Aromanians: Difference between revisions

Aromanians

File:Aromn.JPG
Regions with significant populations
Greece Albania Romania Republic of Macedonia Bulgaria
Languages
Aromanian and other languages in the areas in which they live
Religion
Eastern Orthodoxy, others
Related ethnic groups
• Vlachs   • Romanians   • Moldovans   • Megleno-Romanians   • Istro-Romanians • other Latin peoples

Aromanians (also called: Arumanians or Macedo-Romanians; in Aromanian they call themselves Arumâni, Armâni, Ramani, Rumâni or Aromâni) are a people living throughout the southern Balkans, especially in northern Greece, Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria, and as an emigrant community in Romania (Dobrogea). They are the second most populous group of Vlachs, behind modern-day Romanians (though today, the word 'Vlach' refers only to the Latin-speaking people south of the Danube).

They speak the Aromanian language, a Romance language related to Romanian, sometimes labeled as a dialect of it . Due to the common language foundations, historians believe that the language link with Romanian was interrupted between the 7th and 9th century, after the most important features of the Proto-Romanian language were formed.

Names and Classification

Main article: Names of Aromanians

Aromanian shepherd in traditional clothes, photo from the early 1900s.

The name Aromanian, just as Romanian, derives directly from Latin Romanus ("Roman") through regular sound changes. Adding "a" in front of certain words that begin with a consonant is a feature of the Aromanian language. In Albania, the most common form is ramani, with occasional forms rumani and romani.

Nominated according to the geographic area, Aromanians are in grouped into several "branches": "Pindians" (concentrated around the the Pindus Mountains in the south-western of the Republic of Macedonia, north Epirus, and western Tessaly), "Gramustians" (from Gramos Mountains, concentrated in the northern and center of the Greek province of Macedonia), "Muzachiars" (from Muzachia) and "Farserots" (from Pharsala, concentrated in south of Epirus, in Aetolia-Acarnania, area known in the Middle Ages as Great Wallachia). The first three groups call themselves Armâni, while the Farserots (with a distincs dialect) call themselves Ramâni, Ramani or even Rumâni. All three are called by Greeks as Blaxoi. Vlachs was a term used in the Medieval Balkans, as an exonym for all the Romanic people of the region, but nowadays, it is commonly used only for the Aromanians and Meglenites, the Romanians being named Vlachs only in historical context.

The Gramustians and Pindians are nicknamed by Greeks Cutsovlachs meaning "limping Vlachs". Another name used to refer to the Aromanians (mainly in the Slavic countries such as Serbia and Bulgaria) is "tsintsar", which is derived from the way the Aromanians say the word 'five': "cinci". Some Vlachs are called "Arvanitoblachoi", meaning Albanian speaking Vlachs, referring to their second language, Albanian instead of Greek. Albanians also call them "Chobans".

Origins

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Romanian and Aromanian sheperds on Mount Larga, in the Carphatians. 1927.
See Picture Gallery.

The main theory regarding their origin is that the Aromanians' ancestors, Romanised Dacians and other Thracian tribes came to northern Greece from the Danube region sometimes during the Age of Migrations. See Romania in the Early Middle Ages.

In Greece, due to political reasons, besides the most accepted theory, there were proposed several other theories regarding the origins of the Aromanians. An opposing one claims that Aromanians came into being several centuries earlier, descending from a local Greek population that was Latinised immediately following the Roman conquest of Greece.

In total, the main theories regarding the origins of Aromanians describe them as:

• A branch of Daco-Romanians,
• Latinized Greeks as mercenary soldiers of the Roman legions,
• The descendants of Roman colonizers and soldiers, who would receive agricultural lands as payments for their services,
• Descendants of ancient Thracians or Illyrians.

It is however clear that until the 7th - 9th century, Romanians and Aromanians spoke the same eastern variant of Vulgar Latin, often known as Proto-Romanian.

History

see main article: History of Aromanians.

In the Middle Ages, Aromanians created semi-autonomous states on the territory of modern Greece, such as Great Wallachia or Small Wallachia.

Aromanians played an important role in the independence wars of various Balkan countries: Bulgaria, Albania and the Greek War of Independence, against the Ottoman Empire.

In 1941, after the Nazi occupation of Greece, some Aromanian nationalists created an autonomous Vlach state under Fascist Italian control: the Principality of Pindus. However, this state did not survive the Second World War.

