things that I feel about you be erased. Our sultanate and the state have seen
good things from the Albanian people.”984 Even during his governorship in Konya, Ferid
981 Gregory Stepanovich Shcherbina was an Russian consul in the Kosovska Mitrovica, appointed in March 1903.
He was sent to Kosovska Mitrovica in order to collect information about the Serbian population in Kosovo
vilayet. This initiative made by Imperial Russia, the local Muslim population, mainly Albanians, disliked the
new Consul who was attacked by the locals. Few days after, in March 1903 Shcherbina died of his wounds, after
an Albanian had shot him at point blank range in the southern part of Kosovska Mitrovica. Before dying
Shcherbina ascended into immortality when he replied to Serbian requests to stay safe: "You, Serbs, are not so
lucky to see me die. My death would bring you freedom.” The Serbs of Kosovo and Metochia received the death
of Shcherbina as their national tragedy. See: Z. M. Elezovich, A. M. Mumovich, D. M. Elezovich, Grigorii
Stepanovich Sherbina (1868–1903), v Kulture Kosovskih Serbov, Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo
universitetaa, No 420 2017. pp. 141–145; About the Russian involvement into the Balkans see: Pavel N.
Miliukov, Vospominaniia, 1859‑1917 (New York: Izdatelstvo im Chekhova, 1955). About the life of Miliukov
see: Thomas M. Bohn, Russische Geschichtswissenschaft von 1880 bis 1905: Pavel N. Miljukov und die
Moskauer Schule (Weimar/Köln/Wien: Böhlau Verlag: Beiträge zur Geschichte Osteuropas, Band 25, 1998).
982 Consul Rostkovskii started his career in the Middle East region (Jerusalem and Beirut). During his stay here,
he met and married a Bosnian woman, found in the documents as ‘Princess’ Maria Dabitsa.
From 1884-85 he served as first secretary to the Russian embassy in Sofia. In 1893 he became vice-consul in
Brindisi from whence he was transferred to Bitola in 1895. In 1899 he moved to Skopje, only to return to Bitola
as consul in 1901. See: Hasip Saygılı, 1903 Makedonya’sında Reformlara Tepkiler: Manastır Rus Konsolosu
Aleksandır Rostkovski’nin Katli, Karadeniz Araştırmaları, No 39, 2013, pp. 69-94
983 Hasip Saygılı. Rumeli Müfettişliği Döneminde (1902-1908) Makedonya’da Yunan Komitecileri ve Osmanlı
Devleti, Güvenlik Stratejileri Dergisi 21, pp. 147-183.
984Geore Gawrych. Op.cit., New York, I.B.Tauris, 2006, p. 132
224
Pasha stated his fear of a revolution for an autonomous Macedonia staged by the Bulgarians
and other Slav nations with Russian support. In his view, the only “instrument that could be
counted on for the conservation of the Sultan’s rights in the Balkans was the Albanian
nation.”985 However, this should not be considered an “Albanian nationalist program,” but
rather activism of one peripheral population for the purpose of the penetration and
centralisation of the state. With the aim of strengthening the Albanian element in the central
government, the Grand Vizier favoured two other Albanian speaking Ottomans named Tefik
Pasha, who was a Minister of Foreign Affairs; and Turhan Pasha, appointed as the Minister of
Religious Estates. Grand Vizier seemed to have shared a common cause with those Albanian
speaking Ottomans, especially regarding the future of Ottoman Macedonia, considered by
many Albanian intellectuals and bureaucrats as a territory that belonged to the Albanians.986
Those mobile peripheral actors who worked for the centre were supported by the Hamidian
regime as an advantage granted to ameliorate the Albanians’ exasperations against the
egalitarian reforms in a peaceful way. By reaching this decision to appoint Ferid Pasha Grand
Vizier in a time of Albanian uprisings against the Macedonian reform schemes, the Sultan
certainly thought that he could take advantage of his Albanian ethnic origin.987 Contrary to
this, certain media in Europe circulated that many Albanian officers and bureaucrats were
actually sympathetic towards the Young Turk Movement, opposing Hamidian rule. Therefore,
Ferid Pasha was also subject to the suspicion of being complicit with the Young Turks and
Albanian revolters.988 On one occasion, the German ambassador Kiderlen wrote that “Ferid
Pasha encouraged the Albanian movement (dass Ferid Pascha die Albanische Bewegung
begünstige).” 989 Another report stated that “as a native Albanian, he was particularly
susceptible to the suspicion of sympathising with the Albanian movement. There was even a
rumour in the public that Ferid himself was the leader of this movement.”990 His brother
Avlonyali Süreyya bey noted in his memoirs that Ferid Pasha participated in several meetings
of the oppositional committees in Istanbul, and was once assigned to negotiate with two
985 BOA, Y.PRK.S¸D 2/44, 1315 N 29, 21.2.1898.
See: Abdulhamit Kirmizi, op.cit., 2014, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 40, p. 58
986 BOA, HR.SYS. Dosya 1858, Gömlek 5, Tarih 28.07.1908.
987 Abdulhamit Kirmizi, op.cit., 2014, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 40, p. 59
988 Macedonia. The Grand Vizier’s Dismissal, in: The Times, 24.7.1908, p. 7. See: Abdulhamit Kirmizi,
Experiencing the Ottoman Empire as a Life Course: Ferid Pasha, Governor and Grandvizier (1851-1914), 2014,
Geschichte und Gesellschaft 40, p. 61; Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, op.cit. 2003, p. 190.
989 PA-AA, IA Türkei 159/2, Kiderlen to von Bülow, 22.7.1908.
990 Ibid., Kiderlen to von Bülow, 2.8.1908.; “besonders wurde er als geborener Albanese verdächtigt, mit der
albanischen Bewegung zu sympathisieren, ja es wurde ganz offen das Gerücht kolportiert, dass Ferid direkt der
Leiter dieser Bewegung sei.”
225
ambassadors about the conditions of the Ottoman Empire.991 However, after the aggressive
policies of the CUP against the Albanian population in the post-Hamidian period, he gave to
the Albanian intelligentsia solely moral support without participating actively in the (task of)
building of the Albanian nation-state.992 Hence, there is no doubt that he played an important
role in the Ottoman administration and put in efforts to bring and draw the ‘Ottoman
peripheries’ closer to its ‘centre,’ yet he also supported the periphery when the centre applied
coercive policies.
In order to resolve the situation in the three vilayets, Huseyin Hilmi Pasha was appointed
general Inspector of Rumelia (Vilayat-ı Selase Umum Müfettisligi) in parallel with Ferid
Pasha. In tandem they were the most successful governors of the time, appointed to inquire
the general situation of the Rumelian provinces and the administration of improvements. As a
result of their activities, the three provinces of Salonica, Manastir, and Kosovo were
(officially) addressed in the documents as vilayet-i selase, and were under the direct
supervision of general inspector (müfettis-i umumi) Huseyin Hilmi Pasha for six years from
December 1902.993 His position was directly connected to the administration of Ferid Pasha.
As the two highest representatives of the Hamidian Regime in Rumelia, the Grand Vizier and
General Inspector were instrumental in promoting peace and justice in the region.
The British journalist H. Brailsford describes Inspector General, Hussein Hilmi Pasha as “the
pivot of the new plan (…) who was supposed to be ‘controlled,’ wherever he might happen to
be, by the local Austrian and Russian consuls. Hilmi Pasha is certainly a man of rather
exceptional ability, with much more culture than is common among Ottoman officials. He has
read a little, and speaks French well. (…) His manner is grave, courteous, and distinguished.
He suggests the Arab rather than the Turk. One's first impression is that he is profoundly
sincere and completely honest. His optimism is contagious, and one experiences in his
presence that rarest of all emotions in the East — a thrill of hope.”994
In the then daily newspaper of the time, Asir, the prominent Young Turk Fazli Necip
described his encounter with Huseyin Hilmi Pasha as follows: “[O]ne day we received the
991 Sureyya Bey Avlonyalı, Osmanlı Sonrası Arnavutluk, (Istanbul: Klasik Yayinlari, 2018), p. 354; “cemiyet-i
fâsidenin muhaliflerinden olan birader-i büzürgvârim Ferid Pasa merhum, cümlemizin re’y ü karariyla
süferâdan iki zatin mütalaasini istifsâr etmek üzere tavsît edilmis ve lede’l-icab hukuk-i mengubemizin istirdadi
ve bir idare-i muvakkate teskili takdirinde müzaheretleri sureti temin edilmek istenilmistir.”
992 Abdulhamit Kirmizi, op.cit., 2014, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 40, p. 66
993 Huseyin Hilmi Pasa Evraki Katalogu, ISAM, Yayin No. 337, Turkiye Diyanet Vakfi, 2006, p. 17; Dosya Nr.
1. 1.05.1319
994 H. Brailsford, op.cit.
226
news of Huseyin Hilmi Pasha’s appointment as Inspector General of the Rumelian Provinces.
We asked each other, ‘Who is this Huseyin Pasha?’ He was not a famed dignitary. He had
never been to Rumelia. People talked about it everywhere for days in order to comprehend the
characteristics of this inspector who was to rule the great territory of Rumelia as a semiautonomous
prince.”995
This “man of exceptional ability” (Brailsford) and “semi-autonomous prince” (Fazli Necip)
served in the Empire’s eastern regions in Adana, Ottoman Syria, and Yemen. Due to his skills
in crisis management in Yemen, where he showed diplomatic adeptness at balancing between
local communities and foreign powers that interfered in Ottoman internal affairs, Sultan
Abdulhamid II decided to appoint him in Rumelia as well. He was without doubt a prominent
Hamidian statesman who often shined a spotlight on the extent of Sultan Abdulhamid II’s
investments in centralisation policies.996 However, when the situation in Ottoman Macedonia
was no longer manageable due to armed conflicts between nationalist bands,997 he sided with
the Young Turk Movement. It appears that he supported the Second Constitutional Period and
later was appointed Grand Vizier by the CUP. According to British sources, Hilmi Pasha was
one of the most active members of CUP and that he was, indeed aware of the secret activities
of Young Turk Movement and their political ideology.998 Two days prior to the grant of
constitution, on 21 July 1908, the Rumelia Inspector reported that large-scale rebellions were
in the making in Salonica, Manastir, and Uskup, the capitals of the three Macedonian
provinces (vilayeti selase), and increasing numbers of officers, soldiers, and gendarmes were
leaving their posts to join the committee that would lead to the Young Turk Revolution.
995 Sena Hatip Dincyurek, Reading a bureaucratic career backwards: how did Huseyin Hilmi Pasha become the
Inspector-General of Rumelia?, in Middle Eastern Studies, 2017; “iste bu sırada bir gun Rumeli Vilayetleri
Umumi Mufettisligine Huseyin Hilmi Pasanın tayin olundugunu haber aldık. “Bu Huseyin Pasa kim?”
birbirimizden soruyorduk. Kendisi meshur ricalden degildi. Rumeli’de hic bulunmamıstı. Simdi koskoca
Rumeli’yi bir nevi prens gibi yarı istiklal ile idare edecek olan bu mufettis ̧ in hali- nin hususiyetini anlamak icin
her yerde gunlerce bundan bahsedildi.”; See also: Cigdem Onal Emiroglu and Kudret Emiroglu, Osmanlı
Terakki ve İttihat Cemiyeti: Paris Merkezi Yazışmaları Kopya Defterleri (1906-1908), (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi
Yurt Yayinlari, 2017); Süleyman Kani Irtem, Osmanli Devleti'nin Makedonya Meselesi (Istanbul: Temel
Yayinlari, 1998); Fazlı Necip, Makedonya’da son gunlerimiz ve Umumi Mufettis ̧ Huseyin Hilmi Pasa, Yakın
Tarihimiz, Vol. IV (Istanbul: Turk Petrol, 1962), p. 362.
VOL. 53, NO. 3, 386–405
996 Ibid., p. 399
997 See Christopher Psilos, The Young Turk Revolution and the Macedonian Question (1908-1912), PhD Thesis,
(The University of Leeds: Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, 2000), p. 33. “From 1907 onwards, the
Macedonian Inspector-General began to mount surveillance around the Greek Macedonian consular institutions
and the Patriarchist Metropolitan sees. He also began to direct Albanian and Vlach bands against the Greek
partisans. Before the end of 1907, Hussein Hilmi Pasha successfully insisted on removing from Salonica and
Kavala the militant Greek diplomats Koromilas and Mavroudis.” In the documents See; I.A.Y.E.l1908IFile
39.3/Grand Vizierate to General Administration of Salonica/13/26-5- 1908I Ferid Pasha to vali of Salonica,
I.A.Y.E.l1908IFile 39.3/Constantinople Legationl41l7-6- 1908/no.512/Gryparis to Skouzes,
998 Ibid. British Parliamentary Papers. Accounts and Papers, P.P.A.P. CV 1909, p. 1007
227
According to Mithat Sukru Bleda, “if general inspector Huseyin Hilmi Pasha wanted to
suppress members of the CUP, he could do so. But with his clever mind and understanding of
the situation, he seemed to be balancing between the palace and members of the CUP.”999
It is worth noting that many Albanian intellectuals, bureaucrats, solders, and locals in the
Kosovo vilayet were instrumental in bringing the Young Turks to power. This can also be
analysed through a post-colonial lens and centre-periphery relations. Namely, not only did the
Ottoman bureaucracy and imperial policy influence the peripheries, but it also impacted the
lives of its local agitators (i.e. Albanians), shaping the core values of both the Ottoman
peripheries and Istanbul. In this regard, the outbreak of the events in the Ottoman peripheries,
that is in the three vilayets, such as the rebellion in Resne led by Ahmed Niyazi, known as a
“hero of freedom” (hürriyet kahramani); the gathering of thousands of Albanians at the
meeting in Firzovik; and the support given to the Young Turks by the Ottoman Third Army
based in Salonika show the importance of the periphery in its influence on the centre.
These events represent striking examples of the agencies of peripheral actors who triggered
the Revolution from the Ottoman provinces. To borrow Chakrabarty’s famous term
“provincializing,”1000 I hold that these events in 1908 should be interpreted as “provincializing
Istanbul.” Actually, provincialisation implies understandings of state-society relations and
how they further “play out on and among different scales such as the local, national, regional,
or international.“ 1001 In this regard we need to theorise the complex interplay between
different layers and link them to a deeper reflection of the “local.” In order to bring
perspectives from below or to analyse “the governance beyond the center’’ then, I will further
keep deploying examples from the perspectives of the local actors and Ottoman peripheries.
This enables me to imbue the analysis of core-periphery relations ”with a better understanding
of the role of agency, resistance, and multi-scalar power struggles, which link the many
different cores with the quite variegated peripheries. ”1002
999 Mithat Sukru Bleda, p. 51; “umumi Müfetti Hüseyin Hilmi Paa istemis olsaydı Ittihat ve Terakki elemanlarına
kötülük edebilirdi. Fakat zeki ve anlayıslı bir kimse oldugundan persembenin gelisini çarsambadan anlamı ve
davranıslarını ona göre ayarlamıstı. Bir yandan sarayın nabzını elinde tutarak, öteki yandan Ittihat ve Terakki
yöneticilerine güler yüz göstererek iki tarafı da mükemmelen idare etmisti.”; See also: - Süleyman Kani Irtem,
Osmanli Devleti'nin Makedonya Meselesi (Istanbul: Temel Yayinlari, 1998); Tahsin Uzer, Makedonya Eşkiyalık
Tarihi ve Son Osmanlı Yönetimi (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 1999); Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, op.cit. 2003, p. 72.
1000 Chakrabarty, op.cit.
1001 See: https://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/en/polwiss/forschung/international/vordererorient/
publikation/charders/aufsaetze_2015/Harders-2015-Provincializing-and-Localizing-Core-Periphery-
Relations.pdf (Accessed: 18.01.2020.)
1002 Ibid.
228
4.2. THE YOUNG TURKS AND ALBANIAN INTELIGENTSIA IN OTTOMAN
MACEDONIA
The Young Turk Movement arose after that of the Young Ottomans (Yeni Osmanlilar) in the
second half of the 19th century. It became a rallying point for diverse oppositional groups and
devised alternative political trajectories against Abduulhamid II’s oppressive rule, especially
through their use of the printing press and their call to restore the constitution. The
institutional kernel of the Movement was a secret organisation named the Ottoman Union and
later Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). To gain a deeper understanding of the diverse
legacy of this movement in the Ottoman Empire, one must take a closer look at the ethnic
diversity of its members. This Committee was constituted of members of different
backgrounds: Ibrahim Temo was an Albanian from Struga; Abdullah Cevdet had Kurdish
origin; Mehmet Reshid hailed from a Circassian family born in the Russian Empire; Ahmed
Riza was born into a Turkish family from Istanbul.1003 As is evident, three members were
born in the Ottoman peripheries and just one belonged to an Istanbulite family. In aspiring to
grow in diversity and include backgrounds other than the Muslim background of the Young
Turks, the organisation included non-Muslim Ottoman subjects as well, like Orthodox
Christians from Ottoman Macedonia (Nicolae Constantin Batzaria effendi) and Jews from
Salonika (Emmanuel Karasu, Albert Fua, and Avram Galanti) and a Catholic Arab (Khalid
Ghanem Effendi).1004 Hence, the Young Turks established contacts with like-minded critics of
Abdulhamid’s rule that included intellectuals and officials of the Ottoman empire, primary
influenced by European political ideas. 1005 These itinerant Ottomans comprised diverse
personalities from Istanbul to the Ottoman provinces1006 and their activities spread between
Istanbul and cities far afield such as Cairo, Alexandria, Thessaloniki, Manastir (Bitola), or
Geneva and Paris.1007 By taking this trans-regional approach, my research moves beyond
reductive national-historical and Eurocentric perspectives, while on the other hand it aims to
give a voice to less researched communities who established entanglements and transfers of a
1003 Serif Mardin, op.cit. 2000.
1004 On the Young Turks and their politics, see: Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism,
and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire (1908-1918) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Feroz
Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics (1908-1914) (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2010).
1005 Bedross Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman
Empire, (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2014)
1006 Isa Blumi, op.cit. 2011
1007 Isa Blumi, op. cit. 2013
229
multidirectional character.1008 Examples of such “voices” are inter-personal conversations of
the Young Turks and Ottoman Albanian intellectuals – with each other as well as the local
population – that can be “heard” through their memoirs and diaries, personal letters and
essays, and newspapers and journals. Such conversations were possible due to their still
“hybrid identities.”1009 Neither in the Albanian community, nor in the Young Turk Movement
was there a “homogenous national society.” Furthermore, Isa Blumi suggests that Ottoman
Albanians (and other Balkan nations) did not have a quintessential “fixed identity” prior to the
traumatic Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913; and he warns about a teleological emphasis on
migrants’ national belonging.1010 On top of this, Isa Blumi, Selim Deringil, Ussama Makdisi,
and others underline (the existence of) possibilities rather than restrictions of identities during
the late Ottoman Empire. In this regard, one may argue that identities among the Young Turk
and Albanian communities were in a state of evolution, which can be traced in archival
documents and autobiographical writings, as well as in their political programmes and
activism that challenged the state’s attempts to impose homogenised policies. Thus, by
focusing on the social and intellectual conversations of these mobile actors, this project firstly
aims to return agency where it belongs. In this way, the project distances itself from
imperialist and nationalist-essentialist historiographies that seek to create narratives based on
Western knowledge without hearing local and trans-regional stories of entangled histories. In
sum, then, this study wants to contribute to the provincialisation of Europe and to bring in
questions from the ‘peripheral’ stories, 1011 by elaborating examples of their multiple
trajectories.1012
Within this context, various examples from within the Young Turk and Albanian movements
pose a number of questions such as: what triggered these personalities to cooperate or clash?
In other words, what were the “push” and “pull” factors motivating their communication? Did
the Young Turks and Albanians have the same reasons for Ottoman Macedonia? How did
these mobile actors communicate and build networks in the trans-Ottoman space? What were
their points of view regarding Sultan Abdulhamid II’s autocracy and the Macedonian
Question that became more burning since 1878? How much was their cooperation or were
their clashes influenced by events in the Ottoman Balkans (i.e. the Macedonian Question)?
1008 Binebai op. cit. 2015, Spivak op. cit. 1988, Blumi op. cit.2017
1009 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (London/New York: Routledge, 1994)
1010 Isa Blumi, op.cit. 2017, p. 115
1011 Chakrabarty op. cit.2000
1012 Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernen im Zeitalter der Globalisierung, Die Vielfalt und Einheit der
Moderne, Die Vielfalt und Einheit der Moderne, 2006, pp 37-62.
230
Did Albanian community members perceive themselves as Ottomans and did the Young
Turks include Albanians into their Ottomanism projects, and vice versa? Can we find actors
who were active in both communities? What was their point of view and what did they write?
How were categories of knowledge combined and how did they interact? In other words, how
did thought translate into practice, words into action?
In order to answer these questions, the project attempts to set these cases in a broader context,
acknowledging the relevance of knowledge circulations, interpersonal networks, and
connections that shaped the lives and actions of mobile actors in Ottoman Macedonia. Hence,
it will take into consideration the transfer of knowledge from Pan-Islamist and Pan-Turkist
circles, anarchist and nationalist ideas that influenced both the Young Turk and Albanian
communities in Ottoman Macedonia and their communication in daily life. Thus, an Ottoman
trans-imperial history has the potential to contribute to the booming field of global history,
going beyond hierarchical Euro-Centric points of view by trying rather to explain the history
from an angle of interconnectedness. Here I concentrate on several events transpiring at the
turn of the century, more specifically during the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. In relation
to these events, I will also investigate the following questions: how are global waves (such as
modernisation and ideologies) established on the ground, and how do various actors link their
local upheavals to global waves ideologically and practically?1013 How was the periphery (i.e.
Ottoman Macedonia) influenced by the centre , and how did the peripheral actors (i.e. Young
Turks) have agency to influence the centre and profound changes in state politics?
4.2.1. THE YOUNG TURKS AND NETWORKS IN EUROPE: FROM IDEOLOGY TO
POLITICAL MOVEMENT
In this subchapter I will focus in part on the development of the Young Turk movement as an
opposition that emerged against the Hamidian regime in the period between 1902 and 1908,
with a particular focus on networks among various personalities and communities in the
Macedonian context.
Although the Young Turk Movement can be traced back to 1889,1014 its real political activity
started in the period between 1902 and 1908. In this regard, Kazim Karabekir pointed out that
the “first period of the foundation of the CUP happened in Istanbul in 1889, when the
1013 Nader Sohrabi, Global Waves, Local Actors: What the Young Turks Knew about Other Revolutions and Why
It Mattered, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), p. 46.
1014 BOA, BEO, Dosya 3919, Gomlek 293860, Tarih: 25. B. 1329, p. 3
231
organisation was in the hands of the ranks of students of medicine who still had not expanded
to the Ottoman army.”1015 According to him, “its second period could be traced back to 1906,
only this time far away from Istanbul, in Macedonia, among the civil population and
army.”1016
Kazim Karabekir was born in Istanbul (1882) and since 1906 served as a junior officer in the
Third Army in the region around Bitola/Manastir (Ottoman Macedonia). In a joint effort with
Enver Pasha he established a regional office of the CUP in Manastir. He acted (politically) on
behalf of the Young Turk Movement.1017 Personally, as reflected in his memoirs, he could not
imagine the Ottoman Empire without Macedonia.1018 In his imagination, he feared that “the
fire over Macedonia could burn the whole motherland.”1019
How, then, was it possible that one periphery could “burn the whole motherland”? What was
the reason for the vital importance of Macedonia for the Ottoman Empire? Jan Zucher
comments that “a group of people from the periphery” influenced “the course of events in
these last years of empire” and “the direction of Ottoman and Turkish politics after the
war.”1020 Moreover, according to Sukru Hanioglu, the events in Macedonia and the Young
Turk Revolution “made a profound impact on the shaping of the modern Middle East and the
Balkans.”1021 In order to find out the importance of Ottoman Macedonia for Turkish, Balkan,
and Middle Eastern politics, I will trace back its activities and elucidate their inner networks.
No organisation could be influential without solid networks that provided infrastructural
power.
1015 Kazim Karabekir, op.cit. p 19; “İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeri kuruluşu bakımından iki devreye ayrılır. Birinci
devre kuruluşuna 1889 (1305) tarihinde İstanbul'da henüz olgunlaşmayan bir muhitte ve yine henüz
olgunlaşmayan beş tıbbiye talebesinin hürriyetseverlik heyecanları sebep olmuş ve teşkilatını hemen hemen
istanbul'a hasrettirmiş ve daha çok da mektep talebesini içine almıştır. Ordulara da el atamadığından sayıca
çokluğuna rağmen kudretçe istibdadın merkezi olan Istanbul'da beceriksiz bir halde sözü ayağa düşürmüş ve
ufak bir sarsıntıya karşı kayamayarak varlığını kaybetmiştir.”
1016 Ibid, p. 19; “ikinci devre kuruluşu ise 1906'da Istanbul'dan uzak olan Makedonya'da ihtilaller arasında
olgunlaşan bir muhitte ve yine olgunlaşmış sivil ve asker başların zamanın kaplarını düşünerek ve daha uzun
görüşmeler ve didişmelerle başlamış ve Selanik'te on kişilik bir merkezle faaliyete girişmiştir. Teşkilatını hemen
ordulara hasretmiş, Manastır ınıntıkası gibi, istibdat mihrakından çok uzak bir yerde icra kudretini haiz bir
kuvvet vücuda getirmiş).”
1017 BOA, HR.SYS. Dosya 2105, Gomlek 55, T. 06.10.1915, p. 13
1018 Ibid., p. 55; “Ben bu tahlili yaptıktan sonra ortaya iki sual attım: Bu gidişle Makedonya bizde kalır mı?
Makedonya bizden ayrılırken bütün Türkiye'yi de beraber uçuruma sürüklemez mi?”
