The Berlin Treaty, by its artificial division of the Bulgarian race, created the difficult and perplexing “Macedonian Question.” The population handed back to Turkish rule never acquiesced in its fate; its discontent was aggravated The Macedonian Question. by the deplorable misgovernment which characterized the reign of Abdul Hamid II., and its efforts to assert itself, stimulated by the sympathy of the enfranchised portion of the race, provoked rival movements on the part of the other Christian nationalities, each receiving encouragement and material aid from the adjacent and kindred states. Some insignificant risings took place in Macedonia after the signature of the Berlin Treaty, but in the interval between 1878 and 1893 the population remained comparatively tranquil, awaiting the fulfilment of the promised reforms.
In 1893, however, a number of secret revolutionary societies (druzhestva) were set on foot in Macedonia, and in 1894 similar bodies were organized as legal corporations in Bulgaria. The fall of Stamboloff in that year and the Bulgarian Conspiracies. reconciliation of Bulgaria with Russia encouraged the revolutionaries in the mistaken belief that Russia would take steps to revive the provisions of the San Stefano treaty. In 1895 the “Supreme Macedo-Adrianopolitan Committee” (Vrkhoven Makedoni-Odrinski Komitet) was formed at Sofia and forthwith despatched armed bands into northern Macedonia; the town of Melnik was occupied for a short time by the revolutionaries under Boris Sarafoff, but the enterprise ended in failure. Dispirited by this result, the “Vrkhovists,” as the revolutionaries in Bulgaria were generally styled, refrained from any serious effort for the next five years; the movement was paralysed by dissensions among the chiefs, and rival parties were formed under Sarafoff and General Tzoncheff. Meanwhile the “Centralist” or local Macedonian societies were welded by two remarkable men, Damian Grueff and Gotzé Delcheff, into a formidable power known as the “Internal Organization,” founded in 1893, which maintained its own police, held its own tribunals, assessed and collected contributions, and otherwise exercised an imperium in imperio throughout the country, which was divided into rayons or districts, and subdivided into departments and communes, each with its special staff of functionaries. The Internal Organization, as a rule, avoided co-operation with the revolutionaries in Bulgaria; it aimed at the attainment of Macedonian autonomy, and at first endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to enlist the sympathies of the Greeks and Servians for the programme of “Macedonia for the Macedonians.”
The principle of autonomy was suspected at Athens and Belgrade as calculated to ensure Bulgarian predominance and to delay or preclude the ultimate partition of the country. At Athens, especially, the progress of the Greek Action. Bulgarian movement was viewed with much alarm; it was feared that Macedonia would be lost to Hellenism, and in 1896 the Ethniké Hetaerea (see [Greece] and [Crete]) sent numerous bands into the southern districts of the country. The Hetaerea aimed at bringing about a war between Greece and Turkey, and the outbreak of trouble in Crete enabled it to accomplish its purpose. During the Greco-Turkish War (q.v.) Macedonia remained quiet, Bulgaria and Servia refraining from interference under pressure from Austria, Russia and the other great powers. The reverses of the Greeks were to the advantage of the Bulgarian movement, which continued to gain strength, but after the discovery of a hidden dépôt of arms at Vinitza in 1897 the Turkish authorities changed their attitude towards the Bulgarian element; extreme and often barbarous methods of repression were adopted, and arms were distributed among the Moslem population. The capture of an American missionary, Miss Stone, by a Bulgarian band under Sandansky in the autumn of 1901 proved a windfall to the revolutionaries, who expended her ransom of £T16,000 in the purchase of arms and ammunition.
In 1902 the Servians, after a prolonged conflict with the Greeks, succeeded with Russian aid in obtaining the nomination of Mgr. Firmilian, a Servian, to the archbishopric of Usküb. Contemporaneously with a series of Russo-Bulgarian Troubles in 1902: Intervention of the Powers. celebrations in the Shipka pass in September of that year, an effort was made to provoke a rising in the Monastir district by Colonel Yankoff, the lieutenant of General Tzoncheff; in November a number of bands entered the Razlog district under the general’s personal direction. These movements, which were not supported by the Internal Organization, ended in failure, and merciless repression followed. The state of the country now became such as to necessitate the intervention of the powers, and the Austrian and Russian governments, which had acted in concert since April 1897, drew up an elaborate scheme of reforms. The Porte, as usual, endeavoured to forestall foreign interference by producing a project of its own, which was promulgated in November 1902, and Hilmi Pasha was appointed Inspector General of the Rumelian vilayets and charged with its application. The two powers, however, persevered in their intention and on the 21st of February 1903 presented to the Porte an identic memorandum proposing a series of reforms in the administration, police and finance, including the employment of “foreign specialists” for the reorganization of the gendarmerie.
