The Parliamentary Debates March 1863

[Stevce]

Hi guys,

I have been looking for documents about Macedonia before the Bulgarian Exarchate was restablished by the Ottoman Empire in 1870.
This document mentions Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Roumelia and Macedonia. It talks about the people who inhabit the land and the Greek Patriarch which was the only religion back than. It also has a breakdown of the population. Bulgarians are noted as speaking a debased Sclavonic language, they are in fact a Tatar tribe.

Here is a link https://books.google.com.au/books?id...edonia&f=false

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Hi guys,

I have been looking for documents about Macedonia before the Bulgarian Exarchate was restablished by the Ottoman Empire in 1870.
This document mentions Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Roumelia and Macedonia. It talks about the people who inhabit the land and the Greek Patriarch which was the only religion back than. It also has a breakdown of the population. Bulgarians are noted as speaking a debased Sclavonic language, they are in fact a Tatar tribe.

Here is a link https://books.google.com.au/books?id...edonia&f=false

The Bulgarian Exarchate was not "restablished", it was established for the first time.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Hi guys,

I have been looking for documents about Macedonia before the Bulgarian Exarchate was restablished by the Ottoman Empire in 1870.
This document mentions Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Roumelia and Macedonia. It talks about the people who inhabit the land and the Greek Patriarch which was the only religion back than. It also has a breakdown of the population. Bulgarians are noted as speaking a debased Sclavonic language, they are in fact a Tatar tribe.

Here is a link https://books.google.com.au/books?id...edonia&f=false

Here is a larger segment of the text from that link:

The Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803 to the Present Time: Volume 235, December 31, 1862. Pages 1501 and 1502.

I will not venture to lecture the House, but I wish to draw attention to three or four facts. Of what is Turkey in Europe composed? There are the Danubian Principalities, under the suzerainty of the Porte, inhabited by an unmixed Christian population, with their independence guaranteed by the European Powers, so that Turkey has only to receive the annual tribute. You have Servia, with rights not so extensive, inhabited by a pure Sclavonic race of the Greek faith, but in no wise dependent upon the Constantinopolitan head of the Orthodox Greek Church. On the contrary, one of her first struggles was to release herself from the government of the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople, and to obtain an independent Patriarch in Belgrade. You have Bulgaria, inhabited by a race presenting an ethnological anomaly. Although speaking a debased Sclavonic language, they are, in fact, a Tartar tribe. The landowners are Turks, and they hold the land absolutely. The labouring population are Christians of the Greek faith, yet not accepting the superintendence of the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople, for a very short time ago so great was the struggle to throw off the government of the Greek Patriarch, that they actually threatened to become Roman Catholics if they did not succeed. You have Bosnia, inhabited by a Sclavonic race. At the time of the Turkish conquest the landowners embraced the Mohammedan faith to save their lands. They were the old feudal landowners, and in some cases properties have descended among them for hundreds of years. But the agricultural population are of the Greek faith. In Roumelia you have the Bulgarians, a Sclavonic people of the Greek faith, but the landowners are Turks, descendants of the conquerors. We then come to Albania, where, with the exception of the south, the population is Mohammedan. They are not Sclaves, nor are they Greeks. In Thessaly, a very small province, you have a substratum of the Greek race, but there too, the land owners are for the most part descendants of the old Mohammedan conquerors; while in Macedonia the substratum is Sclavonic with the exception, that a few seaport towns are inhabited by Greeks. But what, let me ask, are the relative populations of these provinces, for it is of importance the real facts of the case should be known to the country. I find that M. Ubicini, who is a good authority on the subject, gives the population of Turkey in Europe as follows:-Mohammedans, 4,550,000; Greeks, 1,000,000; Armenians, 400,000 ; Sclaves, 6,200,000 ; and Roumans, 4,000,000. About one million of the Sclaves inhabit the principality of Servia, the Roumans are the inhabitants of the Danubian Principalities. In Constantinople you have Mohammedans. 475,000 ; Armenians. 205,000 ; the Greeks being only 130.000. Such being the case. you will perceive that the great majority of the population of Constantinople is Mohammedan. while in the provinces the Mohammedans, who exceed four millions, are also the great landowners. More than this, they are men inured to arms, against whom the Christians have no power of successfully contending. I must, moreover, maintain, in opposition to my hon. Friend, that it was not the Turks who corrupted the Greeks, but the Greeks who corrupted the Turks, and I venture to say that no conquerors ever pursued a more liberal policy than that which the Turks adopted. They acknowledged the church of the Greeks and their municipal system. It is all very well to talk of taking the Greeks to Constantinople. Indeed, I do not exactly know what is meant by those who speak after that fashion. Do they desire to give Constantinople a Greek Administration and a Greek King? That is to say to put foreigners there to reign over the Bulgarians, Roumans, and Mohammedans of various races, and thus to violate all the principles of nationality. If so. you would only bring about a state of things infinitely worse than that which now exists.