1019 Ibid., p. 64; “Makedonya yangınının bütün memleketi uçuruma sürüklernesinden korkmalı ve buna göre
hazırlıklı bulunmalıyız.”
1020 Jan Zucher, The Young Turks - Children of the Borderlands? (2002),
http://lib.sudigital.org/record/19673/files/SUDGTL-ARTICLE-2013-644.pdf (Accessed: 06.03.2021)., p. 1
1021 Sukru Hanioglu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), p. 3
232
To begin with, the strong censorship of the Hamidian regime obliged many Young Turks to
move to other countries and to lead intellectual and political discussions in various European
capitals and in Egypt. Indeed, in those cities Young Turks were under the strong influence of
global waves of ideas (European elitist theories, nationalism, modernisation, and
westernisation) of the late 19th century. These itinerant Ottomans1022 tended to accept the
ideas known in social science as the results of circulated knowledge.1023 Some of its members
reflected a strong commitment to positivist approach and elitism, who promoted a vision of
the ideal society based on the ideas of social darwinism. Others were rather proponents of
accepting a multicultural empire and promoting decentralisation. In this respect, Prince
Sabahaddin and Lutfullah Bey - nephews of Sultan Abdulhamid – and their father, Damad
Mahmud Pasha, organised a congress to unite the various Young Turk factions, with respect
to the various Ottoman ethnic groups. This congress was held in Paris in February 1902, and
its’ leaders debated substantial political issues for the first time.1024 However, the congress
showed that the Young Turks in exile were more of an intellectual than a political
organisation that had a clear strategy on the ground. Actually, they did not established
networks with the local people or organisations within the territories of the Ottoman empire.
Thus, the transformation of the Young Turk Movement from an intellectual endeavour into a
political one gained momentum later in 1907, during the Second Young Turk Congress.1025 Its
aim was based to unite all Ottoman elements in order to strength its political position, bring
the revolution into practice and to bring back the constitution from 1876.1026
Furthermore, it should not be assumed that inside these communities there was a unified proto
or supra-national sensibility. It is important to remember that in each organisation there were
members who opposed the ideas and policies of the core.1027 This diverse picture of actors
demonstrates that these personalities were an active and dynamic group, influencing each
1022 Isa Blumi. Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939: Migration in a Post-Imperial World (New York: Bloomsbury
Academy, 2013).
1023 Stefan Rohdewald, Albrecht Fuess, Florian Riedler, Stephan Conermann, Wissenszirkulation: Perspektiven
und Forschungsstand, in Transottomanica-Osteuropäisch-osmanisch-persische Mobilitätsdynamiken, (Göttingen:
Unipress GmbH 2019), pp. 83-104.
1024 Sukru Hanioglu, op.cit. p. 3
1025 Dr. Bahaeddin Sakir successfully converted an intellectual movement into a well-organised activist body in
the form of CUP.; Mehmet Hacisalihoglu, op.cit.
1026 Ahmed Riza. Op.cit.
1027 “The 1902 Congress of the Ottoman Opposition polarised the discord within the Young Turk Movement,
accelerating the rupture between the two groups that had coexisted within the same movement in spite of their
dissimilar viewpoints. This was in fact a schism among the leaders of the movement.” See. Sukru Hanioglu,
op.cit. p. 8; “Majority one led by Damad Mahmud Pasha and Minority by Ahmed Riza. Ahmed Rîza, who had
treated the members of the old CUP organisation as a group of maîtres chanteurs, made it very clear that he had
no respect even for Ishak Sükûti who died in San Remo when the Congress was held (February 1902).”
233
other and often being open to accepting ideas coming from the other communities.
Accordingly, the formed networks thus, cannot be considered in a vacuum as a static
structure, rather as processual constructs of multi-layered identities and historical
intersectionalities. However, we should also be aware that at times the Young Turks also had
divergent responses, participated in different programs, and lobbied for diverse and
sometimes contradictory strategies. Rather the ambitions of the Young Turks were varied and
contested, and the discussions often resulted in clashes and contradictory tendencies. For
example, as early as at their First Congress a rupture appeared between two groups: the
decentralist (ones), led by Prince Sabahaddin by establishing the League for Private Initiative
and Decentralisation (Teşebbüs-i Şahsi ve Adem-i Merkeziyet Cemiyeti), and the centralist,
organised by Ahmed Riza who “insisted on the organisation of a central and centralising
power at Constantinople in the interests of the purely Turkish element.”1028 Prince Sabaheddin
argued that the Young Turks should promote a European intervention, even military measures
if needed, to end the autocratic rule of Sultan Abdulhamid II. On the contrary, Ahmet Riza
Bey dismissed the idea of foreign interference. Thus, between 1902 and 1905, the Young
Turk Movement displayed a polarised character and was undergoing a gradual disintegration.
An Albanian activist from Vlora (Avlonya), Ismail Bey1029 was among the most prominent
members and supporters of the decentralised faction that supported decentralisation during the
Congress which was held in Paris in 1902. He was in fact a cousin of the Ottoman Grand
Vizier Avlonyali Ferid Pasha and later became known as the first President of Independent
Albania (1912) with the name Ismail Qemali. However, during the years 1902-1908, he
cooperated with Prince Sabahudin to unite the various Young Turk factions. In his memoirs,
he points out that “they [Sabahudin, Lutfullah, and Damat Mahmud Pasha] wanted [him] to
take part in this [the Congress], and Prince Lutfullah came to Brussels to see [him] on the
matter. [He] was willing to take part in the Congress on certain conditions — namely, that all
the ethnical elements in Turkey should be represented, so that the desiderata of all the people
of the Empire might be formulated.”1030 Thus, the task of the Central Committee of the
League (Teşebbüs-i Şahsi ve Adem-i Merkeziyet Cemiyeti) was to organise joint activities with
the Albanian, Macedonian, and some members of the Armenian groups. Immediately after the
1902 Congress, Armenian organisations and the IMRO held negotiations for joint action
1028 The Memoirs of Ismail Kemali, op.cit. p. 306
1029 BOA. HR.SYS. 1805, 36, 27.07.1907. p. 2
1030 The Memoirs of Ismail Kemal Bey, opcit. p. 306
234
against the Hamidian regime. 1031 Ismail Qemali (Kemal) eminisces that, in those days,
“subsequent meetings took place at the house of Prince Saba Eddine, in the Boulevard
Malesherbes, where some forty delegates, representing all the races of the Turkish Empire,
continued to sit for several days.”1032
The role of mediator between these groups was assigned to Ismail Qemali. He still imagined a
united Ottoman Empire including all its nationalities. In order to achieve this aim, he and
Prince Sabahuddin decided to involve the British government as a foreign assistant to
dethrone the Sultan and to get support from various Ottoman ethnic groups. Through their
official medium Osmanlî1033 (and later Terakki), he first started to gather the numerous
Albanians who published a new bilingual journal, Ittihad-î Osmanî - La Fédération
Ottomane, in Geneva.1034 It was led by three members of Albanian origin, who were members
of the old CUP (organisation): Ahmed Rîfat,1035 Dervis Hima,1036 and Halil Muvaffak.1037
They had the aim of “decentralisation” and transfer of power to the provinces, more precisely
to Albania and Macedonia. In Ismail Bey’s perception, Macedonia “[was] the country where
‘Shkupetars’ (Albanians) – the ‘Men of the Eagle [had] lived for centuries. Dwelling in a sort
of isolation, they were variously grouped under the generic name of Macedonians or
Illyrians.”1038 To him, there was no doubt that the three vilayets are Albanian provinces,
which should be granted an autonomous status. He also admitted that “the last phase of the
Macedonian affairs” made Albanians “ feel acute anxiety” and “wonder what fate was in store
for their country.”1039 For this reason, they cooperated with various Young Turks in order to
preserve Ottoman Macedonia and to save their country. According to Prince Sabaheddin, this
could be possible only by the formation of an “organizational network from the west to the
east of Asia Minor.”1040 In the western parts of the Empire, Ismail Kemal was appointed, and
as such, he recognised the need for a structured network of supporters and sympathisers.
Therefore, he was in constant contact with Albanian intellectuals, such as Dervish Hima,
1031 Sukru Hanioglu, op.cit. p. 14
1032 The Memoirs of Ismail Kemal Bey, op.cit. p. 307
1033 It was transferred to Cairo on 15th August 1903. Then it was led by Edhem Ruhi and Abdulah Cevdet who
championed more anarchist ideas.
1034 Sukru Hanioglu, op.cit. p. 52
1035 Ibid., p. 173
1036 Ibid. “Dervis Hima had participated in the 1902 Congress as an Albanian representative. Italian government
had shut down his journal Albania-Arnavudluk, planned to resume publication activities in Geneva.”
1037 Ibid. “Halil Muvaffak had been assigned significant duties by the CUP, was the son of an Albanian notable
of Larissa.”
1038 The Memoirs of Ismail Kemali, op.cit. p. 356
1039 Ibid., p. 365
1040 Sukru Hanioglu, op.cit. p. 91
235
Hamdi Ohri, Kadri Prishtina, Jashar Erebara, etc.1041 In the eastern parts of the Empire Prince
Sabaheddin built networks with Armenians. Thanks to these personal connections, uprisings
could be staged effectively in Eastern Anatolia (between 1905-1907) and Ottoman Macedonia
in 1908.
Furthermore, Ismail Kemal and Prince Sabaheddin started finding a way towards a
reconciliation with Ahmed Riza. As a result, they came to an agreement to organise a Second
Congress of Ottoman Opposition Parties, including the Armenian Dashnaktsutiun Committee.
They also hoped for IMRO participation in the congress. However, the IMRO, which was in
total chaos due to the assassinations of its two important leaders such as Sarafov and
Garvanov in November 1907, was not able to take part in the Congress. Following the
agreement among the three organising committees (the decentralist, centralist, and
Dashnaktsutsian committee), the Congress convened in three sessions between 27-29
December 1907 and agreed to cooperate on the Ottoman issues and to establish networks for
the dethroning of the Sultan.1042
4.2.2. YOUNG TURKS AND NETWORKS IN MACEDONIA: FROM POLITICAL
MOVEMENT TO REVOLUTION
As I have been delving into multiple regional entanglements, I propose further to view
Ottoman Macedonia as a fluid space where social networks formed. Furthermore, these
networks, whether recent or long-standing, were based on certain legacies that rendered them
1041 “Kongresin që mbajtën xhonturqit në Paris më 20.02. 1902, ku nga krerët shqiptarë morën pjesë: Dervish
Hima, i cili në atë kohë ndodhej në Romë, Ismail Qemail, mori pjesë nga Brukseli, Jashar Erebera, u dërgua nga
studentët shqiptarë të Bukureshtit, Kadri Prishtina, shkoi nga Kajro, njëherësh ishte edhe nënkryetar i Partisë
“Bashkim e Progres.” See: Eqber Skendi, Hoxhë Kadriu-(Kadri Prishtina), (Prishtinë 1992), pp. 13-14.
1042 Sukru Hanioglu mentioned that the congress unanimously decided to issue a declaration that included the
following points:
“1. To force Sultan Hamid to abdicate.
2. To change the present administration drastically.
3. To establish a system of mesveret (consultation) and constitutional [government].
This declaration also presented the final version of the revolutionary tactics to be
implemented by the members of the participating organisations:
1. Armed resistance against the government’s actions and operations.
2. Unarmed resistance. Strike[s] of policemen and government officials; their quitting
of work.
3. Nonpayment of taxes to the present administration.
4. Propaganda within the army. The soldiers will be urged not to move against rebels.
5. General rebellion.
6. Other means of action to be taken in accordance with the course of events.”
See: Sukru Hanioglu, p. 205. “Osmanlî Muhalifîn Fîrkalarî Tarafîndan Avrupa’da In’ikad Eden Kongre’nin
Beyannâmesi,” ̃in Sûra-yî Ümmet, nos. 128–29, 3.
236
“legitimate.” As a result of the networking, an “epistemic community”1043 was created, which
can be viewed as a fluid social group, sweeping across borders in order to establish
interconnections. The Young Turks in Europe and Macedonia were such an “epistemic
community,” which after the Second Congress of Ottoman Opposition Parties wanted to
create connections with all Ottoman ethnicities. In this respect, this newly reconciliated group
of Young Turks employed a heavily Ottomanist rhetoric when it addressed non-Muslims,
emphasising that it was “working toward the happiness of all Ottoman elements such as the
Albanians, Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Bulgarians, [and] Greeks.”1044
Sukru Hanioglu emphasises that, in written documents, they changed phrases from the
ethnical and nationalist Turkish one to invocations like “O Turkish sons! O Ottoman
brothers!” to “O children of the Fatherland! O Ottoman brothers!” In addition, the words
against the Christian members of the Ottoman empire were replaced by a passage reading:
“You should understand that Bulgarians and Vlachs are not our enemies; on the contrary they
are our confidants and our brothers.”1045
A prominent member of this reconciliated Young Turk Movement was Ahmed Riza. In his
memoirs he expressed the unity of all the different elements with the words:
“I will work for the profit of all Ottomans. Therefore, I named this new organisation ‘Union
and Progress’ (ben bütün Osmanliların çıkarları için çalışacağından dolayı Ittihad ve Terakki
[Birlik ve Gelişme] adını daha uygun gördüm. Öyle kabul edildi).”1046
Since 1907, this united organisation was known as Ottoman Committee of Union and
Progress (CUP), and Ahmed Riza represented the strong intellectual wing of the party. He
played a very important role in organising the Young Turk Movement. Owing to it, he later
became head of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies as well as a senator. He was a man of
thought and liberal personality rather than a professional activist. The professional activism
on the ground was the responsibility of many personalities who worked in Ottoman
Macedonia. One such prominent figure was Talat Bey (later Pasha). He was Ahmed Riza’s
man of connection in Macedonia1047 and a chief clerk of correspondence in the post office in
Thessaloniki. He was founder of the Ottoman Freedom Society (Osmanli Hürriyet Cemiyeti),
1043 About “epistemic community” see: Peter M. Haas, Introduction: epistemic communities and international
policy coordination, International Organization. Cambridge Journals. 46 (1), 1992, pp. 1-35.
1044 Sukru Hanioglu, op. cit. p. 175
1045 Ibid., 186
1046 Ahmet Riza Anilari, op.cit., p. 17
1047 Sukru Hanioglu, op.cit. p. 73
237
which helped to establish various networks throughout Macedonia. In September 1907, this
society was united with Ahmed Riza’s organisation Union and Progress. This was a merger of
two committees pursuing the same goals and similar agendas. Regarding this, in his memoirs,
Talat Pasha wrote that the “Young Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Albanians, Turks and others wanted
to be united all together for the sake of the beloved fatherland and progress.”1048
Furthermore, Talat Pasha, in concert with his friends from Macedonia (Ömer Naci, Mithat
Sukru Bleda, Evaronszade Rahmi, Dr. Nazim), was recruiting new members in order to
expand CUP’s activities in Macedonia. While they were all civilians, they realised that
success in the struggle depended on military activity. Immediately afterwards, a Young Turk
under the pseudonym of A. Raif travelled to Belgrade and the Ottoman-Serbian border in
Kosovo vilayeti to start spreading propaganda among Ottoman officers and the Albanian
population. His propaganda was especially successful among the Albanians.1049 However, the
Young Turks spread very quickly their activities in various units of the Ottoman army in
Macedonia, especially among the officer corps.1050 Thus, CUP started to establish branches
headed by Ottoman officers, such as Enver Pasha and Kazim Karabekir in Bitola and Eyüb
Sabri in Ohrid. These first cells also included members of the ordinary people, such as: Fethi
[Okyar], Colonel Sadık, Aziz Ali al-Misri,1051 Ismet [Inönü], Ali [Çetinkaya], and Kâzım
[Özalp].1052 They formed a separate subgroup within which they forged personal ties and
friendships, often based on a shared history as classmates or fellow soldiers from military
service.
Talat Pasha’s friend, Mithat Sukru Bleda, who was a native of Thessaloniki, registered that
“slowly we attracted many governors on our side. In this context, our first aim was the
governor of Manastir, Hifzi Pasha, who was the husband of my aunt – my uncle. Therefore, it
was much easier to separate him from the palace.”1053 To the contrary, there was a rumour
1048 Talad Pasha, p. 14; “Jön Türkler, Araplar, Yunanlılar, Arnavutlar, Türkler vesaire gibi yurddaki bütün
milletleri birleştirmeyi bu suretle de sevgili vatanın selâmet ve terakkisi için birlikte.”
1049 Sukru Hanioglu, p. 214
1050 Ahsene Gul Tokay, Macedonian Reforms and Muslim Opposition during the Hamidian Era: 1878-1908,
Islam and Christan Muslim Relations, 14:1, 2010, p. 59
1051 Aziz Ali Al-Misri became Egyptian ambassador to Moscow under Nasser.
1052 Erik J. Zucher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk's Turkey
(London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2010), p. 100
1053 Mithat Sukru Bleda, Imperatorlugun Cokusu, (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1979), p. 33; “yavas yavas valileri
de kendi tarafımıza çekmeye baslamıstık. Bu konuda ilk hedef olarak Manastır Valisi Hıfzı Pasayı ele aldık. Hıfzı
Pasa benim halamın kocası, yani enistem oluyordu. Bu nedenle onu saraydan ayırmak daha kolay olacaktı.
Kendisi o tarihlerde hayli yaslanmıstı. Hassas bir kalbi vardı, onu inandırmak ve tarafımıza çekmek benim için
zor olmayacaktı.”
238
that governor of Manastir, Hıfzı Pasha, admitted to the Sultan Abdulhamid II that many
became part of the CUP, but not him (Manastır'da benden başka herkes İttihatçıdır).1054
Furthermore, with the fast growth of various branches in the Kosovo, Manastir, and Salonika
vilayets, for the first time the Young Turks succeeded in establishing a strong network
maintained in a particular (their important operative) region of the Ottoman Empire, its
periphery known as Macedonia. Thanks to these networks, the Young Turks could actively
fight for the realisation of their goal: the re-establishment of parliamentary and constitutional
government. 1055 Members of the Young Turk Movement also opposed the European
intervention and European favouritism towards Christians. There were constant
demonstrations and an uneasy feeling among the Muslim population in Macedonia caused by
the presence of the European reformers and Christian elements supported by many local
bands. Many of the members of the Young Turks used the presence of the Europeans as “a
propaganda tool to gain the support of the Muslim population and it easily attracted various
groups, civilian and military, in the area.”1056
The principal responsibility for this propaganda was in the hands of Bahaettin Sakir. He was
one of the main architects of the transformation of the Young Turk Movement from an
ideological into a political party. Sukru Hanioglu notes that he was deeply influenced by the
IMRO and Dashnaktsutiun’s programmes and regulations.1057 In this sense, the Young Turk
Movement was not closed and did not develop inside a vacuum, rather was influenced by
many other movements in the region and ideas that circulated among the West European
intellectuals. As might be expected, those ideas reflected clearly the activist programme for
the “Ottomanist” union among various Ottoman members, and they were open to all Ottoman
subjects regardless of ethnicity and faith. Bahaeddin Sakir was deeply impressed by those
ideals and accordingly he wrote a poem for unifying the various Ottoman elements together:
“We will colour/paint our enemies with red blood
We are called the brave sons of Turkistan
We are renowned as glorious Ottomans
We cry ‘God!’ and sacrifice our lives
1054 Ibid.
1055 Erik J. Zucher, Young Turks…, p. 99
1056 Gul Tokay, Macedonian Reforms…
1057 Sukru Hanioglu, op.cit. p. 217
239
We become martyrs for God
We should not be burned in this fire of oppression
We cannot stand this vileness anymore.”1058
In one of the letters sent to a volunteer of the CUP, Bahaeddin Sakir also wrote: “We need
young and brave children of the fatherland. This is the time to render to the fatherland an
honorable and glorious service.”1059 This conveyed clearly the message that members of the
CUP were ready to take “action” and to recruit as many volunteers as possible for the purpose
of unity and progress. Many officers and soldiers were invited “to join the gaza for freedom,”
who were modelled on the guerilla bands in Macedonia.1060 It is beyond doubt that the
presence of the various Macedonian chetas in general, and of the IMRO members in
particular, made a deep impression upon the Ottoman officers and soldiers who served in
Ottoman Macedonia during that time. Some of the officers also admired these bands and were
considering establishing a similar organisation that might stave off what they saw as the
imminent collapse of the Empire. This influence on the Young Turks by different
organisations and bands in Macedonia shows that the band members were an active and
dynamic group, and sufficiently open-minded to accept ideas from other communities while
also influencing other communities (i.e. Ottoman Albanians). Evidently, the networks thus
formed cannot be considered in a vacuum and as a static structure, but rather as processual
constructs of interactions and entanglements among various communities, that is in this
particular case, between the Young Turks and Ottoman Albanians. Furthermore, Mithat Sukru
Bleda was aware that Young Turks they had major support in this matter from Muslim
Albanian speaking personalities in Ottoman Macedonia. He described that “these networks of
society (CUP) were spreading fast in all parts of Rumelia. In Bitola they were in the hands of
Resneli Niyaz, in Skopje in the hands of Nexhip Draga, and in Ohrid in those of Ejup Sabri.
All of them were working hard.”1061
Many of these officers, such as Necip Draga in Uskup orAdjutant-Major Niyazi Bey in Resen,
Captain Bekir Fikri in Grebená and Adjutant-Major Eyüb Sabri in Ohrid had a reputation and
1058 Ibid., p. 187-188
1059 Ibid. p. 219
1060 Ibid. p. 220
1061 Mithat Sukru Bleda, Imperatorlugun Cokusu, (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1979), p. 33; “cemiyetimiz kısa
zamanda Rumeli’nin her tarafında yayılmıs, dal budak salmıs ve islerimiz gelismisti. Manastır’da Resneli Niyazi,
Üsküp’te Necip Draga, Ohri’de Eyüp Sabri asker gibi çalısıyorlardı.”
240
authority among the Ottoman Albanians of their respective regions. Since they could speak
Albanian as well as Turkish, they found an easy task to correspond with the whole Muslim
population in Ottoman Macedonia. Therefore, when they decided to go to the mountains they
attracted many Albanian-speaking Muslim volunteers and secured their support.1062
In addition, the Young Turks devoted multiple efforts to include the Ottoman Albanians into
their activism. This was possible due to the backgrounds of the Young Turk members.
Namely, Erik Zücher noted that the Young Turks predominantly originated from the Ottoman
borderlands, more precisely from Macedonia, and were closely linked to the Macedonian
context and the Macedonian Question.1063 Thus, many Young Turks were born in the cities
populated by many Albanians, where Albanianism could naturally find fertile ground.1064
Also, for many members of the Young Turk movement, the Ottoman Albanians were
considered “the sons of Ottomans.” For Tunali Hilmi, who wrote a pamphlet about
Macedonia,1065 those Albanians were the brave people who were always prepared to defend
Macedonia if the Ottoman government failed to do so. For him, the Ottoman Albanians are
“sons of Ottomans” who guaranteed the continued existence of the Empire in the Balkans.1066
In a different vein, the support of the Albanian population for the Young Turk Movement
could also be analysed as a function of “the simultaneity of multiple identities.”1067 Various
scholars of the late Habsburg Empire challanged the assumption of inherent opposition
between national consciousness and imperial loyalty by positing “parallel realities.”1068 In a
similar way, Paul Gilroy defined these realities as “double consciousness,”1069 which is a
constitutive part of a more complex feeling of “two-ness,” of disparate and competing
“thoughts,” “strivings,” and “ideals.”
In the Ottoman context, one can find many instances of “two-ness,” which stem from
hybridisations of the individual persons who operated in a multicultural milieu as transcultural
selves. In this regard, Nathalie Clayer suggests that one should be aware that the Ottoman
1062 Sukru Hanioglu, op.cit. p. 228
1063 Erik Zucher. Children of Borderlands…
1064Nathalie Clayer, op.cit. p. 70
1065 Hilmi Tunalî, Makedonya: Mazi-Hâl-Istikbâl, (Kahire: 1898)
1066 Mehmet Hacısalihoglu, op.cit., 2003, p. 81.
1067 Brunhilde Scheuringer, Multiple Identities: A Theoretical and an Empirical Approach, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2016)
1068 Claudia Ulbrich, Transkulturelle Perspektivenin Selbstzeugnisund Person, in: Selbstzeugnis und Person. edit
by Claudia Ulbrich, (Köln: Transkulturelle Perspektiven, 2012), pp. 1–20. To speak about the „transcultural self,
the writers offer to useterms like Selbst-Verortung, Seitenwechsel, Ambivalenz, Rollenvielfalt, Personenspaltung,
Hybridity, entanglement, entangled histories, Überlagerungen, Parallelwelten.“
1069 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (New York: Verso Books, 1993)
241
Albanians were not a monolithic “ethnic group” comprising a whole. Their way of
interactions varied of course as much as their aims and interests. Therefore, some Albanian
speaking personalities would describe themselves as Ottomans, without referring to a
nationalist feeling, rather standing united to protect the Empire. By analysing the lives of
these Ottoman Albanians who joined and actively supported the Young Turk Movement, one
can find out their multiple trajectories and entanglements that overcame and surpassed the
monolithic boundaries drawn by nationalistic historiographies. 1070 In this line, Brunhilde
Scheuringer posits that “the concept of symbolic interactionism between the groups plays a
fundamental role here. Societies establish and form social roles by means of linked
expectations.”1071 These individuals expected a better future within their fatherland, which to
them was the Ottoman Empire.1072 Therefore, many of them sided with other ethnicities to
achieve the victory that would lead to unity and progress. Indeed, Mithat Sukru Bleda notes
that “no one had any doubt that the CUP would would record a victory.”1073 It was the hope
for the union of the various ethnicities in Macedonia that contributed to the growth of the
Movement among its different subjects. Thus, in the Macedonian context, these “doubly
conscious” or even ‘’multi conscious’’ Albanians provided the chief source of support for the
Young Turk Committee.
