To clarify my own position, I think the way Prof. Miller handles ethnicity is not helpful. I don’t think it would be fair to say his letter was intended as a definitive statement on the subject, but I think his approach of categorising Macedonians as either Greek or non-Greek is not suited to a historical view of the topic. It might work as a snapshot of time, but not of something that changes over centuries.

I also think that applying classical ethnicities directly onto the modern world and ignoring the intervening centuries is not a sound basis for political action, by either side. The modern world is not the classical world and somewhere choices will have to be made about which classical traits are relevant and which are not. When you do that you’re saying more about the modern world than its classical roots. Modern frameworks are anachronistic if what you’re interested in is the ancient world.

You’re welcome to disagree with me, and add your signature to Prof Miller’s letter. However, I hope the above makes it clear there are historical rather than nationalistic reasons why I will not, regardless of seeing some friends on the list. It might mean I disagree with some thoughtful and intelligent people, but that’s what ancient historians do. Research journals are full of people discussing ideas and disagreeing with other historians opinions.

That’s what disturbs me about some of the statements on Macedonian ethnicity. Not that people disagree with me, but that some people find the mere possibility of another opinion unacceptable. That’s why I’m not happy that I’m closing this thread, but we’ve moved to the stage where we’re getting reiterations of the same arguments. It’s a shame because I’ve learned a lot from both sides.

If I return to the subject of ancient Greek ethnicity (and that’s very likely) I’ll try and email everyone who’s participated above so they can criticise whatever else I write. And there’ll be plenty to criticise because I think I’ll be going out on a limb with some of my ideas.

My thanks to everyone above who’s contributed.

Update: It looks like my spam bin swallowed one of Iconoclast’s further comments. The discussion continues at Modern Macedonian History.

I will stay to this one:
Both Phillip II and Alexander the Macedonian used the ancient Greek language for diplomatic, trade and administrative purposes. It seems to have been an act of political expediency. The use of the Greek language for these purposes cannot be used to support the claim that ethno-culturally the ancient Macedonians were Greek, any more than the official use of English, French and Portuguese in many countries in Africa can be used to claim that the inhabitants of these countries are thereby of English, French and Portuguese origin.

So you believe that Macedonians speaking and whiting Greek, only for for
diplomatic, trade and administrative purposes!!!!
I wonder why all the others like Persians,Syrians, Egyptians, Thracians, Romans , identify them as Greeks until today.
End where is the original language you talking about???
Its obvious that you are confuse, you cant explain that Ancient Makedonians speaking and writing in Greek, Had Greek names, build city s with Greek names..
Little History lessons:
In 324 BC Philip B fought the Dardanias and built the city Iraklia there are ruins -and-beyond Monastery today, to counter their attacks.
Near the town was Iraklia villages Styvira, Vrychida, Athakos, Vrygias, Meliti.
Earliest where is now the town of Ohrid, was the ancient Greek town or Ligkistis Lichnitis or Lichnidos. The Ligkistes argue that descendants of Vakchiadon of Corinth.
One of the kings of was the Arravaios the daughter of Eurydice, the married Amyntas III, father of Philip II (father of Alexander the Great).
The Dardanos was from Arcadia
But the Dardania, over current Skopje and the Greek cities of Monastir, Gevgeli, the valley between Axios and Moravia – the Dardania, located just before the Roman-era was created by the descendants of Dardania, son of Electra and Arcades Zeus, who fled from Arcadia. From there he went to disasters due to Samothrace and then moved to the area near Troy. From this came the name of the Dardanelles.Capital of Dardania was Scoupoi.(Scopje)
To add the first expedition of Alexander the Great, in the north up to the Danube, and that seriously injured in return, from the Paionon ambush near today borders in Florina;
The term Makednon nation is the concept of gender and
course refers to the Macedonian Greeks Dorians, from Argos.
The word “Macedonia” is Greek a word that itself the ethnic Greeks indigenous geographical Macedonia. If you think you and others who Slavomakedonians itself in Slavic languages as Makentotsi you can steal the Macedonian history of this place using Greek terms you kid yourself.

(…at this point the comment wanders into the realm of everything that’s wrong with non-Greek Macedonians in modern history for another 600 words, so I’ve trimmed it. Alun)

” The three vilayets – Salonika, Monastir and Kosovo – that made up the region “Macedonia” from the early 1900s onward (see Livanios) were not a country until 1991.”

which should be:

” The three vilayets – Salonika, Monastir and Kosovo – made up the region “Macedonia” from the early 1900s onward (see Livanios); the Republic of Macedonia, formed parts of these vilayets, was not a country until 1991.”