Culture

Traditional Culture

Elements of Aromanian traditional culture, like costumes, beliefs and customs, are very appreciated world-wide.

See also:

• Caloian
• List of proeminent Aromanians

To be completed

Aromanians Today

In Greece

Greece does not recognize the existence of national minorities within its boundaries and pursued an active policy of "ethnic homogenization" (see Hellenisation) since it’s formation in 1829. Hence Aromanians are not regarded as an ethnic minority, but are considered "Latin-speaking Greeks" (i.e. Greeks that speak a Romance language), as cognate with the Macedonian and Bulgarian minorities which are called "slavophone greeks" (i.e. Greeks that speak a Slavic language, or the Arvanites which are called "albanophone greeks" (i.e. Greeks that speak Albanian). Generally, the use of the minority languages has been discouraged

It is difficult to estimate the exact number of Aromanians because of the elusive nature and multiple factors, pertaining to ethnicity and language (see Aromanian#Identity Crisis). Estimates on the number of Aromanians in Greece range between 250,000 to 700,000 .

The majority of the Aromanian population lives in northern Greece, in scattered rural communities. The main areas inhabited by these populations are the Pindus Mountains, Meglan, around Lake Prespa, and around the mountains of Olympus and Vermion. They are seasonally semi-nomadic shepherds, most of the men spending the winters on the plains with the flocks, while their families continue to live in their mountain villages. In the summer, the men also have sedentary occupations, such as taxi driving, law and medicine.

In Albania

The second largest Aromanian community lives in Albania, counting between 100,000 and 200,000 people. There are currently timid attempts to establish education in their native language in the town of Divjaka. The Aromanians, under the name "Vlachs", are a recognized national minority in the Albanian constitution.

For the last years there seems to be a renewal of the former policies of supporting and sponsoring of Romanian schools on the behalf of the Vlachs of Albania. As a recent article in the Romanian media points out, the kindergarten, primary and secondary schools in the Albanian town of Divjaka where the local Vlach pupils are taught classes both in Aromanian and Romanian were granted substantial help directly from the Romanian government. The only Aromanian language church in Albania, the 'Schimbarea la fata' of Korce (Curceaua in Aromanian) was given 2 billion lei help from the Romanian government too.

In the Republic of Macedonia

According to official government figures (census 2002), there are 9,695 Aromanians or Vlachs as they are officially called in the Republic of Macedonia, even though other sources estimate their numbers as high as 20,000 or even more than 100.000 according to their associations' and other estimates[4]. The Aromanians are recognized as an ethnic minority, and are hence represented in parliament and enjoy ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious rights and the right to education in their language.

They have also received financial support from the Romanian government, which made recognition of the Republic of Macedonia's independence conditional on the extension of minority rights to the Aromanians.

In Bulgaria

In Bulgaria most Aromanians were concentrated in the region south-west of Sofia, in the region called Pirin, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire until 1913. After 1913, a massive campaign of bulgarisation started under the auspice of the Bulgarian Government. Due to this reasons, a large part of these Aromanians moved to the Southern Dobrogea, at that time part of the Kingdom of Romania, and after it’s retrieval by Bulgaria, moved to Northern Dobrogea. Another group moved to northern Greece. Nowadays, the largest group if Aromanians in Bulgaria is found in the southern mountainous area, around Peshtera. Besides Aromanians, in the northern part, Bulgaria also hosts relatively large groups of Romanians, along the Danube, from Vidin to Ruse. To the border with Serbia, there are other groups of Romanians (politically called Vlachs of Serbia.

After the fall of communism in 1989, Aromanians, Romanians and "Vlachs" have started initiatives to organize themselves under one common association .

According to the 1926 official census, there were: 69.080 Romanians, 5.324 Aromanians, 3.777 Cutzovlachs, and 1.551 "Tsintsars".

In Romania

Since the Middle Ages, due to the Turkish occupation and the destruction of their cities, such as Moscopole, many Aromanians fled their homeland in the Balkans to settle the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which had a similar language and a certain degree of autonomy from the Turks. These immigrant Aromanians were assimilated into the Romanian population.

In 1925, 47 years after Dobrogea was incorporated into Romania, King Carol II of Romania gave the Aromanians land to settle in this region, which resulted in a significant migration of Aromanians into Romania.