In parallel with the above events, in June 1908 the situation in Ottoman Macedonia grew very
tense due to the discussions held in Reval between King Edward VII and Tsar Nicholas II.
Supposedly, the Great Powers would discuss yet another reform plan for Macedonia.
Therefore, many members of the CUP felt that they needed to act immediately or the Empire
would be invaded by the Great Powers. This resulted in three events that triggered the Young
Turk Revolution, and all of them occurred in Ottoman Macedonia.
The first event took place in June 1908, when Enver Pasha was sent on a mission to a
Turkish-speaking village in the Tikvesh region by the Central Committee in Salonica
1070 See about entangled histories: Yuval Ben-Bassat Petitioning the Sultan: Protests and Justice in Late
Ottoman Palestine. (London/New York: I.B. Tauris. 2013); Yuval Ben-Bassat and Eyal Ginio, eds. Late
Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule. (London/New York: I.B. Tauris. 2011); Zeynel Abidin
Besneley, The Circassian Diaspora in Turkey: A Political History. (London/New York: Routledge. 2014);
Benedict Binebai, Voice Construction in the Postcolonial Text: Spivakian Subaltern Theory in Nigerian Drama,
African Research Review, 9/4, 2015., pp. 206-220.; Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, Stefan Rohdewald and Dirk
Uffelmann, Polnisch-osmanische Verflechtungen in Kommunikation, materieller Kultur, Literatur und
Wissenschaft, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropaforschung 65/2, 2016, pp. 159-166.
1071 Brunhilde Scheuringer, op. cit. p. 1
1072 BOA. HR.SYS. 155, 47, 11.11.1908. p. 2
1073 Mithat Sukru Bleda, op.cit. p. 38; “ittihat ve Terakki’nin atıldıgı mücadeleden muzaffer çıkacagından artık
kimsenin süphesi kalmamıstı.”
242
(Merkez-i Umumi, evvelce, Tikves’e gelmem ihtimalini yazmis oldugundan).1074 His mission
was “to recruit villagers for the CUP’s purposes (köylulerin örgütlenmesi).”1075 A close
reading of Enver Pasha’s memoirs indeed shows that he was establishing a band (daimi
çetenin olusturulmasi) and providing it with instructions, funds, and texts for proclamation of
a constitution.1076 While he was in Tikvesh, two other important events occurred. First, Enver
Pasha remembers that he got news in Tikvesh about the assassination of Shemsi Pasha (Semsi
Pasa’nin vuruldugunu haber almisdim. Inanamiyordum, Bunlar te’yid etdi).1077 He was also
still there when he got word about Ferzovik events in the Kosovo vilayet.1078 Later, when
Enver Pasha received the information that in Ferzovik there were protests for the support of
the constitution, he emphasized that “Northern Albania is also on our side (demek, asil
cekindigimiz, Simali Arnavudluk bizimle beraber olacak).”1079 In the second and third events,
many “multi conscious” Albanians showed that they demonstrated their loyalty to Enver
Pasha. One of his greatest supporters was an adjutant-major named Ahmet Niyazi Bey, who
commanded a battalion in his native Resne in the Manastir vilayet. He was born into an
Albanian-speaking and landowning family in Resne, and finished high military school in
Manastir. He stated that at the Manastir military school he learned the meaning of one’s
fatherland and the love for it. 1080 Thus, he hoped that one day he would fight for his
fatherland’s order and progress.1081 The opportunity for his (patriotic) fight presented itself on
3 July, when Niyazi Bey received permission from the Manastır headquarters of the CUP to
spring into action to protect the Ottoman fatherland. He first headed into the mountains and
formed the National Battalion of Resne from the ranks of Albanian Muslim villagers. There
he was accompanied by Çerçiz Topulli, head of the Albanian Tosk çete.1082
As an Albanian-speaking adjutant-major, he had excellent connections with a number of
Albanian-speaking villages. Relevant here is Erik J. Zucher’s emphasis that the religious
1074 Enver Pasa anilari, op.cit. p. 102
1075 Ibid., p. 105
1076 Ibid., p. 110
1077 Ibid. p. 114
1078 Ibid. p. 121; “daha Tikves kazasinda iken simali Arnavudlarin Kacanik’de toplandigini haber almis fakat
maksadlarinin ne oldugunu anlayamamisdim.”
1079 Ibid. p. 121
1080 Resneli Niyaz, p. 13; “bu hislerimin tesiriyle askerliğe olan bağlılığım gittikçe artıyordu. Bundan böyle
vatan sevgisi ufkumu günes gibi aydınlatmıs, gönlümü dünyalara açmıstı. Oraya ne yerlestirilirse yine bir bosluk,
yine bir seyler koymak gerekiyordu. Orayı yalnız vatan sevgisinin doldurabileceğini bana gizli bir ses durmadan
tekrarlıyordu.”
1081 Resneli Niyaz, p. 16; “ben de vatanımın intizam ve terakkisine faydalı kanunlara, lâzım gelen sekilde
bağlanarak iyi bir zabit olmayı gaye edinmistim.”
1082 According to Gawrych, the fundamental compatibility between the Turks and the Albanians and hence the
need for them to work together was symbolised by the Enver-Niyazi couple, Niyazi representing the Albanians
and Enver representing the Turks. George Gawryc, The Crescent ,op. cit ., p. 169)
243
aspect of these Albanian speaking people is very important, because Niyazi ordered the
soldiers to gather locals1083 who were able to recite prayers while moving into action. Clearly
the insurrection was primarily a Muslim movement of Albanian speaking personalities that
highly pronounced religious motif.1084 Also, in Niyazi’s imagination about the population of
Macedonia, “Muslims did not arrive in Macedonia in the new period. History records that the
Turks were here even before the Ottomans. In this sense, Macedonia has a relation with the
Turks from the old times.”1085 One can notice that he uses the terms “Muslims” and “Turks”
as synonyms and that he does not make any distinction does not refer to different groups of
Muslims, be they Turkish- or Albanian-speaking.
Moreover, when Niyazi Bey arrived in the hills, he stated openly his true aim, that is, to force
the government to restore the constitution. 1086 For him, the reason of all problems in
Macedonia and in other parts of the Empire was the absolutist Hamidian policy.1087 In order to
overthrow this regime, all Ottoman elements were united against absolutism.1088 According to
Niyazi Bey, “there is no one in Macedonia and other parts of the Empire who has not suffered
because of this absolutist regime. Without any exception, we are oppressed by it.” 1089
Following these claims, he also comes to the conclusion that “the Macedonian problem
(Questions) does not exist. If there is a problem, the Turks will solve it and provide with their
children together.”1090
In response to the rebellion in Resne, General Semsi Pasha, an experienced Albanianspeaking
officer loyal to the Hamidian regime, together with other Northern (Geg) Albanians
who supported the Sultan, ordered a garrison to head directly to the city of Manastir. He
1083 For Ahmet Niyazi Bey this was important due to his personal and family connections with those Albanian
speaking villages. In this sense, one should not understand this selection as part of Niyazi Bey’s nationalist
feeling for Albanianism.
1084 Zucher, Young Turks… p. 38
1085 Ibid., 192-193; “böylesine kötü ve böylesine az bilinen Müslümanlar, Makedonya'ya yeni gelmis değillerdir.
Tarih bize gösteriyi Türklerden meydana gelen birçok halk Makedonya'ya burasini Osmanlı sultanlarının ele
geçirmesinden çok önce gelip yerlesmislerdir. Bu bakımdan Makedonya'da Türklerin de çok eski bir tarihî
alâkalan vardır.”
1086 Zucher, Young Turks, p. 32; Resneli Niyazi, p. 199; “hükümeti Mesrutiyet idaresine döndürmek, müsavatı,
adaleti temin etmek üzere milletçe umumî bir tesebbüse geçildiği.”
1087 Resneli Niyaz, p. 191; “Yalnız Makedonya'nın değil, Osmanlı imparatorluğunun bütün vilâyetlerindeki
kötülüklerin asıl mes'ulü bugün basta olan hükümetin istibdat idaresidir.”
1088 Ibid. p. 191; “Türk, Arap, Arnavut, Çerkez, Kürt, Ermeni, Ulah, Yahudi, Sırp, Rum ve Bulgarlardan meydana
gelen Osmanlı adıyla topladığımız ne kadar millet varsa hepsi de aynı istibdat idaresinin çilesini çekip
boyunduruğunda inliyorlar.”
1089 Ibid. p. 191; “ne Makedonya ve ne de diğer Osmanlı memleketinde ayrıcalık ve zulüm görmüs iki çesit halk
yoktur. Istisnasız hepimiz aynı istibdat tazyiki altında ezilmekteyiz.”
1090 Ibid. 192; “Sizin bildiğiniz gibi bir Makedonya problemi yoktur. Bugün ortalıkta görülen problem, Türklerin
kendi aralarında hâl edecekleri ve bu toprağın çocuklarının beraber temin edecekleri ve er geç yapacakları bir
tesekküldür.”
244
arrived to Manastir on 7 July and his next destination was (supposed) to be Resne, along with
two battalions and an Albanian volunteer unit, gathered to suppress Niyazi Bey’s action. But,
upon his exit from the post office in Manastir, he was shot in broad daylight by the CUP
volunteer, Atıf [Kamçıl]. 1091 This murder is generally seen as the turning point in the
revolution, for it eliminated a very dangerous opponent of the Young Turks, who could have
mobilised bashibozuk Albanians against them. The murder demonstrated the power of the
CUP in the towns, and demoralised the palace. Additionally, a band named the CPU or Ohrid
National Regiment was organised by Ottoman adjutant-major Eyüb Sabri. Some kilometres
away from this event, Captain Bekir Fikri gathered a large band in Grebená.1092 The local
Muslims there regarded him as their protector against the Bulgarian and Greek bands.1093
Independently of these developments in the Manastir and Selanik vilayeti, the gathering of
Albanians at Ferizaj/Firzovik in the Kosovo vilayet started on 5 July (two days after Niyazi
sprung to the hills). Additionally, it caused a sense of alarm to the Yildiz, which in the end
contributed to the collapse of the resistance from the palace. This event happened in response
to rumours spread throughout the Kosovo vilayet that Austro-Hungary1094 was planning to
invade Kosovo. Initially, a train was intended to bring students of the Austrian-German
railway training school from Skopje to Ferizaj/Firzovik, but its arrival was interpreted by the
local population as the first step of an Austro-Hungarian invasion attempt. Therefore, a large
population of Albanians gathered in Ferizaj/Firzovik to protest against this “invasion.”1095
Although at the beginning there were some 5,000 armed gunmen, by 23 July the number of
protesters grew to 30,000 local Albanians. In order to suppress this protest, the Ottoman
Government dispatched the Kosovo Gendarmerie Commander-Colonel of the Ottoman troops
in Skopje, Galip Bey. He received an order to disperse the Ottoman Albanians from Firzovik.
The Ottoman Government was not informed that he was, in fact, a unionist (ittihatci).1096 As a
1091 Kazim Karabekir described the assassination with the words: “Millet Fedaisi Atıf Bey de vazifesine başladı.
O kadar muhafızlar ve kalabalık arasında kendine yol açarak yaklaştı ve Şemsi Paşa üzerine bir Nagant
tabancasıyla ateş etti, birinci kurşun boşa gitti, ikinci kurşun paşanın sağ omzundan içeriye girerek kalbi
parçaladıktan sonra sol tarafa çıkmıştı. Paşanın muhafızları da Atıf'ın arkasından şiddetli bir ateş açtılar. Atıf
ayağından yaralanmış ise de yoluna devam edebilmiş ve biraz sonra sağa sokağa saparak gözden kaybolmuş.”
See: Kazim Karabekir, op. cit. p. 327
1092 Fikri Bekir, Balkanlarda Kuvve-i seyyare kumandanı yüzbaşı Bekir Fikri (Istanbul: Belge yayınları, 1985);
Fikri Bekir, Balkanlarda Tedhiş ve Gerilla (Istanbul: TT Vakfi Yayinlari, 2008)
1093 Sukru Hanioglu, op.cit. p. 228
1094 In spring 1908 Dual Monarchy initiated a plan to extend a railway from Bosnian provinces to Novi Pazar,
and further to Mitrovica in Kosovo vilayet. From other side, the Serbian government wanted to build a railway
directly to Albanian coast through Kosovo vilayet. Many Albanians view this with hostility.
1095 Although initially there were some 5000 armed men by 5 July, until 23 July gathered the number up to
30,000 people. See: Tokay, Macedonian Reforms, p. 61.
1096 Suleyman Kulce, Firzovik Toplantisi ve Mesrutiyet, (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2013)
245
Young Turk, he was happy that he was assigned to this task. He managed to convince several
notable Albanian Young Turk members, such as brothers Draga (Nexhip and Ferhat Draga),
and Bajram Curri to attend a meeting in Firzovik (Kosovo Vilayet) and to use their
capabilities for spreading fears of “foreign intervention” among this group and to gain their
support in order to bring to the constitutional restoration.1097 Although initially they were in
the minority, the configuration was soon to change in favour of the Young Turks. Allied with
Albanian-speaking Young Turks, Galip Bey started to convince the gathered people at
Firzovik to take an oath (besa) to the constitution.1098 He further explained that only a
constitutional regime could avert the danger of foreign intervention and pointed out that the
country was in danger, and that a foreign Christian invasion could mean the end for the
Muslim “majority” in Macedonia.1099 The rest of the Albanian-speaking Young Turks added
that the corrupt government in Istanbul did nothing to avert this danger, and consequently the
people had to put their trust in the CUP.1100 The constitution was thus presented as the
solution to these very real and concrete concerns of the rural population. The members of the
Young Turk Movement promised many more rights to the Albanians, including privileges
they had enjoyed prior to the Hamidian regime. After receiving the support of the masses, the
Young Turks sent a telegram to Istanbul asking the Sultan to reinstate the constitution.1101
At the same time, Sultan Abdulhamid II effected major changes to the central administration.
The most important took place after the Albanian-speaking Grand Vizier Ferid Pasha refused
to give any advice to Abdulhamid II on the Ferzovik/Ferizaj meeting. Rumours circulated that
Ferid Pasha was secretly sympathetic towards the Young Turk and Albanian Movements in
Macedonia.1102 Mithat Sukru Bleda described this thusly:
“The warning storm that began in Rumeli started to influence the palace and Abdulhamid II
did not have any other option but to gather his officials to reach a new decision. He later
learned that chaos had broken out.”1103
1097 Remzi Cavus, Firzovik Toplantilarinin Meşrutiyetin İlanina Katkisi, Humanitas Bahar/Spring, Tekirdağ,
2015, pp. 65-72
1098 BOA, Y.PRK.ASK, 258/82/6
1099 BOA, Y.PRK.ASK, 258/82/7
1100 Suleyman Kulce, op.cit, (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2013)
1101 Gul Tokay, Macedonian Reforms…
1102 Ibid, p. 62
1103 Mithat Sukru Bleda, pp. 49-50; “Rumeli’de kopan fırtınanın sarayın temellerini sarsmaya basladıgını
hisseden Ikinci Abdülhamid artık baska çare kalmadıgını anladıgı için vükelâyı saraya toplamıs durumu
inceleterek kesin bir karara varmaları yolunda kendilerini zorlamaya baslamıstı. Saraya gelip gidenlerin hesabı
yoktu. Bir keşmekeştir baslamıstı.”
246
Thus, on 22 July Ferid Pasha was replaced and the new Grand Vizier Said Pasha advised the
Sultan to agree to restore the Constitution from 1876. On the following day this was
celebrated by unprecedented jubilation over the whole of Ottoman Macedonia, while a
military parade was organised in Manastir. Mithat Sukru Bleda remembers that “the
celebration happened in all cities of Rumelia, except Istanbul, and the youth, elderly, children
– all citizens together – celebrated this event.”1104 on the same day, Ahmed Niyazi Bey, with
his comrade, the Albanian Tosk guerilla leader Çerçiz Topulli, and the Macedonian band
leader Apostol Mihajlovski, entered the city as a symbol of the Ottoman-Albanian-
Macedonian cooperation in the revolution. 1105 In the city of Thessaloniki, Enver Pasha
returned from the Tikvesh region to declare triumph with the words: “We are all brothers.”1106
All the population on the streets of Rumelia was celebrating by carrying portraits of Mithat
Pasa, Enver and Niyaz, and Eyup Sabri (Mithat Pasa’nın, Enver ve Niyazi’nin, Eyüp
Sabri’nin resimleri kapısılıyordu). 1107 In conclusion, this Young Turk Revolution was
undoubtedly the work of the military, yet augmented with the support of the Ottoman Muslim
civilians in the Macedonian provinces. Gul Tokay concludes that “the Young Turk Revolution
could therefore also be called the revolution of the Macedonian Muslims, because it was the
Macedonian situation that united the army and the Muslims.”1108
4.3. THE YOUNG TURKS AND ALBANIANS AFTER THE REVOLUTION
The Young Turk Revolution of July 1908 marked the return to constitutionalism in the
Ottoman Empire and the victory of the desire of the CUP members to modernise the central
government with a vision of a multi-national state system. As we have seen, many diverse
groups - including Ottoman Albanians - gave their support hoping to gain privileges or greater
autonomy. However, of all the problems that the Young Turks inherited from the Hamidian
regime after July 1908, the “nationalities question” proved to be the most difficult to
resolve.1109 In this regard, the brother of the Grand Vezier Ferid Pasha, Sureyya Bey, has
1104 Ibid, p. 50; “Bu mealdeki ilânın yayılmasından bir gün önce Istanbul hariç Rumeli’nin bütün sehirlerinde
hürriyet ilân edilmis ve genç ihtiyar, çoluk, çocuk yüzbinlerce vatandas sokaklara dökülerek eylemlere baslamıs
bulunuyordu.”
1105 Gul Tokay, Macedonian Reforms…, p. 62
1106 Ibid.
1107 Mithat Sukru Bleda, p. 50
1108 Gul Tokay, Macedonian Reforms… p. 62
1109 Ahmad, Feroz. The Young Turks and the Ottoman Nationalities : Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Jews, and
Arabs, 1908-1918, (Utah: University of Utah Press, 2014), p. 1.
247
come to the conclusion that “the year 1908 was the worst and most threatening period for
Albania (1908 senesi Arnavutluk’un en mes’um, en hatarnâk bir devresi idi).”1110
The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 caused change of power among the various Ottoman
ethnic or religious groups that had been active as part of the political opposition organisations
before these events. In its aftermath, organisations like Dashnaktsutiun, IMRO, some
Albanian-speaking bands and their representatives, together with Ahmed Riza and Talat Bey
became part of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies such as Ismail Kemal, Necip Draga,
Dukangjizade Basri, and made Jane Sandanski a respected participant in Ottoman politics.1111
On the other hand, following the Revolution, some Albanian intellectuals hoped that the CUP
would grant them privileges and political rights to cultural activities. In the first days after the
Revolution, the members of the CUP made certain concessions in the educational and cultural
fields in accordance with the spirit of the constitutional monarchy.1112 In this regard they set
up clubs and schools that supported the use of the Albanian language. The most active club
was the Society for the Unity of the Albanian Language (Bashkimi) led in Manastir by Fehim
Bey Zavalani, which emerged as the most widely recognised centre of Albanian political and
cultural activism. Furthermore, the clubs that were established in the Manastir vilayeti did not
have a ”uniformed programme,” but their common aim was to work for the Albanian cultural
development.1113
Actually, the Bosnian annexation crisis in October 1908, and Bulgarian declaration of
independence pushed the Albanian element to support Young Turks. In this respcet, many
Albanian intellectuals feared that the new established Bulgaria can trigger the leaderships of
Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece to seek territorial compensation in the three vilayets. The
Albanian leadership had simoultanously laid claim to these areas too, considering them to be
part of an imagined Albania. In the following months however, new developments were to
create a rift between the CUP and the Albanian intellectuals, with events taking place in
Ottoman Macedonia. Their contested policies started when a pan-Albanian Congress was
organised by the Albanian intellectuals, who gathered to discuss the Albanian Alphabet
scripts in Manastir between 14 and 22 November. This event is known in the Albanian
1110 Sureya Bey, op.cit. p. 96
1111 Sukru Hanioglu, op.cit. p. 6-7
1112 Nuray Bozbora, Albanian Perception Of 1908 Revolution And Its Effects On Albanian Nationalism, IBAC
vol.2, 2012, p. 631
1113 Nathalie Clayer, Edhe një herë mbi kryengritjet shqiptare të pasvitit 1908, Përpjekja 30-31, 2013, pp. 85-122.
248
historiography as the First Congress of Manastir. During the Congress, they agreed to use
Latin scripts as a template for the Albanian alphabet. This decision was not welcomed by the
Ottoman authorities, the Greek Orthodox Church (there was no Albanian Orthodox church at
the time), and religious Muslim circles. Many Albanian-speaking imams opposed this
decision and supported the Arabic scripts as a base for the Albanian alphabet. They had the
absolute support of the CUP, and as a result, the Ottoman authorities organised another
congress in July 1909, known as the Congress of Dibra (Manastir vilayeti). Nevertheless, this
attempt was not successful due to the strong opossition of the Albanian delegates and it
marked a start of future conflicts between the CUP and Albanian intellectuals. As a response,
the Albanian intelligentsia arranged another congress that was held in Elbasan (also in the
Manastir vilayet) between 2 and 9 September 1909. It dealt primarily with the approach to the
dissemination of Albanian education and cultural activities, considering the standard Latin
script alphabet a closed chapter. 1114 To this end, the Normal School of Elbasan was
established and it became a milestone for Albanian education. Furthermore, more than sixty
Albanian cultural and political clubs promoting the Albanian language and culture were
formed throughout Ottoman Albania and Macedonia (the three vilayets). Apart from these
Albanian intellectuals who opposed the CUP and Ottoman centralisation, the Albanian
‘traditionalists’ or ‘reactionists’ – supporters of Sultan Abdulhamid II and the sharia –
organised a number of meetings to oppose CUP’s centralisation policy. This Albanian
reactionary movement was developing in parallel with the Istanbul events of 31 March 1909,
which demanded the return of the Hamidian regime.1115
In 1909, the situation in the Kosovo vilayeti was exacerbated when the Albanian speaking
notable Isa Boletini, incited a protests in Mitrovica city, part of Kosovo vilayet. His success
was in mobilising in a short period of time a lot of Albanian brigands who opposed the CUP
policy.1116 As a reaction, the Ottoman forces suppressed these anti-Constitutional riots in
Ottoman Macedonia. According to Christopher Psilos “until the counter-revolution of April
1909, the Albanian disturbances, predominantly in northern Macedonia, occurred on the
instigation and with the active participation of local chieftains and band-leaders like Isa
Boletini and his followers. Such was the case in the second half of March 1909, when three
Ottoman battalions were sent to the Kosovo vilayet with a mission to suppress the irregulars
1114 Perse u zgjodhen dy alfabete, Materiale e Dokumente. Studime Filologjike (in Albanian). No. 4. Tirana:
Akademia e Shkencave e RPSSH, Instituti i Gjuhesise dhe i Letersise. 1988. pp. 149–159.
1115 Nathalie Clayer. Op.cit. Përpjekja 30-31:085-122.
1116 Christopher Psilos, op.cit.; Stavro Skëndi, Mendimi Politik Dhe Veprimtarija Kryengritese Shqiptare 1881-
1912, Përpjekja 09, 1996, pp. 133-157
249
of Isa Boletini and restore the Ottoman administrative and military control over the districts of
lpek and Yakova.“1117 During that time, Ottoman Macedonia kept the region where Albanian
insurrections broke out in turmoil. In 1910, the CUP abolished all Albanian schools, Albanian
cultural activities, societies and clubs, especially after the Kosovo Revolt of 1910. Between
1910 and 1912, the unionists applied centralisation policies in the region and used
Ottomanism as an ideological instrument to translate the imperial identity to the Turkish one.
One can define this attempt as the CUP’s aim of “nationalizing (the) empire.”1118 In this
regard, Kazim Karabekir underlines that “in the case of Macedonia, the formula was the
following: first, garnering the support of the non-Turkish elements for the revolution, and
later controlling and restraining them by deploying the gendarmerie. However, Greeks,
Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs, as well as Arabs and Albanians who were mixed with the
Turks, became provoked and started to bear arms.”1119
These developments made the Macedonian Question even more dangerous, whereby the
Albanian intellectuals started to imagine their future independent Albanian state outside of the
Ottoman Empire. Many of them imagined Macedonia too as part of their new nation-state,
since it was the centre of their cultural activities.1120 For Sureyya Bey, the question of finding
“the border between Albania and Macedonia (Makedonya ile Arnavutluk’un hadd-i fâsilini
sual eyledim)” was still open.1121
Accordingly, the border started “from Mitrovica throughout Kacanink directly to Similina –
where our border necessarily was to be. Furthermore, from Gora to the Adriatic Sea and
straight to the Ambracian Gulf (in nowadays Greece) should definitely be a territory of
Albania.”1122 Not only Sureyya bey, but also other Albanian intellectuals, such as Ismail
1117 Ibid.; Christopher Psilos, op. cit. pp. 164-165.
1118 Allexei Miller, Stefan Berger, Nationalizing Empires, (New York: CEU, 2014)
1119 Kazim Karabekir, p. 18; “en çok Makedonya'da tecrübe sahasına koydukları bu formül şu idi: Türkten gayrı
unsurlara ihtilaller yaptırmak, sonra da orayı nüfuz mıntıkalarına ayırarak jandarma ve idari kontrol koymak ve
asayiş büsbütün bozulduktan sonra kati işgallere başlamak. Rumlar, Ermeniler, Bulgarlar, Sırplar... hatta dini
camia içinde Türklerle kaynaşmış olan Araplar, Arnavutlar ... hep bu maksatla tahrik olunuyor ve
silahlandırılıyordu.”
