Maps and Politics: A Review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia - Pasta blanda

This is an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Humanities E-Book, published in 2009. A facsimilie copy of H R Wilkinson's book published in 1951 by the Liverpool University Press. Illustrated with numerous black & white maps and includes a bibliography and index. A fascinating book regarding the demographics of late Ottoman era Macedonia. In his book, which was published in 1951, Wilkinson exhaustively summarised ethnographic maps put forth by European scholars, ethnographers and cartographers which depicted the demographics of the southern Balkans. From the dozens of ethnographic maps included in Wilkinson's book it is apparent that up until the late 19th century the Slavs of Macedonia were regarded as Bulgarians. The following is how Wilkinson described the process in which the Slavs of Macedonia came to be regarded as an ethno/political group distinct from the Bulgarians in the region. Wilkinson's exhaustive study and detailed analysis of the ethnographic studies pertaining to Ottoman era Macedonia resulted in his assertion that no authority depicted the Slavs of Macedonia as an ethnic group distinct from the Bulgarians until certain European ethnographers and cartographers were influenced by the politically motivated works of the Serbian scholar J. Cvijic who espoused the contemporary Serbian policy of diminishing Bulgaria's claim to the region.