PROPUESTA CURRICULAR
5) Conocimiento nuevo.
5.4 FASE Nº 3: Evaluación y construcción de juicios de valor.
VLAHS ARE ORTHODOX Christian in religion, speak a Latin language and are found scattered throughout South Eastern Europe. Vlahs are also known as Tsintzars to the Macedonians, Serbs and Bulgars; Kutzovlahs to the Greeks; they have at times been known as Macedo-Rumans in order to distinguish themselves from their
cousins, Daco-Rumans, across the Danube.31 The largest and most compact
concentrations of Vlahs in the Balkan Peninsula traditionally were in Epirus and
Thessaly.32 Of all the Vlah centres in European Turkey, the largest urban
concentration was located in the town of Moskopole (along the Albanian/Macedonian borderlands) with approximately 60,000 Vlah inhabitants in
30 The highest estimates of the Macedonian population, unsurprisingly, were derived from individual
commentators who recognised a separate Macedonian identity.
31 G. M. Terry, The Origins and Development of the Macedonian Revolutionary Movement with Particular Reference to the
Tayna Makedonsko-Odrinska Revolutsionerna Organizatsiya from its Conception in 1893 to the Ilinden Uprising of 1903, Unpublished MA thesis, University of Nottingham, 1974.
32 The Romanian historian I. Arginteanu, Istoriya na Armn Makedoncite (Vlasite) [A History of the Macedonian
Vlahs], 1998, p. 113 [Original title, Istora Romanilor Macedoneni, Bucharest, 1904].
The historian, G. Nakratzas (renowned in Greece for his fresh balanced approach towards Greek history), adds that the Vlahs constituted the overwhelming majority of the local population of north-eastern Epirus, Pindus, western Thessaly and the Sperhios valley over the last thousand years. G. Nakratzas, The Close Racial Kinship Between the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Turks, Thessaloniki, 1999, p. 68.
the eighteenth century.33 The nearby towns of Bitkuyki and Shipiska each contained
30,000 Vlahs.34
A harmonious co-existence between Vlahs and Albanians ended with the conversion of the bulk of the Albanian population to Islam. Vlahs inhabiting a line stretching south from Moskopole to the Gramos Mountain became victim to
constant terror by Albanian Muslim bandits.35 The infamous Ali Pasha of Janina,
with a large bashibouzuk force made up of Albanians and Turks, attacked and totally
destroyed the town of Moskopole in 1789.36 A similar fate befell the Vlah towns of
Bitkuki, Birina, Nikulica, Gramosta, Linotopa, Varteni and others.37 Vlahs were
forced to flee and migrated as far as Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria. Others settled in Macedonian towns such as Bitola, Ohrid and Krushevo, followed by further movement into the Macedonian interior. They were most populous in the far southerly regions of the Bitola vilayet, particularly in the Grevena district where they constituted the bulk of the population, and their settlement extended southwards into
the Pindus ranges where they formed a very large compact group.38 Other groups of
Vlah villages existed in the central and western regions of Macedonia, typically in mountainous districts.
In commercial centres such as Bitola, Krushevo, and Voden, Vlahs engaged in trade and business. Urban Vlahs were renowned for coming under Greek influence, and were considered by H.N. Brailsford, a journalist and relief worker in Macedonia,
to be the ‘backbone of the Hellenic party’ in Macedonia.39 Generally mistaken as
33 I. Arginteanu, op. cit. p. 149. 34 Ibid, p. 149.
35 Ibid, p. 148.
36Bashibouzuks were Muslim irregular fighters, typically acting as bandits. They were notorious throughout
Macedonia. During the Ilinden Rebellion, after a village had been attacked by the Ottoman military,
bashibouzuks often made up a second wave of attack, pillaging and plundering all that remained in the village.