1120 Nathalie Clayer. Op. cit. Përpjekja 30-31:085-122.
1121 Sureya Bey, p. 127
1122 Ibid., p. 127; Together with Macedonia, he used the term “vilayeti selase” as well by emphasizing “that three
vilayets were under the command of the forigners (ecnebi zabitlerin kumandasi altinda bulunan vilayet-I selase
heyet-I zabitasi bu kešmekeše çaresa olamiyordu). See Sureya Bey, p. 96; Furthermore he states “Metroviçe’den
Kaçanik Bogazina kadar mümted olan simendüfer hattinin Makedonya kitasindan tefrîki ve Arnavutluk’a terk ü
ilhaki halinde (…) Her hale karsi Similina Bogazina ve silsile-i cibaline kadar hududumuzun çekilmesi zarurî
oldugunu anlatti. Birçok mübâhasâttan sonra, gimalen Gora Daglarindan bed’ ile Adriyatik Denizine munsab
sularin taksim-i miyahi boyunca ve cenuben Salahora Körfeziyle Adalar Denizi arasindaki taksim-i miyah hattini
takib ederek Çamlik’ta vaki Fener Burunu’na müntehî kitanin Arnavutluk’a kalmasi sartiyla bir hududun vaz‘ u
tayinini ve bu suretle bir Arnavutluk’un teskili.”
250
Kemali, Hasan Prishtina, Nexhip Draga, and others, shared a similar imagination about
Ottoman Macedonia as an Albanian territory.1123 For example, the former supporter of the
CUP and member of the Kosovo Vilayeti in the Ottoman Parliament, Hasan Prishtina, wrote
in his memoirs: “I believe that the time has come to throw off this cruel yoke by means of a
joint uprising with a view to creating an autonomous Albanian-Macedonian state.”1124 This
imagination of the Albanian-Macedonian state was even brought into even sharper relief
when the neighbouring countries increased their irredentist activities in Ottoman Macedonia,
and the repressive policies of the CUP towards the Albanians in Kosovo strengthened during
the outbreak of the revolts in 1910, 1911, and 1912.
When the Albanian insurgents realised that their salvation could not be achieved unless they
combined their political activities with armed ones, many Albanian intellectuals demanded
the unification of the Albanian vilayets with the Macedonian.1125 Since the Kosovo vilayeti
was pacified in 1910, it was now the turn of Malësi e Madhe (Iskodra vilayeti) to be the centre
of uprisings, which began in March 1911. During these revolts in Malesia, the Albanian
intellectuals and locals signed an agreement called the Memorandum of Greca. In the twelve
points of the Memorandum, the Albanian intellectuals requested the establishment of a civil
and financial administration, legal structures, an Albanian gendarmerie and police force, and
use of the Albanian along with Turkish language in administration.1126 The aim of these steps
was to pave the way to the creation of an autonomous Albanian province. But they did not
find significant support for their demands neither from the foreign powers nor from the
Ottoman government until the Ottoman Sultan agreed to some of these demands in 1912.1127
During 1912, Albanians staged another uprising in the Kosovo Vilayeti, organised by Hasan
Prishtina and other local Albanians who argued for the implementation of fourteen points1128
1123 Nathalie Clayer, op.cit., in Nathalie Clayer Et Erdal Kaynar, Penser, agir et vivredans l'Empire ottomanet en
Turquie, Peetersparis - Louvain - Walpole, 2013
1124 Hasan bey Prishtina, Nji shkurtim kujtimesh mbi kryengritjen shqiptare të vjetit 1912. Shkrue prej Hassan
Prishtinës (Shkodra: Shtypshkroja Franciskane, 1921); “Pra, më duket se ka arrijtë koha me pështue prej kësaj
zgjedhje mizore nderpermjet të nji kryengritje të përbashket per nji shtete autonom Shqiptaro-Maqedon.”
1125 Ibid.
1126 Nuray Bozobra, op.cit., Ibac 2012 Vol.2, P. 631; Emine Bakalli, Kryengritja E Malësisë Së Mbishkodrës E
Vitit 1911: Përkufizime Dhe Refleksione, Gjurmime Albanologjike - Seria E Shkencave Historike 40. 2010, pp.
187-202.
1127 Zekeria Cana, Rreth Kryengritjes Së Vitit 1912, Gjurmime Albanologjike - Seria E Shkencave Historike 39,
2009, pp. 9-23.
1128 „The demands were:
1. that trained officials be employed in Albania who know the language and the customs of the country;
2. that military service be carried out only in Albania and Macedonia, except in wartime;
3. that laws be passed and implemented based on the ‘law of the mountains’ (djibal) for those regions
where it has been shown by fact that judicial organs will never be productive;
251
and requests for Albanian autonomy.1129 Since the requests could not be granted due to the
intervention of the neighbouring states, this anticipated the beginning of the Balkan Wars. As
a result, more extreme violence and bloodshed were perpetrated in Ottoman Macedonia, and
this time its territory was shared among the (neighbouring) Balkan states.
Based on Sami Frasheri’s vision of the future Ottoman Empire, Nuray Bozbora argues further
that the Albanian and Turkish togetherness was a sort of long-lasting companionship, but
there was an inevitable fragmentation of this cooperation that brought this companionship to
an end for pragmatic reasons.1130 In similar ways, Hobsbawm emphasises that “any individual
can sustain all sorts of multiple attachments, and not see them as incompatible, until some
kind of conflict arises.”1131 Hans Grandits, whose interest lies in such conflicts, reckons that
multi-layered loyalty relations are always present in daily life during times of peace.
However, during times of war, revolt, and organised violence, loyalties generally narrow
down, and people tend to be compelled by the clashing parties to clearly take sides.1132 This
was also present in the Young Turk-Albanian relations, where prior to the Young Turk
Revolution cooperation and multiple attachments prevailed, but the period of revolts and
4. that the Albanians be given enough modern arms. The modality of distribution will be left to the
government. Arms depots will be constructed in sensitive regions from which the Albanians can get
weapons, if needed;
5. that elementary schools be founded and opened in all towns of the prefectures of Kosovo, Monastir,
Shkodra and Janina where there is a population of over 300,000 people; that agricultural schools be
opened such as the one in Salonika since the country is essentially agricultural; and that the curriculum
be taught in the language of the country;
6. that modern theological schools be opened where they are needed;
7. that private schools be allowed to be founded and opened in Albania;
8. that the language of the country be taught in elementary and secondary schools;
9. that particular attention be paid to commerce, agriculture and public works, and that railroads be
constructed.
10. that regional organisations be set up;
11. that more attention be paid than earlier in preserving national traditions and customs;
12. that an amnesty be declared without distinction of class or race, for all Ottomans who took part in the
uprising, for commanders, officers, public servants and soldiers who fled from the army and their
homes, and for those freed or having escaped from prison during the uprising;
13. that the Turkish government give compensation, based on real value, for all the houses that were
destroyed earlier and for which the owners did not receive compensation, and for those that were
damaged and destroy this time;
14. that the members of the cabinet of Haki and Said Pasha be taken to the high court and tried.”
See: Hasan bey Prishtina: op.cit. Shkrue prej Hassan Prishtinës (Shkodra: Shtypshkroja Franciskane, 1921)
1129 Kujtim Nuro dhe Nezir Bato, Hasan Prishtina – permbledhje dokumentash (1908-1934), (Tirane: Drejtoria e
Pergjithshme e Arkivave te Shtetit, 1982); See also in: http://shqiperiaebashkuar.al/?p=20556 (Accessed.
21.07.2020.)
1130 Nuray Bozobra, op.cit. 2012, 638
1131 Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press: 1990), p. 123.
1132 Hannes Grandits et al., Introduction. Social (Dis-)Integration and the National Turn inthe Late- and Post-
Ottoman Balkans. Towards an Analytical Framework, in Conflicting Loyalties in the Balkans. The Great Powers,
the Ottoman Empire and Nation-Building, Hannes Grandits, Nathalie Calyer and Robert Pichler (London: I.B.
Tauris, 2011)
252
uprisings brought this cooperation to an end. The reasons for this split and the causes for
rebellions were many and varied, but Hasan Prishtina, in his memoirs “reduce[d] them to
those which [were] the most important: the nationalism of the Young Turk committee; the
incompatibility of Albanian, and particularly Geg, traditions, with the conditions of freedom
under the Turks; the pan-Islamic intrigues of the government; the army's meddling in politics;
the Turkish atrocities of 1910; the development of national consciousness in Albania; the
terrible and illegal system implemented by the Young Turk government during the elections
in 1912.”1133 Since 1908 the Young Turks agreed on Ottomanism, but were divided regarding
its shape between a more “liberal Ottomanism” and “Turkist Ottomanism.”1134 Ultimately, the
“Turkist Ottomanism” ideology became oppressive towards non-Turkish subjects and broke
down apart the Young Turk-Albanian cooperation and companionship. The CUP’s
Weltanschauung was committed to solving this issue, but was based on positivist principles
and a centralisation policy. An attempt to realise these modernisation projects and
nationalising the Empire increased the dominance of the Turkist elements over the multiple
Ottoman identities.1135 This effort of the CUP of “nationalizing empire” triggered multiple
Albanian revolts and made room for the intervention of the Balkan states. As a reaction to the
CUP policy, the neighbouring states attempted “imperialising (the) nation-state” and
implementing their “small state imperialism.”1136
4.4. ENTANGLED IMPERIALISMS: THE GREAT POWERS AND THE BALKAN
STATES ON THE ROAD TO THE BALKAN WARS (1912-1913)
As has been shown, the Balkans had been in a state of turmoil since the early 1900s,
conditioned by the European imperialism, Balkan “small-state imperialisms,” and the
Ottoman “borrowed colonialism.” These practices for realising the “greater state” projects
clarified and energised in all the countries simultaneously the impulses towards joint action
against the weakened Ottoman Empire after the Ottoman-Italian War in September 1911. In
the autumn of 1911, Italy exhibited its imperialist aspirations of conquest towards an African
province of the Ottoman Empire, triggering a chain of “small-state imperialism” policies
towards Ottoman Macedonia across the Balkans. Eventually these rival Balkan states took
joint action against the Ottoman Empire in 1912, which was named the Balkan League. To the
1133 Hasan bey Prishtina: op.cit., 1921, p. 7
1134 Nuray Bozbora, op.cit. 2012, p. 640
1135 Ibid., p. 640
1136 Marharyta Fabrykant and Renee Buhr, Small state imperialism: the place of empire in contemporary
nationalist discourse, Nations and Nationalism Volume 22, Issue 1, 2015
253
contrary, due to the establishment of the League, Dual Monarchy faced a new and threatening
situation in its Balkan’s “periphery”, while “the retreat of Ottoman power raised strategic
questions that Russian diplomats and policy-makers found impossible to ignore.”1137 In this
regard, the Macedonian Questions and the League of Balkans attracted the attention of the
Great Powers as well. Nevertheless, during this “Macedonian crisis,” the two continental
alliance blocs were drawn even deeper into the antipathies of a region that was entering a
period of conflict and violence that escalated into the Great War. It is conceivable that at this
time, the Balkan states became closely intertwined with the geopolitics of the European
system, but also the Great Powers were intermingled with the “Balkan system,” creating a set
of escalatory mechanisms that would lead the whole European continent into the “zone of
violence” in 1912-1913 and 1914-1918.1138
In this regard, several questions warrant posing: how did the governments of the Balkan states
came to the idea to join their forces and establish the League? How did they generate (their
joint) foreign policy? Was this policy formulated according to the imperialist or nationalist
logics, or both? How did the Balkans, a “peripheral region” of Europe’s “centres,” come to be
the theatre of a Macedonian crisis and Great War of such magnitude? How did an
international system that seemed to be entering an era of détente look on these events? How
was it possible that a year later, in 1914, conflicts escalated into a world war? Was that due to
the imperialist aspirations of the Great Powers? Why did such features of the pre-Balkan and
World War I scene as the Macedonian Questions and the Albanian uprisings had such
profound influence, and how were they combined and interpreted by the minds of those who
had political power? When decision-makers discoursed on the international situation or on
external threats, were they seeing something real, or projecting their own imaginations, or
both? The aim so far has been to reconstruct as vividly as possible the highly dynamic
‘decision positions’ occupied by the key actors on various levels before the Balkan autumn of
1912 and European summer of 1914.
1137 Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, (London: Penguin, 2013), p. 174.
1138 Ibid.
254
4.4.1. “SMALL-STATE IMPERIALISM” – A ROAD TOWARDS THE BALKAN WARS
(1912-1913)
The greater portion of historical scholarship tends to view nationalism and imperialism as
“two mutually exclusive phenomena,” 1139 but recent scholars John A. Hall and Siniša
Malešević argue that “many forms of late imperialisms were fully compatible with nationalist
projects and that empires and nation-states had more in common than is usually thought.”1140
In contrast to the traditional accounts that posit nations and empires as mutually exclusive
projects, in the Ottoman Macedonian case, I highlight that imperial and nationalist discourses
can actually reinforce one another and that they are intertwined in a broader trans-regional
perspective. In this regard, one should keep in mind that neither the empires nor the nationstates
operated as fixed and mutually exclusive entities. Instead, they were characterised by
sovereignty that was “shared out, layered, overlapping.”1141 In practice a nation-state would
often pretend and develop imperial(ist) aspirations and try to achieve them through
national(ist) narratives. Such an interdependence of nationalism and imperialism was seen in
the context of small Balkan polities (but also among the European powers) during the “Age of
Empire.”
In contrast to the Young Turk practice that attempted to modernise the imperial state by
means of nationalising the Empire, the new nation-states such as Serbia, Montenegro, Greece,
and Bulgaria were built around the emerging nationalism and imperialism, and thus, made
reverse attempts at imperialising the nation-state. Influenced by this Zeitgeist dominated by
imperialism and nationalism, the Balkan nation-states were to foster an irredentist and
imperialistic foreign policy that some historians have called “small-state imperialism.”1142
Since all these Balkan nation-states self-consciously based their existence on either ancient
primordial narratives or medieval dynastic statehoods, the borders of those ancient or
medieval states became, quite consistently, the borders desired by the nationalist leadership.
As has been shown in previous chapters, the problem was that the borders of all of the ancient
and medieval states fluctuated widely over the years and always overlapped in Ottoman
Macedonia. At one time or another, the Ottoman Macedonia was ruled by Alexander the
Great and the Byzantine Empire (Greece), the Illyrians (Albania), or the medieval empires of
1139 Sinisa Malesevic, Nationalism and Imperialism as Enemies and Friends: Nation-State Formation and
Imperial Projects in the Balkans, in Nations and States, Power and Civility, ed. by F. Duina (Toronto: University
of Toronto Pres, 2018), p. 149;
1140 Ibid., p. 149
1141 Ibid., p. 151
1142 Marharyta Fabrykant and Renee Buhr, op.cit.
255
Tsar Dušan (Serbia) and Simeon the Great, as well as under several notable rulers such as
Boris I and Ivan Assen II (Bulgaria). Since the Balkan intelligentsia was inspired by the idea
of reviving the glories of the medieval empire, they employed such slogans as “back to
Simeon the Great,”1143 and “to the Kosovo battle,” and “Dušan the Mighty,”1144 or fought over
the ancient figure of Alexander the Great (in Greek and Albanian media).1145 In this attempt,
they often imitated their European mentors and tried to achieve international recognition and
garner support from the Great Powers. In this respect, similarly to the practices of the Great
Powers applied in Africa and other parts of the world, the Balkan states too implemented
imperial discourses and practices in order to increase domestic and international legitimacy.
As if the problem of overlapping “historical” claims were not daunting enough, each of the
nation-states claimed “historical rights” over imagined territories on the basis of imagined
communities and threatened to thwart the plans and imperialist strategies of the neighbouring
countries. In this regard, the General Consul of the Kingdom of Serbia to Thessaloniki,
Zivojin Balugdzic, in his address to the Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Pasic maintained
that, “according to certain ethnic forces, Europe [was] putting in efforts to enforce
decentralisation in Turkey. Since many parts [were] governed by Arnaut [Albanian] lords
[rulers], our aspirations towards Skoplje, Veles, and Prilep would risk being cast in an
unfavourable light, because the Arnautluk [Albanian presence] suddenly emerged in the areas
that [were] chiefly under our rule.”1146 In a response, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Nikola Pasic, wrote: “[I]t does not depend on our will if the situation in the Balkans will take
such a shape that threatens the survival of the Serbs. If this (revolt and) agitation for a “greater
Albania,” which is directed against the life of the Serb element in Kosovo, will receive
support.“1147 He further added that “Austro-Hungary [was] laying the foundation for an
autonomous Albania, which [would] consist of the whole of Old Serbia, the greater part of
1143 Daskalov, op.cit. 2005, p. 230
1144 Aleksandar Pavlovic, Rereading the Kosovo Epic, Serbian Studies Jornal, Vol. 23, No 1 (2009), pp. 83-96
1145 Nathalie, Clayer, op.cit.
1146 DASIP, MIDS, PPO,4/17. IX 1912, F-VIII, D-red 125/II.; „za nas je prebrojavanje u opste nezgodno, a jos
nezgodnije danas, kada se Evropa trudi da na osnovu nekih etnickih snaga izvede u Turskoj izvesnu
decentralizaciju. I kako ce izbori svuda izvan krajeva, u kojima su Arnauti gospodari, biti relativno slobodni,
nase pretenzije na Skoplje, Veles i Prilep mogu se pojaviti u nezgodnoj svetlosti. (…) jer se je u krajevima u
kojima je glavna snaga nasa zacario Arnautluk, koji je poslednjim uspesima svojim postao jos osioniji, te je
svako slobodno kretanje nasem zivlju nemoguce.“
1147 DASIP, MIDS, PO. 7.IX 1912, F-H, D-2; „od nase volje ne zavisi hoce li stvari na Balkanu primiti oblik,
koji preti opstanku Srba ili ne. Hoce li se podrzavati agitacija i bune za ‚veliku Arbaniju,‘ koja je upravljena
protiv zivota srpskog elementa na Kosovu.
256
Macedonia, and the whole of Epirus; in other words, the vilayets of Kosovo, Manastir,
Iskodra, and Yanina.”1148
Such discussions about autonomous Albania were also led among the politicians and
statesmen in Bulgaria. Namely, in the case that Ottoman government “[satisfied] the demands
of the Albanians (Porta ispuniti zahteve Arbanasa),”1149 Bulgaria was to “force Turkey to
implement reforms in Macedonia in accordance with the Treaty of Berlin” or even “declare
war [to the Ottoman Empire].”1150 Also in the Bulgarian media was discussed this “Albanian
Question” (Albanskiyat vapros) as a “strategy of the Ottoman Empire to give power to the
Albanians over Christian territories of (Turkey in) Europe.”1151 In this vein, politicians from
the neighbouring countries insisted on separation between Christians and Muslims or more
specifically between Bulgarians, Serbs, and Greeks on the one hand and the Turks (and
Albanians) on the other. In other words, while the Ottomans were imposing legal measures
and trying to reorganise Rumelia, rival Balkan states were ready to start collaborating among
(even better: colluding with each other and the GPs) themselves and with the Great Powers
against the Ottoman Empire.1152 The discursive medium by which Balkan states and its agents
interfere into politics on the ground was the insistence on the “natural” dispositions of their
imagined communities to struggle for ascendancy through violence in their ethno-religiously
mixed societies. By the stroke of a diplomatic pen, the Balkan states declared themselves to
be the “natural” defenders of “Christian” groups since ”ancient” or “mediaeval” times, and
thus expected from the locals to help the states to forge their imperialist policies in order to
establish “greater states.” For this purpose, in a report from 5 September 1912, Nikola Pasic
pointed out that “all four Balkan Christian states (Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro)
should forge a quadruple alliance led by the motto ‘Balkans for the Balkan people,’ with the
aim of defence and attack.“1153 This cooperation of “the Balkan Christian states” was brought
1148 DASIP, MIDS, PPO, 8.21. IX 1912, F-XVIII, D-red 619; „u njemu je vidjena samo priprema Austro-
Ugarske za stvaranje jedne autonomne Arbanije, koja bi obuhvatila svu Staru Srbiju, veci dio Macedonije i ceo
Epir (vilajete: kosovski, bitoljski, skadarski i janinski.“
1149 DASIP, MIDS, PO, 8.21. IX 1912, F-VIII, D-2
1150 DASIP, MIDS, PO 8/21. IX 1912, F-XI, D-6 raported by Simic; For this purpose, a Bulgarian Ambassador
to St. Petersburg shared the view with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs about situation in Macedonia that
„ako sile u najkracem vremenu ne prinude Tursku da izvede u Makedoniji reforme u smislu Berlinskog ugovora,
Bugarska ce biti prinudjena na rat.“
1151 State Archives of North Macedonia (DARSM) in Skopje, v.VI,87/Xv; v.IV.104/1912, 1 inv.br.283/76; See
also Newspaper Balgariya, 2. November, 1912, Sofiya, title „Albanskiyat vapros;“ See also a study: Nikola
Rizov, Albanskoto vazraždanie, (Sofiya, Knižarnica Hr. Olčev, 1909)
1152 Isa Blumi op.cit. 2003b: 103– 121
1153 DASIP, MIDS, PO, 5/18. IX 1912, F-Aneks, D-Ugovor izmedju Srbije I Bugarske (Grcke?); “da bi trebale
sve cetiri balkanske hriscanske drzave Srbija, Bugarska, Grcka i CG da zakljuce jedan cetvorni sporazum na
nacelu ‚Balkan Balkanskim Narodima‘ za odbranu i napad.“
257
to fruition through a series of bilateral treaties known as the League of Balkans. With Russian
assistance, Serbia and Bulgaria settled their differences and signed an alliance on 13 March
1912. However, an alliance among all parties was only created in September 1912, when it
was already evident that Albania would be granted autonomy by the Ottoman government.
The League of Balkans was supported by Imperial Russia, because it opposed the Austro-
Hungarian policy that supported the Albanian national movement and the idea of autonomous
Albania. 1154 In the end, the Dual Monarchy‘s objections to the expansion of Serbian,
Bulgarian, and Montenegrin policies under Russian patronage in the Ottoman lands,
amounted to enforcing counter measures by supporting the Albanian-speaking population. As
a consequence, the Dual Monarchy became very interested in the “Albanian element” in the
Ottoman Empire, and through various imperialist policies, such as construction of
railways,1155 the Albanian memorandum,1156and the Kultusprotektorat,1157 tried to expand its
power throughout the “Albanian lands” and all the way to Thessaloniki. For these reasons, the
Austro-Hungarian authorities remained closely connected to local Albanian notables, with
whom they often cooperated, and thought that “in the case that Turkey [i.e. the Ottoman
Empire] were to decline, Albanians [would] yield to the Austro-Hungarian Army, because
they [could not] mount resistance against the Slavs alone.“ The latter was stated in a report, in
which the Austro-Hungarian consul to Skopje, Pözel claimed that the (Ottoman) government
1154 Teodora Toleva, op.cit. p. 78.
1155 HHStA PA XIV/Kt. 41, f. 651r–654v; “(…) von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus betrachtet, ist es nie zu
befürchten, dass die Arnauten dauernd dem slavischen Einflusse gewonnen werden. Wenn also die positiven
Bestrebungen Serbiens und Montenegros nie grosse Erfolge in Albanien aufzuweisen hatten, ist die destruktive
Wirkung des slavischen Intriguenspiels, namentlich in diesem Amtsbezirke, von nicht zu unterschätzendem,
insbesondere für Österreich-Ungarn und die Türkei schädlichem Erfolge gekrönt. In diese Kategorie gehören:
Verdächtigungen Österreich-Ungarns mit Gebietserwerbungsgelüsten und daran knüpfende Propaganda gegen
die Sandjakbahn, mit der Gefährdung des Islams durch das Kultusprotektorat und zu befürchtende
Proselytenmacherei, wie es in Bosnien geschehen soll, Provozierung fortwährender innerer Unruhen zur
Schwächung der Türkei, Heraufbeschwörung von unaufhörlichen Grenzkonflikten, namentlich auf der
montenegrinischen Grenze.”; See also the involments of the Deutsche Bahn: OR0610 (Orientbahnen
Ostrumelisches Netz) Abtretung an Bulgarien Vol. 7, 1.1.1909 - 31.12.1911; OR1012 Macedonische (Saloniki-
Monastir) Emission 30.6.1892 - 7.3.1893. In these activities see also the involvements of Deutsche Bank, Berlin
Orientbüro: Orientbahnen Politische Situationsberichte Balkankrieg 1912/1913 (Proteste) Vol. 1, Müller an den
Verwaltungsrat der Orientalischen Eisenbahnen, Wien v. 30.06.1910 betr. Aufstand in Albanien - Pazifizierung
Albaniens
1156 Teodora Toleva, op.cit. pp. 81-92.
1157 „Mit den Verträgen von Karlowitz (1699) und Passarowitz (1718) konnten sich die Österreicher von den
Osmanen ein Protektorat über die Katholiken im nördlichen Bergland von Albanien garantieren lassen. Das
österreichische Protektorat hatte einen positiven Einfluss auf die Beibehaltung des nationalen Bewusstseins der
Albaner. Im Rahmen dieses Kultusprotektorats wurden zahlreiche Kirchenbauten und -renovationen sowie
Geistliche finanziell unterstützt.“ See: Engelbert Deusch, Das k.(u.)k. Kultusprotektorat im albanischen
Siedlungsgebiet in seinem kulturellen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Umfeld, Zur Kunde Südosteuropas. Band
II/38, (Böhlau, Wien: 2009)
258
had become aware of the Slavic threat (slavischen Gefahr)” too.1158 In line with the latter,
Austro-Hungarian authorities counted on the support of Albanian notables such as Hasan Bey
and Nexhip Bey Draga to “turn against the Slavic enemies (die Albaner sich insgesamt gegen
den slavischen Feind kehren werden).“1159 These local notables in fact played important roles
at various levels (local, regional, and international) by negotiating with different sides. They
were able to switch their loyalties according to the given situation and to adapt to new
conditions. In other Austro-Hungarian reports, the Draga family were also described as
Italophiles and opponents to the Dual Monarchy, while Hasan Bey was described as a
supporter of the British Empire (Anglophile).1160 This process, it is important to note, also
differed with the various developments on the ground and thus, local notables (like the
abovementioned Hasan Bey and Draga) at one time supported the Kingdom of Italy or British
Empire, and at another the Dual Monarchy or any other regional state such as the Ottoman
Empire, Montenegro, or Serbia, or were entirely against these claiming no allegiances
1158 Nr. 157 Pözel an Berchtold HHStA PA XIV/Kt. 42, f. 171r–175v.; Uskub, den 28. September 1912;
„Verhandlungen der osmanischen Regierung mit albanischen Anführern. Umwerbung mit materiellen
Zugeständnissen und Postenverleihungen sowie Warnung vor osmanischem Zusammenbruch auf dem Balkan.