“you can not assert is that your proposition is logically stronger and more cogent “

Dan: no. I just gave my arguments to a group of professionals. So far, they’ve responded positively.

“the best contemporary scholarship on history of ancient ethnicities”. What you consider “best” in the exemplar you align yourself with, does not necessarily map to “best” in Professor Millers and the remaining 250+Classical Scholars exemplar. History is founded on science, …”

Wow. A mini-lecture on scientific method and static apriorism. Iconoclast might have done better to write less and read more, for instance in the sources and arguments that I provided and he ignores about ethnic formation, and to have noted that I warned Prof. Miller he was on a bad scholarly track three months ago.

“Greece has had, and still has her arm extended and her hand opened.”

In some ways that is very true and commendable. But important issues remain. The Greek foreign ministry continues to assert as a matter of faith that there are no ethnic minorities in Greece, for instance; and there is the NATO veto, etc.

“neighbouring nation state may become a proxy, that is a pawn,…” for hostile powers

True enough but exactly how this might work remains very vague. It was that vagueness that crippled many arguments of the Greek govt in the 1990s (see Zahariadis’, JMGS, 1996: “these claims were tenuous and implicit and … depended on a chain reaction of events that was neither clear nor probable”

In the meantime, Athenian anarchists are reportedly getting arms from Albanian sources, not the Macedonians who are regularly put forward as Mormo figures.

“… Ottoman census reports, [do] not support your argument. I am a little perplexed, what is your point anyway?”

My point was that many in the Republic of Macedonia had ancestors who lived in what is now Greek Macedonia. They did not leave for tourism.

All census reports are done by governments and often – since the time of Maccabees – serve the interests of governments. That is one reason the numbers in censuses of Macedonia seem unreliable to historians like Livanios (pp. 6 on the Ottoman census of 1904, and 25 on the unreliable Greek census of 1928).

Note that Zahariadis 1994, after reporting reasons for Greek concern about the new state to the north, suggests that one worthwhile response would be to recognize the ethnic minority population within Greek borders, possibly with a census. The Greek government has still not done this.

[On population shifts since 1913] “your agenda with regards to this entire issue. Your attempt to create the appearance of good-guy/bad-guy narrative,…”

It is unclear what Iconoclast disputes here: I mentioned the “forceful suppression” of Slavic Macedonians in Greece, mentioning a Greek source. Iconoclast might, as a scholar, look up the source and dispute it. I mentioned the 1982 law limiting return to “Greeks by genos,” with more detail in my underlying letter:

http://astro.temple.edu/~pericles/Letter.htm

In short, Iconoclast provides many adjectives but ignores the evidence.

“Alexander the Great was within the Greek sphere.”

I don’t disagree. The question is, in what way? Was it the “linear” relationship that the Greek scholar Triandafyllidou disparages? Was it the hostile relationship envisaged in the 1837 founding document of the Greek Archaeological Service? Alexander the Great would require a special essay, which is one reason I did not deal with him. I’m glad to see that Iconoclast takes Borza, a whipping boy on this issue since 1992, as an authority.

“there is no logical or rational justification to take a cognitive leap towards a proposition that the Ancient Macedonians have any relationship, whatsoever with the Slavs,”

which is one reason I did not.

[on “Paeonia”] “you can not say anything about what the current or future democratically elected Sovereign Government of the Hellenic Republic may or may not do.”

Of course not. But using the term “Paeonia” will not advance any cause.

“on the historical ethnogenisis of the Slavic people of the FYROM,… If you intend making references to higher authorities, if you are to be taken seriously, you need to cite the references.”

I provided references, and Iconoclast ignored them. See the “Letter.” I have no dispute with the quotation he provides from Danforth

“stop creating sophistry; these people that you call ‘Macedonian,’ considered themselves Bulgarians at the turn of the previous century. To attempt to say other wise is deliberately conflating the facts.”

I repeat, that great powers and neighbors had every reason to deny Macedonian identity, and that the evidence appears to be that the sense of identity expanded in the 20th century, largely, as Mazower says, due to the “combined idiocies” of Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria.

