History of the Macedonian People From Ancient times to the Present By Risto Stefov History of the Macedonian People From Ancient times to the Present Published by: Risto Stefov Publications [email protected] Toronto, Canada All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written consent from the author, except for the inclusion of brief and documented quotations in a review. e-book edition Copyright 2005 by Risto Stefov 2 PREFACE Ever since their beginning the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian States and to a lesser extent the Albanian State have systematically used every means possible, including waging propaganda campaigns, to negate the existence of the Macedonian nation. They have done this not because Macedonians do not exist but purely to usurp Macedonian territories and the rich Macedonian heritage. Until recently there were no organized Macedonian voices to speak for the Macedonian people and their rights as citizens of this world, so Macedonia’s adversaries, the Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians and more recently the Albanians, spoke for them. The time has now come when Macedonians are taking matters into their own hands and challenging old beliefs and the illegitimacy of those who have been speaking for them. Only Macedonians are the rightful heirs of the Macedonian heritage and the composers of Macedonia’s history. The Macedonians are not Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians or Albanians. Neither can they simultaneously be Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians and Albanians as their adversaries claim. The Greeks claim that “Macedonia is Greek” and has been for four thousand years. Contrary to ancient and modern evidence, they continue to insist that the ancient Macedonians were Greek. Again contrary to evidence and without proof, the modern Greeks claim that they are the direct descendants of the ancient Greeks and as such are the rightful owners of the ancient heritage. Furthermore, and without a shred of evidence, they claim that “all” the ancient Macedonians were killed off during the so called “Slav invasions” of the fifth and sixth centuries AD and there is no one left but the Greeks to claim Macedonia’s heritage. The Greeks, again without any evidence, claim that the modern Macedonians are Slavs who invaded Macedonia during the fifth and sixth centuries AD and have nothing in common with the ancient Macedonians and therefore have no rights to the Macedonian heritage. This book challenges all Greek claims and without any doubt will prove that they are no more than a “Greek myth”. Firstly, it is well known that a “Greek State” never existed before 1829. The ancient City States were conquered by Philip II, king of Macedonia in 338 BC and were never united into a single nation until the creation of the Greek Kingdom in 1832. Was it not the Macedonians who conquered the ancient City States? How then can ancient Macedonia be Greek? The Great Powers created the modern Greek Kingdom for the first time in 1832 as an attempt to partition the Ottoman Empire and prevent the formation of a single Slavic State in the Balkans. The Great Powers, Britain and France, created modern Greece purely for the purpose of blocking Russian access to the Mediterranean Sea. As for the purity of the modern Greek nation there is ample evidence, both historical and scientific, that contradicts modern Greek claims. For example 3 there is no modern pure Greek race that directly descended from the ancient City States. Today’s modern Greeks, like other nations in the Balkans, are made up of Slavs, Macedonians, Turks, Albanians, Roma, Vlachs, etc. A modern Greek person is only Greek by education or by assimilation and has no roots beyond 1832 when the Greek State and the Greek Nation were created for the first time. The modern Greek not only has a mythical past but sadly has abandoned and forsaken his or her own real roots and heritage. There are many examples of how the Greek State achieved nationhood at the expense of other races. For example, when Greece occupied Macedonian territories for the first time in 1912 there were no Greeks living in Macedonia. Yet a few years later the Greek State produced statistics that showed that the vast majority of the Macedonian population was Greek. How was that possible? In reality it was not. The Greek State shamelessly assimilated the Macedonian population by forcibly changing the people’s Macedonian names and toponyms into Greek ones. During the 1920’s, in its population exchanges with Turkey, Greece imported one million Christian Turks, about one fifth of its entire population, from Asia Minor and settled most of them in Macedonia. These people too became Greeks by force. The real flaw in the Greek State’s genealogical claim to the ancients is that, after eighty years of living on Macedonian soil, it convinced the Asian newcomers that they are the rightful owners of the Macedonian lands and heritage because they were told that they were the real direct descendants of the ancient Macedonians and not the indigenous Macedonian population they replaced. The Greek State is not above deception and lies, even to its own people, to convince the world that Greeks and Greeks alone are the rightful heirs of Macedonia’s lands and heritage. This is all done at the expense of the real Macedonians who had lived on those lands for hundreds of generations and have now been displaced. The Bulgarians too have claims on Macedonian territories and are using every means possible to convince the world that Macedonia rightfully belongs to them. The Bulgarian claim is that “Macedonia is Bulgarian” because the Macedonian people are Bulgarian. They are Bulgarian because they speak a “dialect” of the Bulgarian language. This book also challenges Bulgarian claims and will prove that they too are flawed and contradictory. It is well known that the Macedonians were already living in the Balkans and speaking the Slav language long before the first Bulgar Khans with their Turk and Tartar hoards arrived. Evidence shows that the numerically inferior Bulgars became assimilated into the larger indigenous Slav speaking population and adopted the Slav language and culture. More correctly, the Bulgarians speak a dialect of the Macedonian language, not the other way around. After all, was it 4 not the Macedonian brothers Kiril and Metodi from Solun who enlightened the Bulgarians? Without going into too much detail at this point, I want to mention that the aim of this book is to present the reader with a Macedonian perspective of Macedonia’s history. It is time the world heard the Macedonian point of view. Contrary to what Macedonia’s adversaries profess, the truth is on the Macedonian side. There is ample evidence that shows that the ancient Macedonians not only survived the many calamities from ancient times to now but their descendants do exist in Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Canada, Australia, the United States of America, Europe and the world over. They are now in the process of regrouping and are using the tools of the information age to fight back and retake what is theirs. This book is a chronological outline of historical events involving Macedonia and the Macedonian people from prehistoric times to the present. It is not complete in detail by any means but will give the reader a general analysis of Macedonia’s history. The book is written in the English language specifically for the younger generations in the Diaspora who want to learn Macedonian history but do not necessarily have the time or resources to do long and extensive research. Besides providing a comprehensive historical analysis, this book contains valuable information collected from interviews and personal experiences that cannot be found anywhere else. Also, since this book represents the Macedonian point of view, on occasion it will use Macedonian words to describe some of the more familiar place names like Solun (Salonica), Tsari Grad (Constantinople) and the Byzantines (Byzantines). 5 Table of Contents PREFACE ...................................................................................................3 Table of Contents ........................................................................................6 Introduction.................................................................................................7 Chapter 1 - The Beginning........................................................................18 Chapter 2 - The Rise of Macedonia ..........................................................21 Chapter 3 - The Early Macedonian Kingdom...........................................36 Chapter 4 - Rise of the Macedonian Empire.............................................50 Chapter 5 - Philip II - The Greatest of the Kings of Europe.....................59 Chapter 6 - Alexander III - The Greatest of the Great Conquerors ..........68 Chapter 7 - Alexander III - Lord of Asia ..................................................82 Chapter 8 - Alexander III - To the Ends of the Earth, the Trek to India...97 Chapter 9 - The Aftermath of Alexander’s Empire ................................112 Chapter 10 - Prelude to War with Rome.................................................128 Chapter 11 - War with Rome, the Decline of the Macedonian Empires.142 Chapter 12 - Cleopatra VII the Last of the Great Macedonian Monarchs .................................................................................................................157