Erklärung Nexhip Bey Dragas an den Konsul zu Orientierung der Albaner an Österreich-Ungarn im Falle eines
Endes der osmanischen Herrschaft. Weitere Sympathisanten der Donaumonarchie. Beginn der Waffenausgabe
an albanische Hochlandbewohner. Versuch der Umsetzung von Reformen. Teilweise Anwendung des
Gewohnheitsrechts. Aktionen albanischer, bulgarischer und serbischer Banden. Reise der Konsuln Bulgariens,
Großbritanniens, Frankreichs und Russlands in den Polog zur Überprüfung der Lage der christlichen
Bevölkerung. Wie ich aus verlässlicher Quelle streng vertraulich erfahre, hat Ibrahim Pascha anlässlich der
Verhandlungen den Albanesen-Führern vor Augen geführt, dass es den Albanesen zwar schliesslich gelingen
könnte, das Osmanische Reich zu stürzen, dass sie hiebei aber selbst auch zu Grunde gehen müssen, weil sie
einer fremden Macht zum Opfer fallen werden. Die Chefs sollen hierauf begeistert geschworen haben, treue
Untertanen des Sultans zu bleiben. (…) Die Albanesen wollen mit der türkischen Regierung halten und dieselbe
gegen jeden (besonders betont) äusseren Feind bewaffnet unterstützen. Deswegen hätten Nedžib und Hassan Bey
auch diese Dummköpfe (imbéciles, sic) wie Riza Bey und Genossen hieher kommen lassen. Sollte jedoch die
Türkei untergehen, so würden sich die Albanesen in die Arme Österreich-Ungarn[s] werfen, weil sie den
numerisch überlegenen Slaven allein nicht widerstehen könnten und weil sie sehen, dass in ÖsterreichUngarn
auch die Mohammedaner volle Religionsfreiheit geniessen. Dieselben Erklärungen wiederholte Nedžib Bey
einige Tage später auch persönlich dem hieramtlichen Dragomane. Ich habe Herrn Mosel einfach geantwortet,
dass es ein steter Wunsch Österreich-Ungarns ist, dass die Albanesen sich im Rahmen des türkischen Reiches
kulturell und wirtschaftlich entwickeln. Aus derselben Quelle höre ich auch, dass Goracucchi (Luigj Gurakuqi)
in der ersten Hälfte Septembers [sic] im strengsten Incognito hier geweilt und an der Annäherung der Nord- und
Süd-Albanesen gearbeitet haben soll. (…) Auch sonst scheint die Regierung, um angesichts der „slavischen
Gefahr“ wenigstens von Seite der Arnauten Ruhe zu haben, in elfter Stunde einen energischen Anlauf zur
Inangriffnahme der Reformen in Albanien nehmen zu wollen.”
1159 Heimroth an Berchtold HHStA PA XII/Kt. 385, f. 22r–23vBericht, Üsküb, den 8. Oktober 1912; Ich hatte in
den letzten Tagen Gelegenheit, sowohl mit Hassan Bey als auch mit Nedžib Bey Draga zu sprechen. Diese
beiden angesehenen Arnautenführer sagten mir spontan, dass die Albaner sich insgesamt gegen den slavischen
Feind kehren werden. Es seien auch schon Vorkehrungen getroffen worden, um die frondierenden Malissoren
auf den Weg der Pflicht zurückzuführen. Sowohl Nedžib als auch Hassan Bey erzählten es freimütig, dass die
Albaner von den Serben Waffen bekommen haben. „Mit eben denselben Waffen“, fügten sie hinzu, „werden wir
die Serben im Notfalle bekämpfen.”
1160 HHStA PA XIV/Kt. 41, f. 651r–654v, Mitrovitza am 16. August 1912; „Es ist nicht ausgeschlossen, dass er
(Nedjib Bey Draga) zwischen den Aufständischen und der serbischen Regierung vermittelte. Die Familie Ali
Draga Pascha ist italophil, gegen die Monarchie verhält sie sich feindlich. (…) Dagegen scheint Hassan Bey,
dessen anglophile Gesinnung seit jeher bekannt ist, zumindest moralisch durch England unterstützt zu warden.”
259
whatsoever. Therefore, the local level was much more complex, led by multiple dynamics of
various actors who took different trajectories according to the given situation. In line with
this, I analyse the responses of the locals on the ground. As I have suggested in this thesis,
attending to the local level is very important in understanding the complexities of the actors
and their daily lives. Here I particularly highlight the local Albanian-speaking population who
reacted towards these various policies and were actively involved in the policy-making.
Numerous scholars who investigated the Macedonian Question have neglected this ‘Albanian’
factor as an important one for gaining a broader perspective of the developments on the
ground. Oftentimes, these locals manipulated the Great Power interests in the region, winning
in the process the financial and military support that they needed for regional stability and
their daily survival. In this regard, the locals often cooperated and negotiated with many
involved parties and shed new light onto the dynamics at play in the Balkans. To examine this
more closely, we may look at how conversions worked in this process. However, on the
ground some of the Albanian notables cooperated closely with the Serbian state and
established agreements with Bulgaria as well (o surovanju nasih politicara s Arnautima i o
nasem sporazumu sa Bugarskom).1161 The report from the office of the Foreign Affairs of
Kingdom of Serbia at that time, particular notes the cooperation with Isa Boletini and that
Serbia supplied the Albanians with large amounts of weapons (iz Srbije salje velika kolicina
oruzja Arnautima i da se Isa Boljetinac otuda pomaze novcem i poklonima).1162 Furthermore,
those diplomatic reports depicted the local level as a place where “bandits (seoski razbojnici)”
were not informed by national ideology, because they “attacked both Serbs and
Albanians.”1163 One could analyse the listed documents as sources that explicitly show that
local conflicts and violence were not triggered by national consciousness as represented in
regional media. On the contrary, the local Albanians supported the proliferation of weapons
among the[ir] neighbours, the (local) Serbs, so that they (the Serbs) could defend themselves
from the bandits that also posed a threat to the Albanian notables.1164 The Austro-Hungarian
reports also support statements that Isa Boletini was provided with arms by the Serbian
1161 DASIP, MIDS, PO 10/23. IX 1912, F-III, D-7
1162 Ibid.
1163 DASIP, MIDS, PO. 13/26. IX 1912, F-III, D-3; Dr. M.DJ. Milojevic konzul kraljevine Srbije – Pristina;
Nikoli Pasicu; „zandarmerijske i vojne vlasti apsolutno nista ne cine za odrzavanje poredka. S toga su sada pravi
predstavnici vlasti i gospodari u ovim stranama seoski razbojnici. Naoruzani i potpuno slobodni, oni krstare
danju i noci po selima i uzimaju sta kome hoce. Napadaju kako Srbe tako i Arnaute.“
1164 Ibid.; „u ovoj opstoj zbunjenosti nasem se zivlju jedino moze pomoci davanjem oruzja. Arnautski se prvaci
tome nece protiviti. Mnogi i zele da se Srbi malo naoruzaju, kako bi se mogli bar donekle braniti od
mnogobrojnih pljackasa, koji postaju opasni i za same arnautske poglavice.“
260
government,1165 which also equipped the locals with weapons, regardless of whether they
were Albanian- or Serbian-speaking individuals and groups.1166 In fact Isa did not act alone,
that is, he was organising the smuggling together with his sons and other “Albanian bandits
(arnautischen Räuber)” such as Mahmud, Bekir, and Rexhep.1167 This meant that conversion
between regional states (i.e. Serbia) and local Albanian notables was taking place in all
directions. These vast regions of the Kosovo vilayet were still not "ethnically" divided. Slavs
and Albanians lived side by side in communities that had shared interests until the Balkan
Wars. Interestingly, the local revolts which dominated the international and regional attention
during those years were the joint village responses to Ottoman (Young Turk) reforms or raids
by radical Serbian nationalists. To maintain that these revolts were exclusively of nationalist
origin would be misleading and an instance of anachronistic analysis. The various documents
on Serb and Albanian relations along the frontier zone suggest that these neighbours were
cooperating and sharing their daily lives. 1168 Furthermore, these locals were also often
opposed to the state decisions of their “motherland.“ It is important to reiterate that many of
their Serbian-speaking neighbours also joined in the defence of the local community (and
Albanian-speaking population) against state outsiders from Belgrade or Istanbul Orthodox
representatives.1169 It was often the case that these regional states, governed by “Serbian”
citizens, were protected by Serbian consuls that created the tensions. Whether Serbian, Greek,
or Bulgarian, foreign representatives on the whole were supportive of measures that created
divided communities, whereby the construction of schools in particular was key for the
nationalist indoctrination to take place (as seen in chapter Two). Even with this ‘educational’
program in force, Belgrade Serb efforts proved incapable of shifting the local Serb resistance
to nationalist provocation emanating from pan-Slavist activities based in Belgrade and St.
1165 HHStA PA XXXVIII/Kt. 405, n. f.; „Einzelheiten zu dem von Isa Boletini geleiteten Waffenschmuggel aus
Serbien.“
1166 HHStA PA XIV/Kt. 41, f. 651r–654v, Mitrovitza am 16. August 1912; „Schwierigkeit
nachrichtendienstlicher Ermittlung serbischer Waffenlieferungen. Beeinflussbarkeit der Albaner durch
auswärtige Mächte und Wirkung gegen Österreich-Ungarn und das Osmanische Reich gerichteter Propaganda
Serbiens und Montenegros. Serbische Einflusspolitik unter dem Schutz der französisch-russischbritischen
Entente. Österreich-Ungarns Einstehen für friedliche Veränderungen und Kulturpolitik. Kompromittierung Isa
Boletinis durch enge Kontakte zu Serbien. Analyse von Isa Boletinis politischer Laufbahn und der Tätigkeit
seiner Verwandten. Politische Haltung der Familie Draga: Beziehungen zu Italien und Serbien. Orientierung
Hasan Prishtinas an Großbritannien.“
1167 HHStA PA XIV/Kt. 41, f. 651r–654v, Mitrovitza am 16. August 1912; „Sowohl Issa als seine Söhne, welche
in Belgrad auf Kosten der serbischen Regierung geweilt haben, verfügen über bedeutende Barmittel, deren
Herkunft unzweifelhaft zu sein scheint. (…) „Die arnautischen Räuber Mahmud, Bekir und Redjeb aus Selanca
weilten des öfteren in Serbien, sie vermitteln übrigens schon seit Jahren den Waffenschmuggel.“
1168 HHStA PA XII/449
1169 HHStA PA XXXVIII/Kt. 387, f. 10r–18v.; „Konflikt zwischen dem serbischen Metropoliten in Prishtina und
dem serbischen Konsul sowie zwischen serbischen und einer neugebildeten griechischen orthodoxen Gemeinde
in Ferizaj.“
261
Petersburg.1170 There are plenty of cases in which these regional policies, combined with
Russian support, tried to modify the local level by dividing the neighbours according to
national or religious affiliations and categories. Often these political entrepreneurs clashed
with their local “compatriots” and were obliged to modify their initial strategies because the
(Serbian) state(s) often made faulty assumptions where the loyalties of the local Kosovar
„Serbs“ lay. In this regard, Nikola Pasic insisted on nationalisation of the local population by
issuing the “First Serbian Project (I projekat srpski)” that was to fight “for a better fate of
their compatriots in European Turkey (za bolju sudbu njihovih sunarodnika u evropskoj
Turskoj).”1171 In this attempt, Pasic emphasised that his compatriots:
“Live on a territory of the Ottoman Empire known as Old Serbia. This is where Serbs lived,
developed, and saw their own glory and their own downfall. From this downfall to this day,
they preserved their name, language and tradition. This territory nowadays consists of the
whole Kosovo vilayet together with the Novi Pazar sancak, the north-western part of the
Iskodra vilayet and the Adriatic Coast (Durres, Lesh, Medua etc.), as well as the northern and
eastern parts of the Manastir vilayet (Drim, Debar, Porec, Prilep).“
By mapping the people, he further also maps its borders by stating that the “[g]eographic
border would extend from the triangle of the Serb-Bulgarian-Ottoman border from Patarice in
the south, along a line between the rivers Zletovska and Bregalnica towards the Vardar, and
thence to Babun, Prilep, Kicevo, and Ohrid. From the Ohrid Lake it would continue to the
Black Drim and the river Shkumbin.”1172 This mapping was compatible with imperialist
understandings and territorial nationalisation of the space that was considered as their
“historic right.” These rights were based on “invented traditions” that could facilitate the
nationalisation of the local population in the mapped territory. Therefore, like the Bulgarian
intelligentsia, the Serbian political elite much more strongly emphasised the Christian
Orthodox and Slavic roots of their imperial past regarding the Macedonian territories. In
Sinisa Malesevic’s view, thus, Serbia employed imperial and nationalist rhetoric, which was
1170 DASIP, MIDS, PO, 1912, F-IV, D-4; „Danas 7. Septembra 1912 dosao je k meni ruski poslanik g. Gartvig i
procitao mi je depesu u koju je dobio da mi je procita. Rusija ponasala se je vrlo „socustveno“ k sporazumu i nije
pravila nikakav pritisak (davnelnie) ostavljajuci samima (Srbiji i Bugarskoj) da izrade sporazum. I gledala je na
to „soglasenie“ kao na akt garancije njihovih opstih interesa i kao na sredstvo odbrane od napada.“
1171 DASIP, MIDS, PO, 5/18. IX 1912, F-Aneks, D-Ugovor izmedju Srbije I Bugarske (Grcke?)
1172 DASIP, MIDS, PPO, 8.21. IX 1912, F-XVIII, D-red 619; „territorija, na kojoj danas zive Srbi u Otomanskoj
Carevini jeste Stara Srbija. U njoj su Srbi ziveli, u njoj su se razvijali, u njoj su docekali svoju slavu i svoju
propast, u njoj su od propasti do danas cuvali, kako-tako svoje ime, jezik i tradicije. Ta oblast danas obuhvata
ceo kosovski vilajet zajedno sa starim novopazarskim sandzakom, severo-zapadni deo skadarskog vilajeta s
obalom jadranskom (Drac, Ljes, S. DJ. Medua itd.) severni i istocni deo bitoljskog vilajeta (Drimskog, Debar,
Porec, Prilep). Geografska granca te teritorije bila bi ovakva. Od tromedje na srpsko-bugarsko-turskoj granici od
Patarice na jug vodovelnicom izmedju Zletovske (reke) i Bregalnice, a od utoka Zletovske reke Bregalnicom do
utoka u Vardar, a odatle Babunom tako da Prilep i Kicevo s Ohridom i njihovom okolinom ulaze u sastav njen.
Od ohridskog jezera donekle Crnim Drimom pa onda rekom Skumbom.”
262
regularly deployed to sustain competing claims to rule by the process of imperialising nation
states.1173
After becoming known the Italian declaration of war to the Ottoman state in October 1911,
the Balkan states, specifically the Serbian and Bulgarian governments discussed a joint
military venture against the “Asiatic Turks.”1174 To this end, the first Serbian draft of about
the alliance with Bulgaria was completed in November 1911. Furthermore, this “defensive
Serbo-Bulgarian alliance” was signed in March 1912 and was followed by “an openly
offensive one” in May, just as Italy was seizing the Dodecanese. Around this Serbo-Bulgarian
alliance, a secret Balkan League now coalesced, whose purpose was “to expel the Turks from
the peninsula.”1175 Nikola Pasic commented that “European diplomacy was for keeping the
peace, but unfortunately matters in the Balkans developed in different ways that conjured up
ghosts (from the past) among the Balkan population.”1176 According to him, “the first and
most important reason [was] the Turkish administration,” which allowed “Albanians to
conquer the cities.” 1177 Furthermore, he thought that “autonomous Albania should not be
allowed at all. These [the Albanian] tribes still live[d] primitively and without culture, (…)
literature, and alphabet; as such, they [could not] achieve any independent development.”1178
1173 Sinisa Malesevic, op.cit., p. 166; Jörn Leonhard and Ulrike von Hirschhausen, Empires and Nationalstaaten
(Göttingen: Vamdenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011)
1174 Ugron an Berchtold HHStA PA XII/Kt. 385, f. 300r–308r; Belgrad, am 19. Oktober 1912; “Amtsblatt
„Srpska Novine“, vom 6./19. Oktober 1912
An das serbische Volk! Die neuesten Ereignisse haben die Entscheidung des Schicksals der Balkanhalbinsel
wieder an die Tagesordnung gestellt und mit ihr auch das Schicksal Altserbiens, der ruhmreichen, aber
unglücklichen Mutter unseres Königreiches, wo der historische Mittelpunkt der Staaten unserer alten Könige und
Kaiser ist, wo die berühmten Residenzen der Nemanjiče liegen: Novopazarski Ras, Priština, Skoplje, Prizren; wo
unsere Brüder nach dem Blute, nach der Sprache, nach den Gebräuchen, nach dem nationalen Empfinden, nach
ihren Wünschen und Tendenzen leben. Die gewalttätige und unduldsame ottomanische Regierung rottet schon
seit Jahrhunderten diese unsere Brüder aus.”
1175 Ibid.
1176 Predsednik Ministarskog saveta I minister inostranih dela Kraljevine Srbije Nikola Pasic, Beograd, -
Poslaniku kraljevine Srbije u Francuskoj I Belgiji, Vesnicu; DASIP, MIDS, PO, 4.17. IX. 1912; F-VIII, D-2. Pov.
Br. 3571; A Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kingdom of Serbia, Nikola Pasic in one raport wrote:
„Moze se reci da cela diplomacija evropska zeli da se mir odrzi. Ali nazalost tako su se stvari na Balkanu
zatalasale, da je tesko verovati da se mogu zadrzati. Mnogi uzroci proizveli su takvo razdrazrno stanje, da ga je
sada tesko umiriti. Sve sto se desilo u poslednje vreme islo je u prilog uzbudjenju duhova naroda balkanskih. (…)
prvi i najglavniji uzrok taj je, sto se u turskoj upravi desavaju takve stvari, koje jasno pokazuju da je disciplina u
otomanskoj vojsci iscezla i da se vlade smenjuju putem tajnih organizacija i pobuna u vojsci. (…) arnauti se
bune, osvajaju varosi bez kapi krvi, negde vlasti beze, a negde se predaju i pridrzavaju njima, a negde stoje i
gledaju mirno.“ According to him „sve je to uplivisalo na duhove u Srbiji, i primoravaju srpsku vladu da
preduzima blagovremeno mere da je dogadjaji zateknu sasvim spremnu.“
1177Christopher Clark, op.cit.
1178 Dimitrije Tucovic, Srbija i Albanci, (Ljubljana: Casopis za kritiko znanosti, 1989), p. 94; „Ton je davao
predsednik vlade Nikola Pašič. U organu njegove Radikalne stranke, novinama "Samouprava" objavljen je
njegov intervju dopisniku francuskog lista 'Temps", u kome on objašnjava svetu:
"Oni koji misle da se mir može obezbediti stvaranjem autonomne Albanije, varaju se. Ta plemena i danas žive
primitivnim životom i bez kulture, oni su u zavadi jedno s drugim, oni u istoriji nikad nisu imali kakav
263
However, when it became obvious that Albania was likely to be an autonomous
administrative unit inside the Ottoman Empire, the Serbian policy-makers, alongside their
Bulgarian, Greek, and Montenegrin counterparts reacted and insisted on implementation of
small-state imperialism. In this regard, Dr. J.M. Nenadovic, ambassador of Serbia to Istanbul,
wrote to the Miniser of Foreign Affairs, Jovanovic: “I hear that, from the four Rumelian
vilayets, Kosovo, Manastir, Iskodra, and Yanina, they wish to create the geographic name of
Albania and eventually autonomous Albania. They say (…) that England wants to help this
idea of creating an autonomous Albania in order for it to be a wall of defence against the
Austro-Hungarian penetration in the Balkans. In this sense, this Albania, would threaten the
survival of Serbian and Bulgarian propaganda and the Macedonian Question would cease to
exist because it would be subsumed under the Albanian (Question).”1179 Analysing this report,
one can infer that the Great Powers were very active in “solving” the Albanian (and
Macedonian) Questions, and their activity was often accompanied by the presence of the
regional states. The potential ground for the establishment of autonomous Albania triggered
the regional states to cooperate and declare war to the Ottomans. Moreover, Serbian diplomats
found that Albanian autonomy would “threaten [their] survival” and transform “the
Macedonian Question into an Albanian one.” Thus, the Serbian policy-makers intensified
their activities in Ottoman Macedonia, and through the Serbian media, such as the newspaper
Politika, spread the propaganda that “war [was] what the Serbs wished for, war [was] their
duty, and only by war [could] the Serbian tribe be liberated from foreign rule. That [was] the
conviction of all Serbia, that [was] the wish of the people, that [was] the perennial dream of
our soldiers.”1180 Furthermore, this war against the Ottomans was also pictured as “a Balkan
Christian alliance” against the inversion of Asians and a wish of “the whole civilised world
and the Serbian people together with the Slavdom.”1181 It is hence conceivable that these
zajednički život. Ta su plemena podeljena na tri vere, oni nemaju svoje literature, pa čak ni bukvice; očigledno je
da ona ne mogu imati samostalnoga razvitka.”
1179 DASIP. MIDS, PO, 2.8. 1912, F-H, D-3, knjiga 5, sveska 1, p. 1115; “Cujem da od cetiri rumelijska vilajeta:
Kosovskog, Bitoljskog, Skadarskog I Janjinskog zele da stvore geografski pojam Arbanije I da se od ta cetiri
vilajeta ima eventualno izcauriti autonomna Arbanija. Kazu da je to zamisao Camil-pase I da ce ga Engleska u
tome potpomoci. Bilo da ovaj kabinet ostane ili da se odista uspe obrazovati Camil-pasina vlada, uticaj engleske
politike u Turskoj bice presudan. Ako je odista Engleska voljna da pomogne misao o stvaranju autonomne
Arbanije, I da ta oblas bude bedem protiv prodiranja Austro-Ugarske na Balkan, to drzim da takva eventualnost
– autonomija Arbanije u gore navedenom obliku – preti opstanku srpske I bugarske propaganda I mecedonsko
pitanje prestaje postojati jer ga potpuno ekartira arbansko.”
1180 Politika, Broj 3106, Beograd; 9. Septembar, 1912, p. 1; „rat je zelja Srbijanina, rat je njena duznost, samo
ratom i revolucijom moze se osloboditi srpsko pleme od tudjinom. To je uverenje celog sveta u Srbiji, to je zelja
naroda, to je stalni san nase vojske.“
1181 Politika, Broj, 3124, Beograd; 26. Septembar, 1912, p. 2; In an entitled „Balkanski rat“ Politika also reported
„Crna Gora je objavila rat. (…) Crna Gora nije sama s njom su i balkanske hriscanske kraljevine, sa kojima je
Crna Gora u savezu. Kralj je uvek zeleo taj savez, koji svi balkanski narodi ocekuju od invazije Azijata. (…)
264
orientalist discourses of the “civilised” against the “Asians” were also present in the media
during the Balkan Wars. They were significant in mobilising the population and in presenting
the “fallen heroes” as “the dead soldiers of Alexander the Great.” One of the local
Metropolitans, Aksenije, depicted these “heroes” as “saviours of the Macedonian Christians”
led by “our Alexander the Great (Prince of Serbia).”1182
These media akin to Politika invoked “the legacies of the medieval Serbian empires.” Hence
the mass media and public sphere “glorified the early polities of the Serbs”1183 that were
“stretching from the First Serbian Principality under the Vlastimirović dynasty in the 9th
century to the Nemanjić dynasty established in 1217.”1184 In this respect, the “dirty Belgrade
newspapers” were praising the “colonial policy of conquest (kolonijalnu zavojevačku
politiku)“ that was represented as a liberated policy of “kulturtregers.”1185
However, several politicians in the Kingdom of Serbia opposed these policies towards
Ottoman Macedonia. In this line, Serbian socialist politician Kosta Novakovic reported on the
imperialist, Greater Serbian policy (u dopisima iz Albanije raskrinkavao sam imperijalističku
velikosrpsku politiku).1186 In this respect, his most significant work was “Macedonia to the
Macedonians, the Land to the Farmers (“Makedonija Makedoncima, zemlja
zemljoradnicima”),” 1187 and it opposed Serbian (and Yugoslav) policies towards its
Simpatije celog civilizovanog sveta prate Crnu Goru kao i one sveg srpskog naroda i sveg Slovenstva.“1181 This
war was also represented in media as „sveti rat balkanskih naroda je poceo. On ima da se zavrsi oslobodjenjem
Balkana.“
1182 Politika, Broj, 3170, Beograd, 12. Novembar, 1912, p. 2; “U bitoljskoj egzarhijskoj crkvi održano je svečano
blagodarenje... Činodejstvovao je mitropolit Aksentije sa mnogo sveštenika. Mitropolit je pozdravio „dugim i
dirljivim govorom Prestolonaslednika kao oslobodioca Macedonije i spasioca macedonskih potlacenih
Hriscana“ rijecima: "U naknadu za vaše pale heroje i prolivenu srpsku krv mi Vama, našem Aleksandru
Maćedonskom, predajemo sebe, a svoje molitve upućujemo Bogu za sreću Srbije i Njenog Aleksandra Velikog i
srpske pobedne armije.“
1183„Potomci Srba, koji na Kosovu izgubiše bitku, sada kao da dolaze s neba... pa čak hoće i preko albanskih
hrida i snežnih alpa, preko razbojničkih arnautskih gnezda na Jadransko more da pobodu viteški steg Srbije.“ See:
M. Dinić "Prviput kroz Albaniju" - "Sa Šumadijskim Albanskim Odredom, 1912., Prizren-Drač,"Kragujevcu
1922; p. 3-4.