37 I. Arginteanu, op. cit. p. 151. 38 G. Nakratzas, op. cit. pp. 72-76.
39 H.N. Brailsford, Macedonia: Its Races and their Future, London, 1905, p. 179. Macedonia: Its Races and their Future,
Greeks, and claimed as such by Greek propagandists, clearly without the Vlahs the
‘Greeks would cut a poor figure among the statistics’.40 At the beginning of the
twentieth century it was observed how Vlahs might have been mistaken as Greeks:
They shelter themselves in the Greek Church, adopt Greek culture as a disguise, and serve the Hellenic idea. It is rare to meet a man among them who does not speak Greek more or less fluently and well, but at home the national Latin idiom persists, and their callings, their habits, their ways of thinking, make them a nationality apart.41
C. Eliot, a former Secretary at the British Embassy at Constantinople from 1893 to 1898, makes a similar observation about the hidden nature of Vlah nationality: ‘One may live and travel in the Balkan lands without seeing or hearing anything of the
Vlahs, until one’s eyes are opened’.42
Outside the urban centres Vlahs established livestock breeding settlements in mountainous regions and lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle. They were known to herd
large sheep holdings over great distances.43 Rural Vlahs were not as inclined to adopt
a pro-Greek attitude compared to their city brethren and were more inclined to subscribe to pro-Romanian propaganda. Traditionally Vlahs maintained friendly relations with the Ottoman authorities as they harboured no political aspirations in Macedonia. The authorities welcomed Romanian propaganda in Macedonia, as it weakened the Christian subjects further and there was no threat of Romania annexing any part of Macedonia. Romanian influences on rural Vlahs, however, drew a violent reaction from Greek official quarters with various pressures exerted upon Vlah villages in order to encourage them to remain with the Greek Patriarchate church and therefore remain a ‘Greek village’. Greek pressure took two forms – ‘the spiritual
of 1903–1904 in Macedonia, together with his wife, working on behalf of the British Relief Fund after the Ilinden Uprising. Brailsford treats the Macedonians as belonging to the Bulgarian nationality.
40 G. M. Terry, op. cit. p. 9. The historian, L.S. Stavrianos, Stated that when Romania pressured Ottoman
Turkey for official recognition of the Vlahs in Macedonia, ‘this policy naturally aroused much resentment, particularly among the Greeks, for the Vlahs had hitherto been counted as Greeks in population estimates’. L.S. Stavrianos, Balkan Federation - A History of the Movement toward Balkan Unity in Modern Times, Connecticut, 1964, p. 140.
41 H.N. Brailsford, op. cit. p. 176.
42 C. Eliot, Turkey in Europe, London, 1965, (1900), p. 371.
43 Vlahs were known to herd their sheep over large distances, ‘some as far south as the Gulf of Corinth’. D.M.
terrorism of the Greek Church, which holds them by the threat of excommunication, and the physical terrorism of the Greek bands which assassinate their notables and
teachers’.44 Vlahs became an object of rivalry between Romanian and Greek
propaganda.
Generally Bulgarian and Serbian sources put the Vlah figure at between 70,000 and 80,000. The lowest estimates, not surprisingly, came from Greek contemporary commentators such as C. Nicolaides in 1899, at 41,200, and the Greek Parliamentary Minister, Delyanis in 1904, at 25,101. Western European authorities placed Vlah numbers in the 60,000–70,000 range. The highest figures were derived from Romanian sources. Late in the nineteenth century Romania lay claim to the Vlahs and proceeded to interest herself in Macedonian affairs, producing statistical data
indicating a Vlah population of anywhere from 350,000 to 3,134,450.45
44 H.N. Brailsford, op. cit. p. 198.
45 An ethnographic map published by the Romanians N. Densusianu and F. Dame (1877) introduced a new
controversy to the ethnic composition of Macedonia. It indicated a much larger distribution of Vlahs in Macedonia than had previously been recorded. The Vlah population in Macedonia and the surrounding areas was claimed to be 1,200,000 – of whom 450,000 were to be found in Macedonia, 200,000 in Thessaly, 350,000 in Epirus and Albania, and 200,000 in Thrace. In 1913 another Romanian commentator (N. Constantine) claimed that there were 350,000 Vlahs in Macedonia. Romanian statistics of the Vlah population in Macedonia were connected to political manoeuvring rather than any real claim to Macedonian territory. The historian, Stavrianos, Stated, ‘they made use of the Vlahs as a sort of speculative investment which perhaps could be used profitably for bargaining purposes some time in the future’. L.S. Stavrianos, The Balkans Since 1453, 1966, p. 521.
Table 2.1: Estimates of Vlahs in Macedonia, 1877–1913
Year of data Commentator Origin of
Commentator Number of Vlahs
1877 V. Teploff Russian 63,895 1877 N. Denisusianu & F. Dame Romanian 450,000 1878 Syligos Greek 70,000 1889 S. Verkovitch Serb 74,375 1898 G. Weigand German 70,000 1899 C. Nicolaides Greek 41,200 1900 V. Kanchov Bulgarian 77,367 1904 Delyanis Greek 25,101 1905 D.M. Brancoff Bulgarian 63,895
1906 R. Von Mach German 56,118
1912 Y. Ivanoff Bulgarian 79,401
Figure 2.1: Vlah movement into Macedonia, 1700–1900