Macedonia during the Byzantine period

With the exception of some enclaves of Latin-speaking and other peoples, the fundamentally Greek population of Macedonia remained effectively unchanged until the 7th century A.D., when various Slav races (Drogovites, Strumonites, Sagoudates, and others) began to settle in the area of Macedonia. With the permission of the Byzantine authorities, these tribes formed small Slavic enclaves known to the Byzantines as 'Sclavineae'. Throughout the 7th century the Slavs fought the Byzantines and made repeated attacks on Thessaloniki, though without success. In 688 Justinian II won a decisive victory over them, and forcibly removed many of them to Bithynia in Asia Minor. For a long time the Slavs lived peacefully in the European provinces of the Byzantine Empire and, as can be seen from Byzantine writers, many of them were hellenised.

In the meantime the Balkans had been invaded by Finno-Tartar tribes, the Proto-Bulgars, who in turn began to gain sway over the Slavs and the other peoples who lived in the area which today is Bulgaria. However, these tribes were assimilated linguistically by the Slavs, who far outnumbered them. The amalgamation of these peoples -who jointly used the name Bulgars- created the medieval state of Bulgaria.

At this point it should be noted that there is considerable controversy amongst scholars with regard to the extent of the 'Bulgarisation' of the Slav tribes which had settled in parts of Macedonia. The historians of Skopje (Yugoslav Macedonia) maintain that there were no Bulgars in Macedonia during the Middle Ages, and that Samuel was a Slav Macedonian king who fought against Byzantines and Bulgars alike. However, the Byzantine sources reveal that Samuel's kingdom was a multi-racial one, and that for a short period in the 10th century it extended further than Bulgaria, into Macedonia and even further south and north. The fact remains, nonetheless, that despite the dynamism which this state displayed for a few decades it was unable to dislodge Byzantine rule over the whole of Macedonia or bring about any radical change in its ethnological composition. The major centres of population in southern Macedonia did not fall into the hands of Samuel and continued to be Greek, without interruption. In the rural areas of northern Macedonia, on the other hand -in areas, that is, which today are mostly within the frontiers of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, though some lie to the south- it would appear that there was a solid Slav element. After the overthrow of Samuel's state by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, known as 'the Bulgarslayer' (11th century), the Greek population of the rural areas revived and there was a Greek renaissance throughout the length and breadth of Macedonia.

In the 14th century, the Serbian empire of Stefan Dugan spread into Macedonia. However, this short-lived empire, which preceded the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, had no effective impact on the ethnological nature of Macedonia, as explained by Professor A. Vakalopoulos in his History of Macedonia. Serbian rule left in its passage a few more Slav enclaves which reinforced the strata of Slav population already there. More importantly, however, Serbian rule left behind it tales of a great, though transient, empire. It should be noted that these misty recollections of a glorious past played their part in inciting the national awakening of the Serbs in the 19th century to put forward claims on Macedonia. A similar process occurred with the national awakening of the Bulgarians, who, during the 19th century, laid claim to the title deeds of Macedonia by virtue of its shortlived occupation by czar Samuel.

It is, perhaps, necessary to emphasize at this point that during the Byzantine era and, later, in the Ottoman period the term 'Macedonia' had lost its former geographical implications. According to the historians Amantos, Zakythinos and Vakalopoulos, the Byzantine authors often applied the term Macedonia to areas including the greater part of modern Albania, Northern Thrace (Eastern Rumelia) and regions of what is today Greek Thrace. That the term 'Macedonian' had, in Byzantine times, lost the national and even the geographical meaning which it had had in antiquity is proved by the fact that the 'Macedonian Dynasty' of Byzantine emperors actually consisted of princes from Thrace.