1184 Ugron an Berchtold HHStA PA XII/Kt. 385, f. 300r–308r; Belgrad, am 19. Oktober 1912; “Amtsblatt
„Srpska Novine“, vom 6./19. Oktober 1912
An das serbische Volk! Die neuesten Ereignisse haben die Entscheidung des Schicksals der Balkanhalbinsel
wieder an die Tagesordnung gestellt und mit ihr auch das Schicksal Altserbiens, der ruhmreichen, aber
unglücklichen Mutter unseres Königreiches, wo der historische Mittelpunkt der Staaten unserer alten Könige und
Kaiser ist, wo die berühmten Residenzen der Nemanjiče liegen: Novopazarski Ras, Priština, Skoplje, Prizren; wo
unsere Brüder nach dem Blute, nach der Sprache, nach den Gebräuchen, nach dem nationalen Empfinden, nach
ihren Wünschen und Tendenzen leben. Die gewalttätige und unduldsame ottomanische Regierung rottet schon
seit Jahrhunderten diese unsere Brüder aus.”
1185 Dimitrije Tucovic, opcit. p. 101.
1186 Bojan Korsika, Srbija I Albanci: Pregled Politike Srbije prema Albancima od 1878 do 1914. Godine,
(Ljubljana: Casopis ‘Kritiko znanosti’, 1989), p. 18; Kosta Novakovic, Autobiografija Koste Novaković, (Cacak:
Čačanski glasnik, 1966).
1187 Kosta Novakovic, Makedonija Makedoncima, zemlja zemljoradnicima, (Cacak: Cacanski glas, 1924).
265
“peripheries.” Furthermore, he pointed out that “rural Serbia already disappeared in 1912. An
imperialist Serbia, pan-Serbia, was born in its stead, with a pan-Serbian dynasty and pan-
Serbian militarism. This new imperialism [was] cruel, brutal, merciless, dream[ed] of a return
of Dusan’s empire and trie[d] to overtake as far as other imperialist powers in ten years.”1188
Another socialist, Dimitrije Tucovic, emphasised the Serbian imperialist aspirations and the
invention of the mediaeval tradition. Tucovic devoted his life to socialist ideals that opposed
these imperialist practices. In doing so, he openly criticised the Serbian government and
defined its policy as a “praxis of colonial extermination (praksa kolonijalnog istrebljenja).”
1189 According to him, this praxis was the foundation on which to make “(Albanians) our
sworn enemies,” and compared these state practices against the local Albanian-speaking
population with the European exterminations in overseas colonies.1190
This small-state imperialism was also reported in the Austro-Hungarian archives as “planned
deportation and colonisation by Serbs (geplante Deportationen und Kolonisierung mit
Serben).” 1191 Not only the Great powers, but also the “small states” applied imperialist
practices and defined the Lebensraum of their imagined greater state projects.1192 In this
sense, as presented above, prior to the Balkan wars, it is observable that the local, regional,
and international levels were not developed in isolation, rather were intermingling and
influencing each other. As the “Albanian element” influenced the Balkan state policies, these
regional states influenced the local population on the ground as well. These developments did
not take place without the presence of the Great Powers, which intensified their policies and
divided those countries further into what as of 1914 became known as the Triple Entente and
Triple Alliance. Therefore, I highlight here how these levels were interacting and influencing
each other in the framework of the Balkan small-state imperialism, yet without excluding the
1188 Ibid.; “Seljačka Srbija više ne postoji .... 1912. ona je potpuno nestala. Umesto nje, imperijalistička Srbija,
pan-Srbija se pojavila, sa svojom pan-srpskom dinastijom i pan-srpskim militarizmom. Ovaj novi imperijalizam,
surov, okrutan, nemilosrdan, sanja o povratku Dušanovog carstva i pokušava da dostigne u sledećih deset godina
imperijalne sile koje postoje stotinama godina.”
1189 Ibid. p. 39; Dimitrije Tucović, Srbija I Arbanija: Jedan Prilog Kritici Zavojevačke Politike Srpske Burzoazije,
Izdanje Socijalističke knjiţare, Beograd 1914. p. 51
1190 Bojan Korsika, op.cit., (Ljubljana: Casopis ‘Kritiko znanosti’, 1989), p. 23.; “Srbija je htela i izlazak na more
i jednu svoju koloniju, pa je ostala bez izlaska na more, a od zamišljene kolonije stvorila je krvnog neprijatelja.
(…) Zavojevački pohod Srbije na Arbaniju (je) najgrublje odstupanje od načela zajednice balkanskih naroda. U
njemu su do kostiju razgolićene netolerancija prema drugim narodima, zavojevačke težnje i gotovost buržoazije
da ih sprovodi najbrutalnijim zločinstvima, kakva su do sada izvršivana samo u prekomorskim
kolonijama.“ Furthermore “sprovodi najbrutalnijim zločinstvima, kakva su do sada izvršivana samo u
prekomorskim kolonijama.”
1191 HHStA PA XXXVIII/Kt. 405, n. f.; Prizren am 15. Oktober 1913
1192 HHStA PA XXXVIII/Kt. 441, n. f.; Üskub, den 24 Oktober 1913; “eine ihren Zwecken entsprechende
Kolonisierungspolitik durchzuführen. (…) Durch die geschilderten Methoden wird die Regierung jedenfalls sehr
bald in den Besitz zahlreicher und ausgedehnter Grundkomplexe gelangen und, auf selben gestützt, alsbald eine
rege Kolonisationstätigkeit entfalten.”
266
imperialist involvements of the Great Powers, especially the policies of the Dual Monarchy
and Imperial Russia. The importation of nationalism and imperialism to the region during the
Age of Empire created violent rivalries between various state- and nation-building projects.
As the history of the Balkan Wars shows, these violent rivalries predated the European
conflict of 1914-18.1193 Nowhere was this friction more apparent than in Macedonia, the last
region to be “liberated” from the Ottomans. Here Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Macedonian
(together with Albanian) nationalists held competing territorial claims.
4.4.2. MONTENEGRO AND THE IDEA OF A GREATER STATE: TOWARDS
MACEDONIA
The Montenegrin policy and its activities towards Ottoman Macedonia has thus far received
scarce in the respective studies. Like the other Balkan states, Montenegro underwent the
process of “colonization of the mind” and played an important role in the Balkan League.
According to Leften Stavros Stavrianos, “after obtaining its independence, Montenegro was in
the forefront during the 19th century wars against the Ottoman Empire. The role of
Montenegro in the South Slav and overall Balkan affairs was quite out of proportion to its
ridiculously meagre material resources.”1194 In a similar vein, John D. Treadway recorded that
Montenegro’s role in the Balkan affairs [had] been minimised by Western historical literature,
and whose inquiries into the nature of Europe’s powder keg frequently sidestepped
Montenegro in order to tackle the seemingly more substantive and controversial case of
Serbia.1195 Historically, the region of Zeta on the Adriatic Sea, which was later known as
Montenegro (Karadağ), became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1496. Due to its geographic
position and tribal social structure, this region was only nominally incorporated within the
Ottoman administrative system subordinated to the pashas appointed by the Ottoman Imperial
Council in Scutari (İşkodra/Shkodra/Skadar). Montenegro was actually a semi-independent
principality under the Ottomans, and was initially represented by a bishop-prince (vladika).
For most of Montenegrin history, vladikas conserved Montenegrin tradition, and maintained
good relations with Imperial Russia via the Orthodox Church. As has been shown in the
Chapter One, Tsars often supported Montenegrin tribes in their efforts to strength their semi-
1193 John Paul Newman, The Origins, Attributes, and Legacies of Paramilitary Violence in the Balkans, in War in
Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, ed. by Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 145.
1194 Leften S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453, (New York: Rienhart, 1958), p. 237.
1195John D. Treadway, The Falcon & Eagle, Montenegro and Austria-Hungary, 1908-1918, (West Lafayette:
Purdue University Press, 1983)
267
independent status, as well as in anti-Ottoman movements.1196 Actually, during most of the
nineteenth century, with the help of the traditional protector state of Russia, Montenegrin
rulers and intelligentsia constructed national narratives of Montenegrins as the “chosen
people,” 1197 who should build a nation-state and carry out this final solution against
“undeveloped barbaric Ottomans.” Accordingly, Montenegrin rulers paid much attention
regarding the Eastern Question and invented many traditions against the “Ottoman yoke.” The
invented traditions of the Montenegrins as a “chosen people” entrusted with the specific
mission to “save the true faith and Serbdom,” and to fight against the “Turkified Slavs” and
“big Asiatic Mongols (Ottomans),”1198 were supported by Montenegrin newspapers at the Fin
de Siècle. Furthermore, the Montenegrin Voice (Glas Crnogorca) newspaper remarked that
Montenegrins “have the mission (zadaću) of being the interpreter of all Serbdom and the
messenger (vjestnik) of their sorrow to the world, from those free high mountains of
Montenegro (sa slobodnijeh visina crnogorskijeh).’’1199 This small group of people must
work for the liberation and unity of millions of Christians, who for many centuries had been
in a state of shameful slavery (u ropstvu najsramotnijem) under the Mohammedan yoke (u
jarmu muhamedanstva), the butchers of the faith of Christ (zakletog krvinka vjere
hristove).1200 This concern for Christian “liberation” from the Muslim yoke emanated from
the nationalistic meta-narratives that assumed conflict was inevitable among different
ethnically constituted religions. In this light, the aim of this work is to present several
examples that show the active Montenegrin role towards the Macedonian Questions. Thus, I
do not to argue that Montenegro was the main actor in the Ottoman Macedonia and “solver”
of the Eastern Question, but rather to present its important role in the Macedonian Questions
and Balkan affairs in general. Nevertheless, it was the first state that declared war to the
Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars and promoted actively the conquest of the Ottoman
Macedonian territories. Moreover, Montenegrin authorities found legitimacy for this
liberation and state-building in the Orientalism discourses popular throughout nineteenth
century Europe—considered to be the “center of civilization.” In this regard, the more outside
1196 Armando Pitassio, The Building of Nations in South-Eastern Europe, the Cases of Slovenia and Montenegro:
A Comparative Approach, in The Balkans: National Identities in a Historical Perspective eds. Stefano Bianchini
and Marco Dogo (Ravenna: Longo, 1998), 53.
1197 According to Anthony D. Smith the notion of a “chosen people” can be applied only with the sanctification
of national narratives as sacred communion. Furthermore, he points out that religious notions of the “sacred” and
“profane” are integrated into the national culture that represents their nation as “chosen” and their policy as
“sacred”. See Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (NY: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 18.
1198 Petar Petrović Njegoš, op.cit. 1965
1199 Glas Crnogorca, April 21, 1873.
1200 Glas Crnogorca, April 21, 1873.
268
patrons insisted on using these discourses, the more local nationalist promoters insisted on
exploiting various “barbarian” identities. The Montenegrin newspaper accordingly presented
“the people of the East as being incapable of leading an independent life-style” (istočni narodi
nisu sposobni za samostalni život), adding that “they do not know about the right of liberty”
(pravo na slobodu). Because they are “incapable for civilization” (nesposobni za civilizaciju)
and “incapable of leading an independent life-style” (nesposobni za samostalni život)
someone “should bring civilization to them” (nositi civilizaciju). 1201 Those who possess
“progress” (napredak) are not just Montenegro and Serbia, but also other Christian
populations of the Ottoman Empire that are “active, productive and smart” (radni, proizvodni
i umni). Consequently, the condition for true progress was the complete liberation of the
people from the Ottoman yoke (potpuna narodna sloboda). 1202 Through this prism of
imperialist projections, Frantisek Sistek analyses Montenegrin policy before the First World
War. He situated Montenegrin identity and history narratives “within a wider Pan-Serb
historical and national framework,” combined with ideas of a greater imagined territory that
should include all Serbs or South Slavs into one state.1203 This concept of the greater state is
the culmination of the new type of European imperialism. The transformations that happened
in the Balkans represent a microcosm or local manifestation of worldwide impact.”1204 As has
been discussed, the relationship between the Balkans and Western Europe can be investigated
as a substitution of an “imaginary” colonialism: accepting ideas of the West in order to define
and create one’s own colonial space. For Montenegro, the Macedonian lands were important
in the legitimation of Montenegro’s invented tradition of the “Montenegrins as the best or
purest Serbs,” who survived the decline of the Serbian Empire (“Dusanovo carstvo”) and the
battle of Kosovo.1205 This argumentation was based on the narrative that the Ottomans never
truly conquered Montenegro and that the dynasty of Petrovic played a historic part in
safeguarding Serbdom (“Srpstvo”), especially after the Ottoman conquest of Prizren and
1201 Glas Crnogorca, April 21, 1873.
1202 Glas Crnogorca, April 21, 1873.
1203 The aim of this work is not to argue that Montenegro was the main actor in the Balkan affairs and “solver” of
the Eastern Question, but rather to present its highly important role in the Macedonian Question and Balkan
affairs in general
Irena Stefoska, op.cit., in Macedonia: Land, Region, Borderland…2013, pp. 69; Glas Crnogorca, 25 October,
1903, No. 45; Michael Palairet, The Balkan economies c. 1800-1914 – Evolution without development,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 342; Frantisek Sistek, Pan-Serb Golden Age and
Montenegrin Heroic Age: Reconstructing History and Identity Narratives in Montenegro, 1905-1914., in New
Imagined Communities, edited by LibusaVajdova and Robert Gafrik, (Bratislava: Kalligram, 2010) p. 191.
1204 Maria Todorova, op.cit., pp. 167; See: According to Maria Todorova, “the national was imposed as the
hegemonic paradigm in Europe, as the gold standard of ‘civilized’ political organization, the imperial or any
other alternative could be viable.
1205 Zivko M. Andrijasevic, Srpstvo u Crnoj Gori, See:
http://www.montenegrina.net/pages/pages1/istorija/cg_u_xix_vijeku/srpstvo_u_cg.htm (Access: 16.05.2017)
269
Skopje.1206 The state ideology sought to affirm the “historical merit” of Montenegrin state
aspirations for supremacy in the Serbian national liberation movement. This Montenegrin
“primacy” was based on the invented tradition that Zeta was now the “cradle of Serbdom” and
the historical core of Dusan’s Serbian Empire, which was situated in Macedonia and
Kosovo/Old Serbia. It posited that the Montenegro had a historic role as the centre of the
Serbian nation and Serbian statehood. In one of his speeches, Prince Nikola’s advisor, Jovan
Popovic Lipovac, declared that it was not by coincidence that Zeta [present-day Montenegro]
was the political centre of the Serbian Empire, adding: “Zeta was to the Serbian nation as the
Moscow principality was to Russia, Piedmont to Italy, and Prussia to Germany. It was
precisely Zeta that gave rise and birth to the most important Serbian people, including the
Nemanjic dynasty, which originated from Ribnica [a part of Podgorica, Montenegro]. After
the Battle of Kosovo, when the Ottomans conquered the Serbian Empire, inhabitants of Zeta
protected Serbdom until our present day.”1207 Therefore, the cities of Prizren and Skopje,
which were still part of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had
historical symbolism for Montenegro, as it aspired to liberate them from the “uncivilized
Ottomans.” It is no coincidence that the popular anthem of Montenegro (which Prince Nikola
referred to as a “military anthem”),1208 also known as the Serbian Marseillaise, was “Onamo,
namo!” or “There, over there!,” thus alluding to the inclusion of Ottoman Macedonia (the
three vilayets) into the “new,” imagined state. In this anthem, particular importance was given
to Prizren, Decani, and their liberation from the Turks.
“Онамо, 'намо... да виђу Призрен! “There, over there... I see Prizren!
Тато је моје – домаћу доћ'! It is all mine – home I shall come!
Старина мила тамо ме зове, Beloved antiquity beckons me there,
Ту морам једном оружан поћ'. Armed I must come there one day.
(…)
Онамо, 'намо... за брда она There, over there... beyond those hills,
Казују да је зелени гај Lies a green grove, they say,
Под ким се дижу Дечани свети: Under which rises Holy Dečani:
молитва у њих присваја рај. A prayer said within Paradise claims.
1206 Ibid.
1207 Ibid.
1208 Nikola Petrovic (kralj), Memoari, (Cetinje: Obod, 1988)
270
Онамо, 'намо... за брдаона, There, over there... beyond those hills,
Ђе небо плаво савија свод; Where a sky of blue bends its arch;
На српска поља, напоља бојна, On to Serb fields, on to battle fields,
онамо, браћо, спремајмо ход! There, brothers, prepare to march!
(…)
Онамо, 'намо... забрдаона There, over there... beyond those hills,
Милошев, кажу, пребива гроб! Lies there, they say, Miloš’s grave!
Онамо покој добићу души, There my soul eternal peace shall gain,
Кад Србин више небуде роб.” When (the) Serb is no more a slave.”1209
As years later King Nikola would state, this anthem became the “dream” of his youth which
“should come true.”1210 Not only did the cities of Prizren and Decani rose to prominence, but
so did Milos, alluded to in the phrase “Milos’s grave,” who assassinated the Ottoman Sultan
Murat. Accordingly, Montenegro should rise as the new “Milos” and liberate all Serbs from
the “Ottoman Yoke” in the form that “(the) Serb not to be a slave anymore.” However, in
order to realise this dream, King Nikola made multiple attempts at alliances with Balkan
states and at liberating Ottoman Macedonia from the “big Asiatic Mongol.” Another
contributing factor in defining the Montenegrin Lebensraum was that Montenegro was
blocked from expanding into Herzegovina and Sanjak by the Austrian army. Thus, Nikola’s
government was impelled towards continued imperialism towards the east, designing its own
expansionist strategy of the Drang-nach-Osten type. He intended to carve a Greater
Montenegrin or a united, South-Slavic state from the territories of Ottoman Albania and
Ottoman Macedonia, with a seat in Prizren.1211 It is beyond doubt that the Montenegrin Prince
was interested in the Iskodra Vilayeti (which was not part of Vilayet-i Selase), considering
Shkodra/Skadar the first capital of Duklja. However, Prince Nikola also considered the
Manastir and Kosova Vilayeti parts of the future Greater Montenegrin or united South-Slavic
state. In a letter from 27 August 1896, Prince Nikola wrote to Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria
that the “Macedonians should leave the Sultan in peace [ostaviti na miru], because the
1209Ibid.
1210 Glas Crnogorca, 26 September, 1912, No. 42
1211 Michael Palairet, op.cit., 2003, p. 214; DACG/Cetinje, OuPlj, 1912-1915/F16, #1, br. 403, 1912
271
moment [would] come to leave these provinces [the three vilayets], inhabited by Slavs, to the
three of us: Bulgarians, Serbians (Srbijancima), and Montenegrins.”1212
In December 1896, another ‘solution’ was presented by Prince Nikola to the Italian
Ambassador to Cetinje, Mr. Bianchi, in the form of an expansionistic plan towards Ottoman
Albania and parts of Ottoman Macedonia. Nikola Petrovic claimed that the Montenegrin
borders were under threat from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the West, and therefore
Montenegro should expand its territories in the south-east towards Iskodra and Vilayet-i
Selase. According to this plan, Montenegro was to occupy almost all of the northern part of
Albania and parts of the Manastir and Kosovo Vilayets, from the river Shkumbin/Iskomi
river, through lake Ohrid and extending between Skopje and Prizren to Kacanik, then upwards
along the railway of Kosovska Mitrovica, where it would finish along the Ibar River to the
Austrian border in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. According to this plan, Italy would annex
southern Albania, while some parts of the Janina Vilayet would belong to Greece.1213 This
expansionist policy, inspired by European imperialist strategies, was based on the
Montenegrin imagination of Macedonia as part of a Slavic mental map that was to be shared
among the Slavic brothers (Bulgarians, Serbians, and Montenegrins) or to be included in a
single state of South Slavs. Thus, in a letter from 1902, Prince Nikola wrote to the Serbian
king Alexander Obrenovic that “Austria [would] never arrive in Thessaloniki – not before us!
Before us Serbs, and Bulgars, Austria [would] never take a position in Macedonia.” He added
that “thanks to Russia, the Macedonian pie [“pogacu Makedonije”] [would] be shared among
us and the Bulgarians so that all [would] be satisfied.”1214 This mental map, which imagined
Macedonia as part of a Slavic state, was supported by the power of media in order to create a
“new” mentality across the society, too. Therefore, during the Macedonian crisis of 1903,
Macedonia was often presented as a Macedonian-Serb Question (“makedonsko-srpsko
pitanje”).1215 In one article, “The Macedonian and Old Serbian Problem” (“macedonski i
1212 Nikola I Petrovic Njegos, Pisma, (Podgorica: Cetinje Sveti Gora, 2009), p. 278; Knjazu Bugarske,
Ferdinandu: “Reci, dakle, Makedoncima da ga ostave na miru, jer ko zna jednog dana da on ne bi mogao doci na
pomisao da ustupi ovu provinciju (Makedoniju), naseljenu Slovenima, nama trojici: Bugarima, Srbijancima I
Crnogorcima I da nam rece: podijelite je djeco moja, medju vama kao braca I prijatelji.” Cetinje, 27. Avgust
1896 g.
1213 Gligor Stanojevic, Prilozi za diplomatsku istoriju Crne Gore od Berlinskog kongresa do kraja XIX vijeka,
Istorijski casopis, XI, Beograd, 1961. pp. 171-172; in: I documenti diplomatic italiani, terzaserie vol. I Roma
1953, pp 218-219,
Izvjestaj italijanskog poslanika sa Cetinja od 8. Decembra 1896
1214 Nikola I Petrovic Njegos, op.cit., (Podgorica: Cetinje Sveti Gora, 2009), pp. 318-320; Kralju Aleksandru
Obrenovic, 1902 g.: “Rusija bi pogacu Makedonije lijepo medju nama I Bugara podijelila na zadovoljstvo
obojice.”
