Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

THE STORY OF THE PEOPLE. 77 met people who believe there is a special race which they call 'Macedonian,' whose 'cause' they wish to aid. The truth is, that in a district which has no official frontiers, and never has had any stable ones, there are people of six races, who, as we have seen, all have causes to be considered. I shall not attempt to give statistics here or elsewhere; they and the ethnographical maps are all compiled for party politics. I have examined a number. None correspond. I do not believe in any of them. Even could a census be taken by that impossible being, a quite impartial outsider, who possessed an intimate knowledge of all the dialects and customs of the different races, a certain proportion of the people would 'belong to other nations' before he could get it printed. The best example of this Balkan peculiarity which I have met was a man who told me that he was a Greek, but he was born in Bulgaria, his father was a Servian, and his children Montenegrins. Local types differ much, and the remarks that apply to one district do not fit another. I shall speak only of the part I have stayed in- the districts of Lakes Ochrida and Presba. Here there are Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, and Vlahs. Of Turks, except officials and such of the army as may be quartered on the spot, there are few. The Albanians, I believe, are all Moslem. Should there be any Christians they would be officially classed as Greeks. A large part of the land near Lake Presba is owned by Moslem Albanians as ' chiftliks ' (farms).
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Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 77
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 1, 2025.
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