page_title: Macedonians (ethnic group)
section_title: Ottoman period
hierarchical_section_title: Macedonians (ethnic group) / History / Ottoman period
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Gjorgji Pulevski, one of the first Macedonian modern writers.) Македонски: Ѓорѓија Пилевски, еден од првите модерни македонски писатели и револуционер.
context_page_description: Macedonians are a South Slavic ethnic group native to the region of Macedonia in South-East Europe. They speak the Macedonian language, a South Slavic language. About two thirds of all ethnic Macedonians live in North Macedonia and there are also communities in a number of other countries.
context_section_description: After the final Ottoman conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the 14/15th century, all Eastern Orthodox Christians were included in a specific ethno-religious community under Graeco-Byzantine jurisdiction called Rum Millet. The belonging to this religious commonwealth was so important that most of the common people began to identify themselves as Christians. However ethnonyms never disappeared and some form of primary ethnic identity was available. This is confirmed from a Sultan's Firman from 1680 which describes the ethnic groups in the Balkan territories of the Empire as follows: Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, Vlachs and Bulgarians. The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century brought opposition to this continued situation. At that time the classical Rum Millet began to degrade. The coordinated actions, carried out by Bulgarian national leaders supported by the majority of the Slavic-speaking population in today Republic of North Macedonia in order to be recognized as a separate ethnic entity, constituted the so-called "Bulgarian Millet", recognized in 1870. At the time of its creation, people living in Vardar Macedonia, were not in the Exarchate. However, as a result of plebiscites held between 1872 and 1875, the Slavic districts in the area voted overwhelmingly (over 2/3) to go over to the new national Church. Referring to the results of the plebiscites, and on the basis of statistical and ethnological indications, the 1876 Conference of Constantinople included most of Macedonia into the Bulgarian ethnic territory. The borders of new Bulgarian state, drawn by the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano, also included Macedonia, but the treaty was never put into effect and  the Treaty of Berlin (1878) "returned" Macedonia to the Ottoman Empire.
caption: Georgi Pulevski is the first known person, who in the middle of 1870s insisted on the existence of a separate (Slavic) Macedonian language and ethnicity.[70]
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