1215 Glas Crnogorca, 22 February, 1903, No. 9
272
starosrbijanski problem”), Glas Crnogorca reported that the “population of the three vilayets
[Macedonia and Old Serbia] [was] around three million and in all (three) vilayets the majority
[were] Slavs (Serbs and Bulgarians).”1216 However, the border among these two Slavic tribes
cannot be precisely drawn.1217 In order to legitimise the action that would liberate the Slavs in
Macedonia, Nikola and his Petrovic ancestors revealed the mediaeval events (the Battle of
Kosovo) and mediaeval personalities (Marko Kraljevic of Prilep/Macedonia, Milos Obilic of
Kosovo, etc.).1218 In general, Nikola Petrovic wished to solve the Eastern and “Macedonian-
Serb Questions”, to lead a general uprising against the Ottomans in the Balkans and to rebuild
the Greater Serb or broader South-Slavic state, led by the Petrovic dynasty, which had “the
longest tradition of independent government among the South Slavs.”1219 Therefore, in one of
his interviews for Neue Freie Presse (20 May 1883), he revealed: “I belong to a family that
was in power when the Karadjordjevic and Obrenovic were rayahs in the Ottoman Serbian
vilayet!”1220 He could never hope for expansion outside the borders of old Montenegro/Crna
Gora, Brda, and partly Herzegovina without using the rhetoric of romanticism and Pan-
Slavism, Njegos’s glory and popularity among the South Slavs, and the construction of the
national myth of the “Montenegrins as the best/purest Serbs,” who had the legitimacy to unite
all Serb lands.1221 In the arguments presented here, Jovan Plamenac, the Minister of Internal
Affairs and Representative of the Minister of Education of Montenegro, during the crucial
time of the Balkan Wars (1912–13), shared several ideas about Serbdom with the Ambassador
of Serbia to Montenegro, Dr Mihajlo Gavrilovic, by putting forward the idea of “greater
Serbia” with the aim of “establishing the greater Serbian Kingdom,” because “we (Serbs and
Montenegrins) are one people (…) striving towards a general Serb policy.” 1222 These
Montenegrin narratives and imperialist projections did not go unnoticed by the Ottoman
1216 Glas Crnogorca, 4 April, 1903, No 15
1217 Glas Crnogorca, 26 April, 1903, No 18
1218 Novak Kilibarda, Usmena knjizevnost Crne Gore – Od slovenske paganske pjesme do poezije starca Milije:
http://www.montenegrina.net/pages/pages1/knjizevnost/usmena_knjizevnost_crne_gore_novak_kilibarda.html
(Access: 31.05.2017)
1219 Boban Batricevic, Recepcija Petra II Petrovica u ideologijama crnogorskih vlasti, Arhivski zapisi,
XXII/2015, broj 1, Cetinje 2016, pp. 84
1220 Radoslav Rotkovic, Lazna Sablja kralja Milutina I pretenzije kralja Nikole na srpski prijesto:
http://www.montenegrina.net/pages/pages1/istorija/cg_u_xix_vijeku/lazna_sablja_kralja_milutina.htm (Access:
02.06.2017)
1221 Zivko M. Andrijasevic, Srpstvo u Crnoj Gori, See:
http://www.montenegrina.net/pages/pages1/istorija/cg_u_xix_vijeku/srpstvo_u_cg.htm (Access: 16.05.2017)
1222DASIP, MIDS, PO, 31.VIII/13.IX.1912, F-IV, D-2; „Ovde Plamenac pada u vatru – on u opste govori – i
stade na dugacko govoriti o Karadjordju, Milosu, vladici Danilu itd., o velikoj Srbiji, o besmislici da Srbija i
Crna Gora ovako zivotare; treba ici napred, hrabro, stvoriti jednu veliku srpsku kraljevinu i ne gledati kako se
srpski zivalj izvan granica Srbije i Crne Gore gubi i odrodjava.“ Plamenac continued „kakve dinastije, kakve
deobe sfera i interesa, nama treba jedna srpska drzava kao sto smo jedan narod, narod je glavno, on ce ostati, a
kape moze menjati! (…) Mi necemo dinasticku i sepraratisticku politiku, mi hocemo opstu srpsku.“
273
medium and the Ottoman authorities. Ottoman documents was often reported that, “beside the
presence of the Serb element in the three vilayets,” the “Montenegrin request regarding these
territories” was following closely as well.1223 One of these requests was that of Montenegrin
support for the Macedonian autonomy, and Prince Nikola’s wish to appoint his son Mirko as
General Governor (d'introduire en Macédoine une administration autonome avec le Prince
Mirko de Monténégro comme Gouverneur Général).1224 The Ottoman media reported as well
that Montenegro was very interested in the three vilayets, known as Macedonia, and had
support from Imperial Russia and the British Empire. In the Ottoman newspaper Balkan,
published in Plovdiv (Filibe), article entitled “Montenegro and Macedonian Principality”
(Karadag ve Makedonya Prensligi) was published, which emphasised the Montenegrin
interest in the three vilayets and the potential appointment of a Montenegrin prince (Mirko),
which was already opposed by the Dual Monarchy.1225 In subsequent reports, the Ottoman
newspaper Balkan stated that “Macedonia was an egg actively rolled around by political
games (desise-i siyasiye).”1226 Accordingly, this “egg” was involved in the playground among
1223 „Sırp unsurunu çok göstermek maksadıyla Vilâyet-i Selâse dahilindeki Sırp mekteplerine Karadağ'dan bir
takım talebelerin getirildiği istihbarat üzerine yapılan tahkikata dair.“ See: Rumeli Müfettişliği, Umum Evrâkı,
TFR.1.UM 13/1212,11.03.1324
1224 Ahmet Tevfik Pacha a Tevfik Pacha, Berlin, le 31 aout 1906: „Ayant lu d'une part dans les journaux d'hier
que l'Angleterre avait proposé -âux Puissances d'introduire en Macédoine une administration autonome avec le
Prince Mirko de Monténégro comme Gouverneur Général, que la France et l'aile auraient appuyé cette
proposition et que l'Allemagne, l'Autriche- Hcrigrie et la Russie n'auraient pas encore exprimé à ce sujet leur
opinion et de l'autre, que d'après le Neuer Wiener Tagblatt, le Prince de Bulgarie aurait fait sonder
confidentiellement le Cabinet russe afin de savoir quelle attitude la Russie prendrait si la Bulgarie serait déclarée
royaume - et que le Gouvernement russe aurait répondu qu'un tel changement lui serait indifférent, j'ai demandé
au Ministre des Affaires Étrangères des renseignements sur ces deux points. Il m'a répondu qu'il n'en savait
absolument rien mais qu'il se fera renseigner sur ces nouvelles. Vu l'état actuel des événements, j'ai cru pourtant
utile de les signaler à l'attention de Votre Excellence.“ See: Sinan Kuneralp and Gul Tokay, Ottoman Diplomatic
Documents of the Origins of World War One IV, The Macedonian Issue 1879-1912, The Isis Press, Istanbul,
2011, p. 163
1225 Balkan, Filibe (Plovdiv), 4 September 1906, No. 30;
“Karadağ Ve Makedonya Prensliği
Rumeli vilâyet-i şahânesinde mevkî'i tatbîke konan […] ıslâhat programını gayr-i kafî add edüb vilâyet-i selâse-i
mezkûreye muhtariyet-i idâre verilmesini iddi'â eden İngiltere, Rusya ve Avusturya kabinelerine Makedonya'ya
ta'yin edilecek valinin Karadağ prensi intihâb edilmesini teklif etmişse de Avusturya hükümeti [..] ıslâhat
programının Makedonya'da istalahat-ı idârîyeyi te'mine kâfî olduğu iddi'âsıyla bu teklifi şiddetle red etmekdedir.
İngiltere'nin bu hesabca niyeti, bir "Karadağ ve Makedonya Prensliği" teşkîl etmek olacak ki harita-i siyâsetde
henüz böyle bir safha görülmüyordu. Bakalım mes'ele daha ne kalıblara girecek.”
1226 Balkan, Filibe (Plovdiv), 5 September 1906, No. 31;
“Makedonya Yumurtasi Bakalim Ne Yumurtlayacak?
Dünki Veçernepoşte'de görülen mizah resmi şâyân-ı dikkatdi. İngiltere kıralıyla fehâmetlü prens hazretlerini bu
resimde konuşduruyor iken prens hazretlerini bir yumurta üzerinde oturdup diyor ki bakalım bu yumurtadan ne
çıkacak? Ya'ni demek istiyor ki Makedonya bir yumurdadır. İngiltere'nin Karadağ prensini oraya vâli ta'yin
itdirüb muhtâriyet-i idâre taleb itmesi bir desîse-i siyâsîyedir. Bu desîse-i siyâsîye şimdi yumurta içinde bir
tohum gibidir. Bundan bir horos çıkacak ki o da fehâmetlü prens hazretlerinin an garîb tecellî idecek olan
teşebbüsât-ı siyâsîyedir.” See also:
Balkan, Filibe (Plovdiv), 7 September, 1906, No. 33;
Makedonya'nin Muhtariyeti Hakkinda
274
different actors, which I identified as the Great Powers and regional Balkan states. Several
reports show that Montenegro was actively involved into diplomatic negotiations with various
state actors, but also with the Macedonian local population on the ground.1227 During the
years of frequent uprisings of Albanian speaking population (often joined by the local Slavicspeaking
neighbours), especially in the Kosovo vilayet, Montenegro actively supported local
Albanian notables with arms and weapons, and became a safe haven for Isa Boljetini, Hasan
Ferri (Ferovic), and a handful of other local personalities.1228 As I argued above, only through
this multi-layered prism of actors, one can closely analyse the complexities between state and
non-state actors that took place from local, through regional, to global levels. In this regard,
the Montenegrin policy is just one of the instances that puzzles the broader picture of the
Macedonian Questions and the Montenegrin “small-state imperialism” is just an offshoot of
the broader global imperialism.
At this point, it is worthy to note that Montenegrin media also reported on the importance of
Montenegro for the liberation of Slav-speaking Christians from the “Ottoman yoke” and
supported the practices of imperialism. Thus, king Nikola’s proclamation to the Montenegrins
before the beginning of the First Balkan war, contained elements of an expansionist policy,
combined with Montenegrin-Serb glory, and their duty to fight in Old Serbia and Macedonia.
In a proclamation of Prince Nikola, Montenegro was described as a state whose “cries [were]
coming from its oppressed brothers who live[d] in Old Serbia [and Macedonia]. There [was]
merciless slaughtering of not only men, but also women and young Serb children, which
[could] not be tolerated anymore. (…) Therefore, the duty of the Montenegrins was always to
fight for the brothers of the Serb tribe and for Slavdom in general.”1229 In this proclamation,
Atina'da müteşekkil Makedonya komitesinin reisi doktor Yerveyanis etdiği telgrafnâmeyi "Tan" gazetesine
keşîde etmişdir. Avrupa matbû'âtının işâatına göre İngiltere'nin teklifi üzerine Karadağ prenslerinden Mirko
Makedonya vâli-i umûmîliğine ta'yin olunacakmış. Biz, Makedonyalıların ahassı âmâlî Makedonya'yı mâder-i
vatanımız olan Yunanistan'a ilhâk etmek olduğundan ecnebî bir prensin mukaddes toprağa ayak basmasına aslâ
muvâfakat edemiyeceğimizi şedîden beyân eyleriz. Yıldız Sarayının erkânı veliahd-ı saltanat Mehmed Reşad
Efendi hazretlerinin vücüdunu mahva çalışıyorlarmış. Saray erkânı gelecek pâdişâhın kânûn-u esâsî tarafdârı
olduğundan korkuyorlar! Erkânı arasında Burhâneddin Efendinin saltanata getirilmesinde en ziyâde ileri giden
ve hap dâimâ bu gibi rolleri oynalan Hülü paşazade Şamî İzzet Paşadır. Almanya imparatorunun da bu mes'elede
tarafdârlığı istişmam olunuyorsa da İngiltere ve Rusya buna kat'iyen muhâlefet etmekdedir. İngiltere kralı
Yedinci Edvard ile Almanya imparatoru Vilhem hazretleri son mülâkâtlarında buna dâir arîz ve amîk
konuşmuşlar.
1227 HHStA PA XIV/Kt. 33, f. 25r–29r.; “Waffenschmuggel aus Montenegro. Albanisches Zweckbündnis mit
Montenegro.”
1228 HHStA PA XIV/Kt. 40, f. 23r–24v.; Mitrovitza am 1. Juli, 1912; „Rolle Isa Boletinis bei der Organisation
des Aufstands. Albanerversammlung in Drenica unter den früheren Abgeordneten Hasan Prishtina und Zejnullah
Bey. Versorgung der Aufständischen mit Waffen aus Serbien und Montenegro. Aktionen der Aufständischen
gegen osmanische Steuerverwaltung und Gendarmerie. Weitgehender Boykott einer vom Vali einberufenen
Versammlung der Dorfältesten aus Shala, Lab und Drenica. Vorgehen osmanischer Truppen gegen Isa Boletini.“
1229 Glas Crnogorca, 26 September, 1912, No. 42
275
Prince Nikola further asserted that, “in this battle we [would] fight with our brothers from
Serbia” against the “cruel Turks [“turaka grdnih zulumcara”].” At the end of the
proclamation, King Nikola Petrovic stated that his “dream from his early youth [was] coming
true. [He] predicted this day, and [his] anthem ‘There, over there!’ (‘Onamo, namo’) instilled
faith in Serbian hearts so that they would cross over those hills! Montenegrins lived! Long
live the Balkan League!”1230 This dream escalated into the Firs Balkan War declared firstly by
Montenegro, which soon turned into the Second Balkan War, and “bloodshed of brothers
from Danube to Thessaloniki”1231 in order to “protect the Serbian heritage in Macedonia
[“srpske tekovine u Macedoniji”].1232 In the Second Balkan War, the Montenegrin troops
participated actively in Ottoman Macedonia, where Decani division (Decanski odred) was
established by king Nikola Petrovic of Montenegro, which defeated the Bulgarian army near
the Battle of Bregalnica.1233 Thus, the Balkan Wars were just one of the consequences of the
global state imperialism, that was reflect among the Balkan states as the “small-state
imperialism.” The outbreak of war was the culmination of chains of decisions made by the
Balkan states, who already have defined their Lebensraum according to their invented
traditions that overlapped in Ottoman Macedonia.
4. CONCLUSION
Here I traced the practices of the local and state agents during the period from the Young
Turk Revolution (1908) to the First Balkan War (1912). In this chapter I adopted both a
‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ perspective and I placed them within trans-regional dynamics by
demonstrating how they influenced each other. To understand more comprehensively how
these local, national, regional, and likely international practices of the “struggle for
Macedonia” related to one another, I focused on the multiple arenas in which local, national,
and regional actors engaged and interacted, built alliances but also perpetrated violence and
bloodshed. As part of it, I showed how the locals were influential in changing the state
strategies and projects, but also how the states transformed the region by applying “small state
imperialism.” As such, I presented several examples of Albanian- and Turkish-speaking locals
(e.g. Ahmet Niyazi Bey, Enver Bey, Ohrili Eyüp Sabri) in the three vilayets and the
1230 Glas Crnogorca, 26 September, 1912, No. 42
1231 Glas Crnogorca, 27 June, 1913, No. 28
1232 Glas Crnogorca, 9 November, 1913, No. 52
1233 Jevto A. Ruzic, Skadar i Bregalnica (Crna Gora u ratovima 1912-1918 godine) (München: Stamparija Iskra,
1964).
276
importance of the Ferzovik meeting (Kosovo vilayet) in triggering the Young Turk
Revolution from the ground inside the bottom up perspective. These events represent the
significance of the ‘periphery’ and its influence on the ‘centre’ by changing the government in
1908 and dethroning Sultan Abdulhamid II in 1909. To borrow Chakrabarty’s famous term
“provincializing,” I hold that these events of 1908 should be analysed as “provincializing
Istanbul.” In fact, I aimed here to show that the ‘periphery’ can be active too and its peripheral
populations were not bereft of agency. In this regard, this chapter highlighted that Albanianspeaking
population was playing a very important role and that the ‘Albanian element’ in the
Macedonian Questions should be subject to closer inspection and important analysis.
Especially, after the Macedonian-Albanian conflict in 2001 in North Macedonia, it was
proved that the Albanian-speaking population play an important role in the region and their
perspective(s) should be included. Apart from it, I also included the Montenegrin role in the
Macedonian affairs. This actor was hitherto completely excluded from studies regarding the
Macedonian Question. Through several examples, I emphasised that Montenegro and
Albanian-speaking population played far more important roles than scholars have argued. In
this respect, I took a closer look at the Kosovo vilayet, which was an integral part of vilayeti
selase. The uprisings throughout the region between 1909 and 1912 have shown that the
potential for the creation of autonomous Albania, as promised by the Ottoman government in
August 1912, triggered Montenegro (and other Balkan states) to declare war on the Ottomans.
Thus, the ‘Albanian element’ on the ground, together with the state perspective(s) of
Montenegro and Balkan states are very important in understanding complexities and
dynamics.
277
CONCLUSION
The overall objective of this dissertation was to map and explore the role of contentious state
policies and imaginations in and of Ottoman Macedonia during the period of the Age of
Empire, and to situate my findings within the larger trans-regional space by arguing that there
has not been one uniform Macedonian Question as a whole, but rather several questions
conceived variously at the local, regional, trans-national, and international levels. Since
various levels and many actors (Great powers, Balkan states, Ottoman Empire, and locals)
were involved, I argued that one could not speak about one unified question, but rather more
about the multifarious dimensions of the questions in all their interlocking complexity. On the
one hand, if one were to follow the findings and realise (as has been shown) that Macedonia
as a geographic space actually did not have clearly defined borders, and that various actors
differently imagined this space, then this could be a reasonable argument to consider the
Macedonian Question as a whole, since it was part of a spatial contestation. On the other,
Macedonia as an imagined geography rather looked like a mass of multi-layered questions
such as spatial, social, economic and material, and scholarly questions that proliferated during
the 19th and early 20th centuries. In other words, this Macedonian Question was folded into
‘larger’ ones, like the Eastern Question, Pan-Slavic, nationality, and social questions, even as
they competed for attention with countless ‘smaller’ ones, like the Albanian, Serbian,
Bulgarian, Greek, or Vlach community questions.
On the whole, however, these questions have been treated separately and not as a part of
various complexities combining ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches, integrating them in
a larger trans-regional space and multiple perspectives. Inside one and the same community or
even among the state politicians or intellectuals of the same national elite, could be a
circulation of different views on these questions. It would be misleading if one would
consider these actors as part of one unified national(ist) program who employed a uniform
policy toward the Macedonian Questions. However, they all had something in common: they
formulated these questions as the “definitive” or “final solution.”
This search for a “final solution” during the 19th century strove to “solve” these questions
inside the nationalist projects and their various constructed imaginaries suggested by
statesmen and intelligentsia. These actors viewed problems as if they had been math equations
(2 x 2 = 4), having only one possible solution, once and for all. It was mostly around conflicts
278
and inflicted violence in social and political upheaval that these questions were most hotly
debated, and then European intellectuals together with regional intelligentsia hoped for
expedient solutions. As Christopher Hitchens noted, “once one has defined a people or
nation” as a “question” demanding a “solution,” that people or nation has been turned into a
problem. However, in the context of the Macedonian Question(s) these multi-faceted agents
had often their own “final solution(s)” that differed from each other (international, regional, or
local actors). Moreover, not everyone had the same “final solution,” because each particular
solution was proposed so as to serve a political purpose and often a personal gain that differed
from that of another actor. In this respect, for some the Macedonian Question(s) was/were a
problem of the Muslim presence in Europe, for others it was the Imperial Russian expansion,
and for others still it was a regional problem in the form of “the Balkans for the Balkanians”
or “Macedonia for the Macedonians,” and thus implied another “final solution.”
At other times, a question might seem to recede or even disappear during a certain period. In
this regard, it is very important to follow its dynamics from different viewpoints and to
consider the Macedonian as multi-layered questions that were not developed in a vacuum, but
rather overlapped significantly with other questions of the time (social, national, agrarian,
material and economic, or spatial etc.). What Holly Case called the “age of questions” began
in the 1820s and 1830s as a result of the expansion and politicisation of press distribution, the
enlargement of the voting franchise (in Britain), and a “tight series of international events.” In
this respect, Case posits that “these three developments gave rise to an international public
sphere, the habitat in which questions thrived and proliferated.” At that time, as has been seen
in the first chapter, the European states began to explore the Ottoman territories, especially
the Greek heritage, while European Philhellenes included these parts (Greece, Macedonia,
other parts of the Balkans) as the source of their ancient civilisation. When the Greek
Uprising in the Ottoman Empire (1821–1832) broke out, the European public attention to the
Macedonian Questions was already becoming apparent, especially by means of the calls of
the European intellectuals to intervene in the Ottoman Empire on behalf of the Greeks. These
calls were often based on political and personal interests as parts of the European colonial
projects “to chase the Turks out of Europe once and for all.” During the beginning of the 19th
century, around Europe was developed an interest in classical antiquity, discovery, and
imagination of “the ancient world through the lives of the contemporary inhabitants,” which
increased the awareness of the then Greeks and their “questions.” This “ancient world,” seen
by the Great Powers as a “cradle of European civilization,” instigated the European actors to
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intervene on behalf of the “Greek cause.” One of these Philhellenes, François-René de
Chateaubriand, wrote about the “civilized” Christian Greeks that were under the yoke of
“barbarity and Mahometanism.” In his book Note sur la Grece (1825), he justified the
intervention by arguing that the Greeks, a Christian people (“comme les peoples chretiens”),
were usurped by the Turks, who did not observe the European laws (“ne reconnoit point le
droit politique de l’Europe”), but were ruling according to their Asiatic customs (“se
gouverned’ apres le code des peoples de l’Asie”). In this respect, this small “civilized” group
of people needed European assistance against “the fiery zeal and bigoted enthusiasm of the
followers of Islam.”
This delivery of “civilized” ideas - for Slavs, Catholics, Jews, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks –
transformed the Macedonian Questions into a European one or what Dostoevsky, writing in
1877, called a “world question.” I showed that not only did the Macedonian Questions
concern the East of Europe, or the Slavs, Russians, and the Turks, or, specifically, the
Serbians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Macedonians or Albanians, but that it also concerned the whole
of the West of Europe. I furthermore argued that by no means did it only concern the
European intellectuals in relation to access to the seas and the Bosporus strait, but that rather
it reached much deeper, was more fundamental: it was the “cradle of European civilization.”
Furthermore, since these Ottoman parts were very important for European politics, the
Macedonian Questions should also be studied as a globalised “problem.” In this respect, in his
“Pan-Europe,” Coudenhove-Kalergi argued along similar lines that “today the European
Question signifies to the world what for more than a century the Balkan Question signified to
Europe.” With this claim, Coudenhove-Kalergi considered the Balkan Question, or in other
words the “Macedonian Question,” as a European problem, and thus, “not merely of local but
of international import.” In fact, Macedonia was a “world problem” within globalised
“question(s)” that included an active presence of international actors. In this small corner of
the world, the international actors sometimes imagined “the Greeks a little too magnificent
and the Turks a little too Tatar,” yet at other times as a “majority Slavic speaking land.” By
the 1850s, the fickleness of public attention to the Greek Question was already disappearing
and was soon extended to “the Slavs and other ethnic groups inhabiting the peninsula.”
Accordingly, Henri Thieres in his book La Serbie: Son Passé et Son Avenir (1862) pointed
out that “Bosniaks and Bulgarians [were] of the same race (sont de meme race) as the
Montenegrins and Serb” and that they “[would] form a Slavic empire that Europe [would]
allow them to exist.” Through the transfer of knowledge these ideas were circulating, were
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discussed among intellectuals, imagined, and projected into a “final solution.” What is more,
these actors often applied their strategies toward the Ottomans based on a “civilized” Europe
versus a “barbarian” Orient.
This discourse and production of knowledge circulated around South-Eastern Europe, where
the intelligentsia accepted these ideas. Although “these are false dichotomies,” this discourse
founded a common frame in “the question idiom.” As has been argued in the first chapter, the
intellectuals in the Balkans also accepted these discourses due to the “colonization of the
mind,” which was reflected in the form of “nesting Orientalism.” This self-imagination
among the Balkan intellectuals also constructed a “big Asiatic Mongol” that was an
embodiment of the Ottoman Empire. This tendency to essentialise Self as “superior” and
“civilized” had a political framework to construct the oriental Other as “backward” and
“barbarian.” For many intellectuals among the emerging Balkan nations, their mission
civilizatrice at the turn of the 20th century was to apply these political programs into restoring
the “European civilization [back] to its roots.” These political programs, developed in
Načertanije and Megali Idea (or other programs elsewhere) envisioned Macedonia as
‘liberated’ from “the Ottoman/Turkish yoke” and imagined this space as part of their either
ancient heritage (Hellen and Illyrian) or medieval empires (Serbian and Bulgarian).
These “emancipationist drives” in the Balkans were anti-imperial in order to create new
empires by putting their “small-state imperialism” into practice. As I elaborated in the second
Chapter, these politicians and intellectuals or “political entrepreneurs” commonly viewed
violence as a legitimate solution to the questions of this period. In fact, the Macedonian
Questions offered a powerful example where the Balkan nations tried to “solve” the
“Macedonian Question” by resorting to violence in order to liberate the people of Macedonia
from the “Turkish yoke.” In the second Chapter, I demonstrated that, in the period of 1878-
1903, education and the schools became the central battleground for competing the Balkan
states’ competitions in “small-state imperialism”. Much like their counterparts elsewhere - the
British, German, Italian, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, or even the Ottoman state - the Balkan
countries applied imperialist strategies. Due to millet system of the Ottoman Empire, they
were able to instrumentalise the foundation of the schools for imperialist purposes. From the
very beginning, these schools in Ottoman Macedonia (together with the churches) were meant
to monitor, supervise, and manipulate local populations in those ways that were best suited to
support the Balkan “small-state” imperial ambitions long-term.
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These ambitions, however, were not new, because they were rather stemming from the
Zeitgeist that was typical of the whole globalised world. As much as questions were
globalised, the “final solution(s)” was/were also entangled in these “world” problems. Much
like the Congress of Berlin (1878) that ended with the establishment of new Balkan states
(Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, and semi-independent Bulgaria) and with the introduction of
necessities for reforms in the Ottoman territories that became known as Macedonia, the Berlin
Conference of 1884 and 1885 marked the climax of the European competition for territory in
Africa, a process commonly known as the “scramble for Africa.” Within a few years, Berlin
became a cornerstone for the development of imperialist policies: during the first instance, in
1878, it became a base for the “small-state imperialism” of the Balkan states, while during the
second instance, in 1884 and 1885, it became a core for the European global imperialism. At
the Berlin Conference, the European states negotiated and formalised their claims to
territories in Africa that included several invasions, occupations, divisions, and colonisation
of most of its territories, a set of processes known to historians as the “New Imperialism.”
Throughout this “Age of Empire,” the Western schooling during the colonisation of Africa
was initiated by variety of European missionary organisations which had entered Africa to
proselytise the natives and “envisioned themselves as bringing a higher view of life to
benighted savages.” At the very beginning, these missionaries did not hope to educate the
local population, but rather to convert them. In ways similar to the Western educational
institutions in Africa, especially with respect to the conversion and definition in school
curricula of “what counts as valid knowledge,” the Balkan states tried to police “valid
knowledge” for the local population in Ottoman Macedonia in order to “convert” them into
Serbs, Greeks, or Bulgarians. In fact, the whole history of colonial schooling is marked by the
contestation between state and rival political groups with separate and conflicting vested
interests, phenomenon that John Anderson calls “the struggle for the school.” In the second
Chapter I highlighted how this “struggle for the school” was brought to the “scramble for
Macedonia,” which among the Balkan states was known as “the struggle for Macedonia.”
