page_title: Macedonia (Greece)
section_title: Modern history
hierarchical_section_title: Macedonia (Greece) / History / Modern history
caption_attribution_description: English: The 1st Battalion of the Army of National Defence marches before the White Tower on its way to the front, Thessaloniki 1916
context_page_description: Macedonia is a geographic and administrative region of Greece, in the southern Balkans. Macedonia is the largest and second-most-populous Greek region, with a population of 2.38 million in 2017. The region is highly mountainous, with most major urban centres such as Thessaloniki and Kavala being concentrated on its southern coastline. Together with Thrace, and sometimes also Thessaly and Epirus, it is part of Northern Greece. Greek Macedonia encompasses entirely the southern part of the region of Macedonia, making up 51% of the total area of the region. It also contains Mount Athos, an autonomous monastic region of Greece. Macedonia forms part of Greece's national frontier with three countries: Bulgaria to the northeast, North Macedonia to the north, and Albania to the northwest.
  Macedonia incorporates most of the territories of ancient Macedon, a kingdom ruled by the Argeads, whose most celebrated members were Alexander the Great and his father Philip II. The name Macedonia was later applied to a number of widely-differing administrative areas in the Roman and Byzantine empires, resulting in modern geographical Macedonia.
context_section_description: Greece gained the southern parts of the region with Thessaloniki from the Ottoman Empire after the First Balkan War, and expanded its share in the Second Balkan War against Bulgaria. The boundaries of Greek Macedonia were finalised in the Treaty of Bucharest. In World War I, Macedonia became a battlefield. The Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, favoured entering the war on the side of the Entente, while the Germanophile King Constantine I favoured neutrality. Invited by Venizelos, in autumn 1915, the Allies landed forces in Thessaloniki to aid Serbia in its war against Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, but their intervention came too late to prevent the Serbian collapse. The Macedonian front was established, with Thessaloniki at its heart, while in summer 1916 the Bulgarians took over Greek eastern Macedonia without opposition. This provoked a military uprising among pro-Venizelist officers in Thessaloniki, resulting in the establishment of a "Provisional Government of National Defence" in the city, headed by Venizelos, which entered the war alongside the Allies. After intense diplomatic negotiations and an armed confrontation in Athens between Entente and royalist forces the King abdicated, and his second son Alexander took his place. Venizelos returned to Athens in June 1917 and Greece, now unified, officially joined the war on the side of the Allies.
  In World War II Macedonia was occupied by the Axis (1941–44), with Germany taking western and central Macedonia with Thessaloniki and Bulgaria occupying and annexing eastern Macedonia.
  At the beginning of the 19th century, Slavic peasants identified themselves based on belonging to their family, village, or local region, or as "Rum Millet", i.e. members of the Greek-dominated community of Orthodox Christians. The Slavs of Macedonia generally referred to themselves and were known as "Bulgarians", but the word "Bulgarian" invoked the idea of a poor, Slavic-speaking peasant.  By the middle of the 19th century, peasant communities of Macedonia experienced the formation of deep divisions with rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire. From then, the Slavic speaking communities of northern Greece split into two hostile and opposed groups with two different national identities - Greek and Bulgarian. By the Second World War and following the defeat of Bulgaria, another further split between the Slavic groups occurred. Conservatives departed with the occupying Bulgarian Army to Bulgaria. Leftists who identified as Macedonians (Slavic), joined the communist-dominated rebel Democratic Army of Greece. At the conclusion of the Greek Civil War (1946–49), most Macedonians of Slavic background were evacuated by the Greek Communist Party and forced to flee to the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia and other countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Some also immigrated to Canada, Australia, and the United States. Current Greek law still forbids the reentry and restitution of property by Macedonians that are not "Greek by origin."
caption: The 1st Battalion of the National Defence marches on its way to the Front, during WWI.
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