At the same time the Bulgarian government, under pressure from Russia, arrested the revolutionary leaders in the principality, suppressed the committees, and confiscated their funds. The Internal Organization, however, was beyond Bulgarian Insurrection in 1903. reach, and preparations for an insurrection went rapidly forward. In March a serious Albanian revolt complicated the situation. At the end of April a number of dynamite outrages took place at Salonica; public opinion in Europe turned against the revolutionaries and the Turks seized the opportunity to wreak a terrible vengeance on the Bulgarian population. On the 2nd of August, the feast of St Elias, a general insurrection broke out in the Monastir vilayet, followed by sporadic revolts in other districts. The insurgents achieved some temporary successes and occupied the towns of Krushevo, Klisura and Neveska, but by the end of September their resistance was overcome; more than 100 villages were burned by the troops and bashi-bazouks, 8400 houses were destroyed and 60,000 peasants remained homeless in the mountains at the approach of winter.
The Austrian and Russian governments then drew up a further series of reforms known as the “Mürzsteg programme” (Oct. 9, 1903) to which the Porte assented in principle, though many difficulties were raised over The “Mürzsteg Programme.” details. Two officials, an Austrian and a Russian, styled “civil agents” and charged with the supervision of the local authorities in the application of reforms, were placed by the side of the inspector-general while the reorganization of the gendarmerie was entrusted to a foreign general in the Turkish service aided by a certain number of officers from the armies of the great powers. The latter task was entrusted to the Italian General de Giorgis (April 1904), the country being divided into sections under the supervision of the officers of each power. The reforms proved a failure, mainly owing to the tacit opposition of the Turkish authorities, the insufficient powers attributed to the European officials, the racial feuds and the deplorable financial situation. In 1905 the powers agreed on the establishment of a financial commission on which the representatives of Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy would sit as colleagues of the civil agents. The Porte offered an obstinate resistance to the project and only yielded (Dec. 5) when the fleets of the powers appeared near the Dardanelles. Some improvement was now effected in the financial administration, but the general state of the country continued to grow worse; large funds were collected abroad by the committees at Athens, which despatched numerous bands largely composed of Cretans into the southern districts, the Servians displayed renewed activity in the north, while the Bulgarians offered a dogged resistance to all their foes.
The Austro-Russian entente came to an end in the beginning of 1908 owing to the Austrian project of connecting the Bosnian and Macedonian railway systems, and Great Britain and Russia now took the foremost place in the The “Reval Programme.” demand for reforms. After a meeting between King Edward VII. and the emperor Nicholas II. at Reval in the early summer of 1908 an Anglo-Russian scheme, known as the “Reval programme,” was announced; the project aimed at more effective European supervision and dealt especially with the administration of justice. Its appearance was almost immediately followed by the military revolt of the Young Turk or constitutional party, which began in the Monastir district under two junior officers, Enver Bey and Niazi Bey, in July. The restoration of the constitution of 1876 was proclaimed (July 24,1908), and the powers, anticipating the spontaneous adoption of reforms on the part of regenerated Turkey, decided to suspend the Reval programme and to withdraw their military officers from Macedonia.
See Lejean, Ethnographie de la Turquie d’Europe (Gotha, 1861); Hahn, Reise von Belgrad nach Salonik (Vienna, 1868); Yastreboff, Obichai i pesni turetskikh Serbov (St Petersburg, 1886); “Ofeicoff” (Shopoff), La Macédoine au point de vue ethnographique, historique et philologique (Philippopolis, 1888); Gopchevitch, Makedonien und Alt-Serbien (Vienna, 1889); Verkovitch, Topografichesko-ethnographicheskii ocherk Makedonii (St Petersburg, 1889); Burada, Cercetari despre scoalele Romanesci din Turcia (Bucharest, 1890); Tomaschek, Die heutigen Bewohner Macedoniens (Sonderabdruck aus den Verhandlungen des IX. D. Geographen-Tages in Wien, 1891) (Berlin, 1891); Die alten Thräker (Vienna, 1893); Berard, La Turquie et l’Hellénisme contemporain, (Paris, 1893); La Macédoine (Paris, 1900); Shopoff, Iz zhivota i polozhenieto na Bulgarite v vilayetite (Philippopolis, 1894); Weigand, Die Aromunen (Leipzig, 1895); Die nationalen Bestrebungen der Balkanvölker (Leipzig, 1898); Nikolaides, La Macédoine (Berlin, 1899); “Odysseus,” Turkey in Europe (London, 1900); Kunchoff, Makedonia: etnografia i statistika (Sofia, 1900); La Macédoine et la Vilayet d’Andrinople (Sofia, 1904), anonymous; L. Villari, The Balkan Question (London, 1905); H. N. Brailsford, Macedonia: its Races and their Future (London, 1906); J. Cvijić, Grundlinien der Geographie und Geologie von Mazedonien und Altserbien (Gotha, 1908). For the antiquities, see Texier and Pullan, Byzantine Architecture (London, 1864); Heuzey and Daumet, Mission archéologique en Macédoine (Paris, 1865); Duchesne and Bayet, Mémoire sur une mission en Macédoine et au Mont Athos (Paris, 1876); Barclay V. Head, Catalogue of Greek Coins; Macedonia (London, 1879); Kinch, L’Arc de triomphe de Salonique (Paris, 1890); Beretnung om en archaeologisk Reise i Makedonien (Copenhagen, 1893); Mommsen, Suppl. to vol. iii. Corpus inscript., latinarum (Berlin, 1893); Perdrizet, Articles on Macedonian archaeology and epigraphy in Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, since 1894.
(J. D. B.)