This was a battleground for the Balkan state authorities, their political entrepreneurs and
specialists in violence over particular groups within the indigenous peoples in Ottoman
Macedonia. I argued that Bulgaria was especially important in creating a new range of
possibilities for the indigenous population through the establishment of the Bulgarian
Exarchate (1870) and the Bulgarian Men’s High School of Thessaloniki (1880), which
transformed the politics in Ottoman Macedonia as well as, ultimately, the way in which state
personnel viewed education and schools as one of the instruments of state power. Juxtaposed
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to the long assumed “right” of the Patriarchate of Istanbul as Representative of the Orthodox
Christians (Rum) in the Ottoman empire, a new set of tensions developed that created
opportunities for political entrepreneurs on the ground that incited the Greek and Serbian
states to provoked reactions from the Greek and Serbian states. All these Balkan states
founded a spate of organisations and schools (Drustvo Sveti Sava, Drustvo Srbo-Makedonci,
Vtreshna revolucionna organizaciya, Ethniki Etaireia etc.) in order to inject a national
consciousness and feelings about ancient Hellenism or the medieval Bulgarian and Serbian
empires. What emerged at the end was a rivalry between the Balkan states that mobilised the
locals by providing them with education, school system and religious programs. At that time,
the Rum church placed in Istanbul tried to utilise its networks to create a cultural monolith
that would eliminate the particularistic loyalties of the various ethnic Orthodox communities
such as Albanian Tosk and Bulgarian and/or Macedonian Orthodox members in the region.
However, as demonstrated in the second Chapter, the heavy emphasis on “Greek,”
“Bulgarian,” or “Serbian” school construction highlighted the dynamics of local ambitions on
the ground that contradicted previous scholarly assumptions about their significance to the
“ethnoreligious” school and organization. Ironically, the tactics of the political entrepreneurs
of instrumentalising state assistance and their networks to “indoctrinate” the locals with metanational
narratives, often provided an instrument for resistance to the church or state
hegemonies, and turned the indigenous population into “advocates of communal rights.” What
is more, it was often the case that these political entrepreneurs clashed over the
“indoctrination” of certain national programs or ideologies. For example, in the second half of
the 1890s, the “Bulgarian” organisations proliferated and separations inside their associations
had already started occurring, joined by conflicts with the Bulgarian government and
Exarchate. In the Greek and Serbian examples, the controversies between the ecclesiastical
and educational parts, as well as between the state and brigandage, often resulted in clashes
and support of various interests. In this regard, the second and third Chapters challenged
linear transformations towards a “nationalised” rationality. Nevertheless, I argued that the
projects of these governing elites and political entrepreneurs were in fact often conflicting and
contested. Their imaginations, projections, and discourses did not only conflict with one
another, but they also diverged from the existing national or social realities. It has already
been demonstrated that the governing elites worked to build “imagined communities” based
on “invented traditions,” which often failed on the ground. Thus, by moving beyond the
debates on nationalism and rather adopting the approach of subaltern studies, I considered
several local organisations and actors. In the third Chapter of the thesis I highlighted that there
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were not only projects and actions initiated by states and intellectuals, but also projects and
moves undertaken by the general population as well. One of such organisations was IMRO
(but also Chetniks, Kachaks etc.). However, I intentionally did not want to focus only on
IMRO members and their activities, because I believe that the Macedonian Questions were
part of much bigger complexities, than trying to reduce this trans-national problematic
(Macedonian Questions) as part of only one organisation that carries Macedonian name in the
title: Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation. Thus, this study did not pay attention
only one IMRO due to two reasons: firstly, this topic has been already covered by dozen
studies related to the Macedonian Question, and secondly, I believe that other actors have
valuable importance -such as ‘Albanian element’ and Montenegro- to include them in this
study. Thus, I argued that only by taking into consideration various actors as relevant
participants of “multiple arena of domination and opposition,” one can set them into the transregional
dynamics and understand their complexities. Furthermore, I emphasized that one
could not understand these divergences, if done were not to take into account those local
contexts and issues that determined the way state projects and their networks were received,
understood, transformed, and adapted at the local level. Thus, the inclusion of the “bottomup”
perspective and the local dynamics is crucial for an understanding of these complexities,
named as the Macedonian Questions. Without integrating this viewpoint in the research, we
would not know that “eternal enemies,” as are considered those in one of the examples of the
Serbian-Albanian conflict, were much more likely to cooperate with each other and share
their daily life in the streets known as mahale. More often than not, this was not just an
administrative entity, but also a place for social networks. Its members could be Christian and
Muslim, speakers of Serbian or Albanian (or any other language), connected into solidarity
that was sometimes more powerful than religious affiliation.
With regard to the Serbian-Albanian context, more specifically the Kosovo vilayet (one of
three Macedonian vilayets), I showed how these relations were much more complex on the
ground than represented by nationalist historiographies. Thus, thinking in terms of “national”
for a time when locals were still not thinking through the lenses of “national” could mislead
the analysis. Rather, we studied the example of one of the active participants in the Serbian
cheta in Ottoman Macedonia led by Vojislav Tankosic, Smajo Ferović, who was an Albanianspeaking
(rather bilingual) Muslim who originated from the castle guard (dizdar) Omeragic
family from Plav (present-day Montenegro). His grandfather, Jakup Ferri, and uncle Hasan,
are celebrated in contemporary Albanian historiography “heroes of the nation” (hero i kombit)
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who fought against Montenegro in 1878 for the “Albanian cause.” However, Ferović took part
in the Chetnik Organisation. Considering that he spoke Albanian (dobro govorio arnautski),
he played an important role among the Albanian notables in the Kosovo vilayet, especially in
relation to Isa Boletini, another venerated hero in Albanian historiography. What is more,
Ferović’s uncle Hasan Ferri (Ferović) was a very close friend of Isa Boletini. As an outcome
of this friendship, two sisters of Smajo Ferović were married to Isa Boletini’s sons. Thus, as a
Serbian chetnik, Ferović established family connections with Albanian national heroes, and in
addition to that, they cooperated in daily life on different levels. In other words, there were
circumstances at play whose analysis cannot rely on the clichés that leave an ethno-national
imprint, but rather should take into consideration family, kinship, and tribal connections of the
actors on the ground. The demonstrable family connections of the locals did not take place in
a social, cultural, or political vacuum. They operated within a set of fluid social roles and had
a strong agency to even force ascendant regional state administrations to adapt to conditions
they created on the ground. Oftentimes when a certain situation did not fit their personal,
family, or kinship interests, their agency could change state policies and break down state
networks. The fact, however, that they took various paths and quite different (often
contradictory) approaches to dealing with situations on the ground speaks volumes about the
complexity of individual and group “agency” in late Ottoman Macedonia, and simultaneously
about the poor analytical value of looking at these events through the lens of nation and
nationalism.
On the other hand, I also argued that the states had influence on the lives of locals, and centres
such as Sofia, Athens, Belgrade, or Istanbul could propel the locals to participate in the raids
and use of violence. By the late 1880s and into the 1900s, the “liberation” from the
“Ottoman/Turkish yoke” simultaneously meant violence on a breath-taking scale, as political
entrepreneurs together with “specialists in violence” operated on behalf of one or the other
neighbouring state. By mobilising these regional and local perspectives, this dissertation
conceptualised the Macedonian Questions as the space of “multiple arenas of domination and
opposition.“ In other words, different actors on the ground clashed with various state agendas,
but also often entered negotiations between state and non-state actors. In this regard, I did not
argue that different groups were defined according to their primordial ethno-national
identities, but rather that those groups or the individuals within them interacted, negotiated,
and fought in multiple arenas. To understand more comprehensively how local, national,
regional, and likely international practices of the “struggle for Macedonia” related to one
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another, the third and fourth (final) Chapters focused on the multiple arenas in which local,
national, and regional actors engaged and interacted, built up alliances but also perpetrated
violence and bloodshed. Thus, the present work has illustrated that the people on the ground
cannot be investigated separately from the statesmen and politicians, intellectuals and priests,
tribal chiefs and their families, with whom they negotiated or conflicted in everyday life. One
should also emphasise that these conflicts were not always based on “ethno-national” hatred.
Rather, the brutalities in the villages of Ottoman Macedonia were often also due to economic
reasons or local vendettas. This “everyday violence” is also understood as “violence that is
not motivated by politics and is not exerted by the state.” Eva Anne Frantz emphasizes that
this form of violence was often motivated by economic hardships by triggering the practices
of robbery. Furthermore, this practice was indeed independent from religion, confessional or
ethnical factors and was rather a tribal component. Following the Eva Anne Frantz’ statement,
here especially I agree that the long-assumed role of ‘tribal’ violence within the Ottoman
Balkans proved to have important, often neglected, implications. In this respect, it is also
often neglected that, in these areas, the violence was incited by tribal motives and ‘honour
codes’ much more often than religious or ethno-national differences. In the mountainous areas
of this vilayet, extended family structures were dominant and the solidarity with and
membership in a certain family or tribe was crucial.
In late Ottoman Macedonia, especially in the Kosovo vilayet, the Ottoman state
administration was virtually absent from the mountainous regions. In order to integrate these
parts into a broader centralisation apparatus, the Ottoman state firstly borrowed the ideas of
the European state practices, and secondly tried to implement them by colonisation in the
form of mission civilizatrice. This “borrowed colonialism,” defined by Selim Deringil, led the
Ottoman officials to depict the provincial subjects as living in “a state of nomadism and
savagery.” Influenced by the European discourses of the time, the Ottoman Empire also
introduced the notions of “civilized” and “barbarian.” In the Ottoman context, the latter term
predominantly referred to the tribal groupings in the Kosovo vilayet and Debre (Manastir
vilayet), depicted in Ottoman documents as vahsi (wild) and cahiliyyet (ignorant). These
tribes (asabiyet), who inhabited the mountainous regions, governed themselves according to
the Law of Lek Dukagjini. In order to establish control over them, the Ottoman “borrowed
colonialism” was reflected through the notions of castigation (tedbi) and education/correction
(terbiye) that aimed to bring them (locals) under discipline (inzibat). In other words, the
Ottoman principles of civilising and disciplining were introduced as a process of “borrowed
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colonialism” in order to prevent the influence of the Great Powers or regional states on these
populations in Ottoman Macedonia. The policy of integrating the “periphery” and including
these “wild and ignorant” tribes within the bureaucratic apparatus can also be analysed in the
broader context of the Ottoman counter-colonialist response to European imperialism. I have
argued that this Ottoman colonial modernity was a “survival tactic” for ensuring the stability
and protection of the state, which entailed an important quest for legitimacy. Thus, the
government administration was reorganised, a judiciary and executive councils were
established, legislation and laws were enforced, technological developments in the form of
roads, telegraphs, and railways were introduced, all in order to bring the provinces closer to
the centre than ever before. With the goal of drawing the three vilayets (Macedonia) closer to
the centre, Sultan Abdulhamid II, appointed a peripheral mobile actor in Istanbul to the
position of the Grand Vizier. One such personality was Avlonyali Mehmet Ferid Pasha, who
belongs to the company of those who played a crucial role in the enforcement of the “centreperiphery”
relations. Since many Albanian-speaking locals in Ottoman Macedonia were
dissatisfied with the introduction of the reforms of 1903, as an Albanian-speaking bureaucrat,
Ferid Pasha played an important role among the local Albanian population in the three
vilayets, trying to negotiate with notable locals. However, this influence was not one-sided,
from the “centre” towards its “peripheries,” but as I further argued, the practices at the
periphery of the Empire proved far more influential (in state/governmental matters) than
previously theorised. Based on post-colonial theory and “centre-periphery” relations, in
Chapter Four I highlighted that people living in the peripheries possessed agency and shaped
the Ottoman bureaucracy and imperial policy as much as the Ottoman “borrowed
colonialism” impacted the lives of its local agitators, shaping the core values of both the
Ottoman peripheries (Macedonia) and Istanbul. I demonstrated that the outbreak of the events
in Ottoman Macedonia in July 1908 such as the rebellion in Resne led by Ahmed Niyazi; the
meeting of thousands of Albanian-speaking inhabitants in Ferizaj (Firzovik) whose local
rebels sent telegraphs to Istanbul demanding the restoration of the 1876 Constitution,
triggered the Young Turks and the Ottoman third army based in Thessaloniki to charge to
Istanbul in the name of a Revolution. Indeed, reports suggest that the “revolt” in Kosova, as
much as those surfacing throughout Macedonia, changed completely political constellation in
the Ottoman Empire. Here I argued that the locals and the ‘Albanian element’ played a very
important role in the Revolution. In this regard, I analysed detailed entangled relations
between the Young Turks and Albanian-speaking members of this movement or Albanian
notables, who cooperated with the Young Turks. In this Chapter, I emphasised that without an
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understanding of these entanglements and the situation on the ground, we could not have a
clear picture of the subsequent events in Ottoman Macedonia, such as the Albanian Uprisings
and the Balkan Wars. Perhaps ironically, I suggested that these events represent also a good
example of the agencies of ‘peripheral actors’ who triggered the revolution in the Ottoman
provinces, respectively in Ottoman Macedonia and changed the regime in the ‘centre.’ To
borrow Chakrabarty’s famous term “provincializing,” I hold that these events of 1908 should
be analysed as “provincializing Istanbul.” This enables us to imbue our analysis of “centreperiphery”
relations with a better understanding of the role of agency, resistance, and multiscalar
power struggles which link the many different cores with the quite variegated
peripheries. Furthermore, the research went beyond reductive national-historical and
Eurocentric perspectives. On the other hand, it “gave a voice” to less researched communities
who established entanglements and transfers with a multidirectional character. Such “voices”
were exemplified in the fourth Chapter by the personal conversations of the Young Turks and
Ottoman Albanian intellectuals – with each other and the local population as well – which
were “spoken” in their memoirs and diaries, personal letters and essays, newspapers and
journals. Such conversations were possible due to their still ‘hybridity.’ Neither in the
Albanian community, nor in the Young Turk Movement was there a ‘homogenous national
society.’ However, Hanes Grandits points out that a basic differentiation must be made during
the time of conflict (revolt and organised violence), because people tended to be compelled by
the warring parties to clearly “take sides.” In similar ways, Hobsbawm emphasises that “any
individual can sustain all sorts of multiple attachments, and not see them as incompatible,
until some kind of conflict arises.” In connection to these analyses, the period between 1909-
1912/13 were the years of increased violence in Ottoman Macedonia. After an attempt for a
counter-revolution in the Ottoman Empire on 31 March 1909, the Young Turk regime started
to suppress all groups that opposed the centralisation. I argued that this Young Turk attempt
of centralisation was simultaneously a process of “nationalizing empire.” This was often
applied by way of introduction of new laws that violated local traditions and codes and
triggered many revolts in the peripheries. During the time, Ottoman Macedonia kept the
region in turmoil, where Albanian insurrections broke out. Although, prior to the Revolution
(1908), many Albanian-speaking notables were still guided by custom, tradition, and code of
honour (besa) based on regional, tribal, or family codices that enabled multi-layered loyalty
relations in daily life during times of peace. However, the years after 1908 became “the worst
and most threatening period for Albania” guided by many conflicts and increased violence. In
this respect, during times of conflict, revolt, and organized violence, loyalties generally
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narrowed down, and people tended to choose a side (with which they allied). These processes
triggered many Albanian intellectuals to overcome regional divisions (Tosk and Gegë) or
tribal differentiations and to stand for a “pan-Albanian” unity. It is therefore conceivable that
a more intensive cooperation between south and north Albanians began only after the Young
Turk Revolution and the CUP’s attempts of centralisation (policy). During this period, new
local actors, such as Nikolle Ivanaj and Isa Boletini, played very important roles and
transformed the dynamics on the ground. While Ivanaj connected two Albanian regions and
was in constant communication with the band kaçak leader Themistokli Germenji and the Geg
notables, Isa Boletini was a man of action between the Kosovo notables and the states of
Montenegro and Serbia. Because of the destructive military policies of the Young Turk
regime, the once highly contested socio-political spaces such as Ottoman Macedonia were left
vulnerable to external interests aimed at securing absolute power. That said, these
centralisation policies introduced by the Young Turks did not always work out according to
their plans. For example, border areas such as Kosovo vilayet in particular, became a place for
new possibilities and ultimately cooperations with Serbian and Montenegrin states. In this
respect, the Young Turk efforts of “nationalizing empire” brought many local Albanianspeaking
notables to cooperate with their “eternal enemies” – the “Serbs” – and the Serbian
state. Moreover, the ‘Albanian Uprisings’ (1909-1912) triggered various policies of the
Balkan states as well, which led the Balkan states to interfere into Ottoman affairs. The
problem that I examined in Chapter Four was that the Balkan states feared the potential
establishment of autonomous Albania, as promised by the Ottoman government in August
1912. In the documents also known as Arnavutluk, autonomous Albania was to consist of at
least two vilayets of Macedonia, Kosovo and Manastir, but it also often included Selanik (the
entire Ottoman Macedonia). As such, the Serbian diplomats and Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Nikola Pasic, openly reported that the “Albanian presence” and “Greater Albania” posed a
threat to “the survival of the Serbs.” The same opinion was held by the Bulgarian and
Montenegrin diplomats who insisted on implementation of reforms in Macedonia that would
avoid the formation of the potential autonomous Albania. At the end, this ‘Albanian presence’
in fact led these, once rivalling states, towards cooperation and the establishment of the
Balkan League, which Nikola Pasic called “four Balkan Christian states (Serbia, Greece,
Bulgaria and Montenegro).” The Serbian consul in Prishtina, M. DJ. Milojevic, asserted that
“Albanians [were] sensing that the Turkish Empire [was] gradually falling apart and therefore
they wished to build friendships with the neighbouring states of Serbia and Montenegro so
that they could jointly protect their fatherland(s) against foreign enemies.” As a final result of
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this turmoil in Ottoman Macedonia, the local Serbs joined the Albanian notables in the
uprisings. They were also supported by Serbian organisations of National Defense and the
Black Hand, whereby Serbian and Albanian-speaking bands, vojvoda Tankosic, and Isa
Boletini this time fought together and joined forces against the Ottomans. To this end, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Serbia issued a Directive regarding the
cooperation with the Albanians (direktiva za rad sa arnautima) on 11 July 1912, which
clearly stated that Serbia “should support by all means the division between Turks and
Albanians.” It further declared that the Albanian struggle should be “encouraged and helped”
by the Serbian state, but to the extent that supported “overall Serbian interests (opšti srpski
interes).” In fact, the state interest was to “weaken the Albanians and Turks,” because it was
“inevitable to war with the Turks.” Furthermore, Stevan Simic, a member of the Serbian
Chetnik Organisation argued that Serbia should use all capacities to penetrate Ottoman
Macedonia, because “the anarchy [would] last until the Macedonian, in other words Turkish
or Near Eastern Question [was] solved” (a anarhije ce biti uvek do god se ne reši maćedonsko
odnosno tursko ili bližeg istoka pitanje). In order to implement a “final solution” to the
Macedonian, that is Turkish, or Near Eastern Question, the Balkan states established the
Balkan League (Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece). In this attempt, the Balkan states
declared war to the Ottomans known historical scholarship as the Balkan Wars (1912-13).
The first country that declared war was Montenegro. On this topic I also highlighted the
important role played by Montenegro, whose position has often been omitted by scholars
when it comes to the Macedonian Questions. I examined the Montenegrin policy towards
Macedonia, and showed that it was an active participant in the Kosovo vilayet by providing
local notables with arms and offering them a safe haven, especially during the implementation
of the Young Turk centralisation policy. As such, the Montenegrin policy needs a closer
analysis and further detailed study with regard to the Macedonian Questions. Apart from it,
Montenegrin rulers, in this case Prince Nikola, worked on the construction of the myth about
Montenegrins as the “purest Serbs,” who had the right and legacy to rule over cities such as
Decani and Prizren – once important centres of the Serbian empire. In fact, Prince Nikola
intended to carve out a Greater Montenegrin or a united, South-Slavic state of the territories
of Ottoman Albania and Ottoman Macedonia, with a seat in Prizren. In this attempt, he also
supported the idea that his son Mirko should be appointed General Governor of Ottoman
Macedonia, a suggestion made by the Great Powers in 1906. The Ottoman media and various
documents reporting of these attempts entitled them “Montenegro and the Macedonian
Principality.” In this regard, there is no doubt that Montenegro played an important role in
290
Macedonia. Furthermore, in the fourth Chapter, I argued also that the Balkan Wars were a byproduct
of the “small state imperialism” of the Balkan governments. These states also passed
through the process of “imperializing the nation-state” as an inversed process of the Young
Turk regime’s attempt at “nationalizing (the) empire.”
Already by the spring of 1912 these imperialist policies and their subsequent state apparatus
were managed by the people who had little knowledge of the Macedonian region over which
they expected to rule. These military regimes of Montenegro, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria,
but also Ottoman military regimes, were no longer interested in understanding the locals, but
tried to instrumentalise them for their imperialist purposes. As a result, their operating logic
was to cooperate with the locals only if they contributed to the achievement of stateimperialism.
In other words, in the peak of these imperialist policies, which erupted into the
Balkan Wars, Ottoman Macedonia would become a zone of violence and conflicts. Focusing
on the experience of the inhabitants of Ottoman Macedonia during the period of increased
violence in the region (1903-1912/13), I illustrated how in fact solidarities and their
interpersonal relationships broke down due to the imperialism and were forcefully replaced in
the public by a sense of collective belonging to a certain nation (Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek,
Albanian, or Turk). In order to lay the groundwork for the emergence of this violence, I
argued that the wars and conflicts on the ground were not incited due to a “national
awareness” and “primordial ethno-nationalism” of the locals, but were rather a by-product of
the state-promoted nationalisms and their imperialist ambitions in the region that often
influenced the locals to take sides in times of conflicts and violence.
The opportunity of the states to envision imperialism allowed planners to abandon the
practices of negotiation with the locals. Rather, the administrative goal was full-scale
extradition of the people who “belonged” to other nationhoods or religions. In this respect,
Mark Mazower identifies the decade from the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) to 1922–1923 as
“the catalyst for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and massive forced population movements for the
first time in history.” This process of violence, partition, and division of Ottoman Macedonia
into smaller ethnically “homogeneous” entities was named “Balkanization.” The term was
coined during the Balkan wars (1912-1913) and was widely used and accepted after the Great
War (1914-1918), a time during which it referred to the fragmentation of Ottoman
Macedonia. By that time, this term received a negative connotation of violent tensions that are
usually accompanied with fragmentation of various entities. However, this fragmentation of
291
Ottoman Macedonia (the Balkans) and the violence on the ground was not an isolated
example in the geographic region of the Balkans and “unique” case for this part of the world.
However, the use of the term ‘Balkanization’ grew into ‘abuse of language,’ widely promoted
in European media as a synonym for conflict, allegedly due to the Balkan geographical “zone
of violence” that did not fit entirely within the “civilized” European ideals. In fact, incoming
the Great War (1914-1918) and the Second World War (1939-1945) showed that neither the
Ottoman Empire nor the Balkan states were completely “barbarian,” nor were the European
empires totally “civilized.” At that time, the mentors of the Balkan states, known as the Great
powers, enmeshed Africa and other parts of the world in the processes of Balkanization and
Imperialism, which resulted in slavery and exploitation, political alienation and racism, wars
and violence, ethnic cleansings and genocide. The results of the Europeans’ colonisation in
Africa, the Endlösung of the Jews in Germany, the anti-Jewish pogroms in Imperial Russia,
demonstrate that “the white man’s burden” was to think through the lenses of “questions” and
“final solutions.” It seems that during this “Age of Empire” not only were the Macedonian
Questions globalised, but also the final solutions became balkanised. The primary lesson to be
drawn from these stories is that (the picture of) the world was not divided between the
“Occident” and the “Orient,” the “civilized” and the “barbarian,” the “progressive/advanced”
and the “backward,” but Europe, coupled with the Balkans and the Ottomans, was more
intricately connected and entangled into the “Balkanization,” a tool widely used to “solve” the
Macedonian Questions.
292
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Archives and Libraries:
- Archiginnasio Library in Bologna
- Başbakanlik Osmanli Arsivi or BOA
- Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris
- Central State Archive of Albania (AQSH) in Tirana
- Central State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg (TsGIA SPb)
- Deutsche Bahn OR0610 (Orientbahnen Ostrumelisches Netz)
- HHStA, Vienna
- Historical Archive of Macedonia in Thessaloniki (IAM)
- National Library of Bulgaria “St. Cyril and Methodius” in Sofia
- Staatsbibliothek in Berlin
- State Archive of Montenegro (DACG) in Cetinje
- State Archives of North Macedonia (DARSM) in Skopje
- State Archives of Serbia (DAS) in Belgrade
Newspapers:
- Albania, Brussel
- Balgarin, Gyurgevo
- Balgariya, Sofiya
- Balgarski Glas, Bolgrad
- Balkan, Filibe (Plovdiv)
- Bratstvo, Beograd
- Celokupna Balgariya, Tarnovo
- Diturija, Selanik
- Drita, Bukuresh
- Fiamuri Arberit/La Bandiera dell’Albania, Corigliano Calabro
- Glas Crnogorca, Cetinje
- Istok, Beograd
- Kalendari Kombiar, Sofja
- Makedonija, Istanbul
- Makedonski pregled, Sofiya
- Maritsa, Plovdiv
- Messager de Vienne
- Narodno Prava, Beograd
- Nezavisimost, Bukurest
- Nova Balgariya, Bukurest
- Politika, Beograd
- Shpnesa e Shcypeniis, Ragusa
- Tercüman-ı Şark, Istanbul
- The Times, London
- Vreme, Beograd
- XiX vek, Carigrad
- Yugozapadna Bulgaria, Sofija
333
Web Sites:
- http://ataturkkitapligi.ibb.gov.tr/ataturkkitapligi/index.php
- http://digital.bms.rs/ebiblioteka/
- http://diplprepiska.mi.sanu.ac.rs/Wiki.jsp?setLang=en&page=Serbia-Forum
- http://dlib.me/
- http://macedonia.kroraina.com/en/ban/nr4.html#155
- http://nationallibrary.bg/wp/?page_id=1337
- http://www.albanianhistory.net/1878_League-of-Prizren/index.htm
- https://www.bksh.al/online-catalogues
- https://www.osmanlicagazeteler.org