Hellenic Macedonia Since Liberation:General Observations and Principal Phases

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The contemporary period of Macedonian history has already completed 98 years of Hellenic administration. Nonetheless, this important chapter in modem Greek history has not yet received the historiographical attention which it deserves.  To begin with, the bibliography is clearly and dishearteningly deficient in terms both of quantity and quality, and this is especially true of the literature referring solely to the more recent periods. As a result, the basic points of reference continue to be the special volumes devoted to Macedonia and published on the occasion of the various anniversaries of its liberation. However, these works inevitably suffer from the shortcomings of all circumstantial publications, and, furthermore, they focus their interest primarily on one of the most important (and easiest) of the thematic targets: the city of Thessaloniki.
It is indicative ofthe situation that contemporary Macedonia has only recently begun to appear on the agenda of specialist conferences,,and even then this has occurred in such a way as to ensure that the primacy ofthe ancient and, to a lesser extent, of the Byzantine period -goes unchallenged.
This historiographical narrowness of approach can be attributed to..