“I don’t think that anyone is arguing that the Slavs, of the FYROM, don’t exist …. when the citizens of the nation state, whose capital city is Skopje, in their act of asserting their equal rights of self-determination to call themselves by the appellation of simply, Macedonian, [they] have instantaneously, inextricably, and demonstrably diminished the equal rights of self-determination of ethnic Greek citizens of the Hellenic Repbulic… then we have a problem”

Noone holds a franchise on the name “Macedonian.“ Some people on both sides claim it is “holy.” So they don’t like it when others use it. But there is no evidence that the inhabitants of the Republic of Macedonia aim to prevent any use of the term “Macedonian” in Greece, which is what the extremist language (“diminished… rights of self-determination”) claims. Danforth, cited by Iconoclast, has already made this point. That Henry Morgenthau described “Macedonia” as a “purely Greek region” in 1929, a year after the Greek census showed the opposite, tells us more about how Great Powers regarded the Balkans than about territory itself.

I have no dispute with Loring Danforth’s finding that “Krste Misirkov, who had clearly developed a strong sense of his own personal national identity as a Macedonian and who outspokenly and unambiguously called for Macedonian linguistic and national separatism, acknowledged that a ‘Macedonian’ national identity was a relatively recent historical development.” That is indeed part of my point about ethnogenesis.

“Your argument cunningly asserts the word “region”, rather than the word “country” as a means of asserting claim on the entire region of Macedonia, rather than just the FYROM. This is completely unforgivable, if this was intentional.”

No cunning involved. The three vilayets – Salonika, Monastir and Kosovo – that made up the region “Macedonia” from the early 1900s onward (see Livanios) were not a country until 1991.

I am criticizing not the “Greek character” which Iconoclast says he represents, but arguments by the Greek government and some partisans.

Iconoclast presents a numbered list of claims the point of which is that people who think of themselves as Macedonians and live in a region long called Macedonia may not call their state by the name, Macedonia, because this some how damages citizens of the Greek province of Macedonia. Iconoclast throws in the dread term, “irredentism,” without a word about the form irredentism might take, and without considering that continued condescension and hostility will spur, not reduce, irredentist fervor in the state to the north.

Iconoclast claims that the Republic of Macedonia is “monopolising the name.” That would require denying the right of others to use the word – which is the opposite of what’s happened. Noone I know in the Republic of Macedonia “denies” any Greek of his or her “God given right to self-determine myself as a Hellene (Greek) and a Macedonian.”

Indeed, I shall say right now that I believe Iconoclast is probably a Macedonian (since we don’t know who he or she is, we cannot be sure). That’s a good thing. But it has never been at issue.

So, let us end this discussion; enough has been said so far, so that every reader can draw its own conclusions. I know that you are going to respond to this, but this is my last comment here. Take care.

No it really doesn’t. Language is important, but it is not the defining feature of ethnicity as the modern Balkans would show. The equation between language and peoples is also being thrown out in archaeology. There’s very few Iron Age archaeologists in the UK or Ireland who would say the Celts were in the islands precisely because language is not ethnicity. What makes the ancient Macedonians more Greek is the variety of other evidence from archaeology, but this is ambiguous.

Traditional histories say that the Greeks colonised Chalkidike around the 8th century BC. They are said to have have stuck to the peninsulas because of the tribe living in the interior. It’s a similar tale for colonisations elsewhere, which would suggest there was a strong divide between Greek and non-Greek. I’m not so sure about this. The histories we have are written centuries later from the points of view of specific Greek cities. In the case of Athenian history it would be useful to think of the inhabitants of Chalkidike as non-Greek as it would help justify the settlement of the area, at least to other Greeks. However, the archaeological record shows that there’s evidence for exchange of material between Chalkidike and southern Greece long before the colonisation moment back further into the Iron Age and Bronze Age. So you have archaeologists like John Papadopoulos pointing out that the historical record is not the last word on ancient ethnicity or culture.

Where does this leave ancient Macedonia? I think in other places you can see a process of intentional Hellenisation around the Mediterranean around the mid-seventh to sixth centuries. Settlements beyond the Peloponnese make a very strong point of emphasising how Greek they are at this time, and Macedonia could be doing the same. Borza (click on ‘Who were the Macedonians’) says that there’s good reason to argue that around this time the Macedonians too were becoming Hellenised. Equally when Macedonia takes control of Greece there’s an argument to be made about to what extent it is Macedonianised. The conquest is more or less the dividing point between the Classical and Hellenistic periods in Greek history. There is no one defining point where we can say what is exactly ancient Greek or ancient Macedonian. Once you get past that Greek history becomes much more dynamic and interesting.

It’s also worth pointing out tha Borza (p. 97 in the same book) is firmly against applying discussions of ancient ethnicity into the modern world.