There are currently between 25,000 and 50,000 Aromanians in Romania, most of which are concentrated in Dobrogea. Due to their cultural closeness to ethnic Romanians, most of them do not consider themselves to be a distinct ethnic minority but rather a "cultural minority". Recently, there has been a growing movement in Romania, both by Aromanians and by Romanian lawmakers, to recognize the Aromanians either as a separate cultural group or as a separate ethnic group, and extend to them the rights of other minorities in Romania, such as mother-tongue education and representatives in parliament.

Diaspora

Excepting the Balkan countries, there are also communities and groups of Aromanian emigrants living in the Unites States, Canada, France and Germany.

In Germany, at Freiburg, is situated one of the most important Aromanian organisations, the Union for Culture and Language of the Aromanians, and one of the largest libraries in Aromanian language.

In the United States, The Society Farsarotul, is one of the oldest and most known associations of Aromanians, founded in 1903 by Nicolae Cican, an Aromanian native of Albania. The Farsarotul society is under constant monitoring of the Greek Embassy in Washington, being sometimes accused of "anti-Greek" activities. That is because generally, the Aromanians outside of Greece tend to separatist ideals.

In France, the Aromanians are grouped in the Tra Armanami cultural association.

Identity Crisis

Aromanians have played an important role in the history of all modern Balkan states, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, etc. Prominent Aromanians include Pitu Guli (Bulgarian revolutionary), Ioannis Kolettis (prime minister of Greece), Evangelos Averof (minister of Defence of Greece), Andrei Saguna (Romanian patriot), the Ghica family (Wallachian and Moldavian voivodes and Romanian Prime Ministers), etc. See List of prominent Aromanians.

But while in most countries the separate identity of the Aromanian language, culture, history, traditions, beliefs and claims have been acknowledged and protected, in Greece there is a constant government supported process of identity erasure, and assimilation.

Here, besides the geographical/linguistic classification, another classification divides the Aromanians into two branches: an anti-Greek and a philo-Greek faction. The greekophils have been pejoratively called by the rest of the Aromanians as "grecomani" respective "cataoni", "katchani" or "caciauni". Interesting to note is that the Kara-katchani are apparently a tribe of Aromanians, completely Greecized sometimes in the 18th and 19th century.

Modern Greek historians ascribes them to the ill-defined and dubious socially obligatory doctrine of "Hellenism", which states the supposed absolute superiority of the Greek culture, language and race . In other words, the doctrine encourages the minorities of Greece to give up their identity and language in exchange for becoming part of what they are told is a "superior" culture.

This government supported "Hellenisation" of the minorities of Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, dates back centuries ago, and was noticed by many historians and observers of the Greek society. In 1903, in an article published in The Times, about the complicated "Macedonian Question", regarding the demands of Greece to annex the modern Republic of Macedonia (at that time Ottoman province), Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941) would state:

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Aromanians from Serres, the Ottoman Empire.

The truth is that a large number of those described as Greeks are really Roumans. Till within recent years Hellenism found a fertile field for propaganda among the representatives of the gifted Romance speaking race of the Pindus region. Today Janina has quite forgotten its Rouman origin, and has become a center of Hellenism. Athens, the nearest civilized centre, offered natural attraction to the quick-witted mercantile element in the towns. But, for good or evil, the tide has turned. A counter-propaganda, of which Bukarest is the center, has made itself felt, and the Rouman civic element east of Pindus is probably lost to Hellenism, notwithstanding the fact that much money is expended by Greek committees in the endeavor to gain recruits for Greek nationality. Parents are actually paid to send their children to Greek schools.

Results of propaganda are clear also in modern Aromanian society. Many Aromanians of Greece have obscure ideas regarding their origin and role in Greek society and history. Many identify themselves as heirs of the Byzantine tradition, and hence by some vague reasons, they consider themselves "Latin-speaking Greeks". But almost all Balkan nations can successfully claim heir from the multiethnic Byzantine Empire. So while the adherence to the Byzantine Empire is not entirely false, a more pertinent study on the History of Aromanians shows the complex relation between the Aromanians and Greeks as part of the Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire, and the Modern Greek state.

The history of the Aromanians in Greece is in itself a long struggle for achieving own statehood, and Aromanians have a long tradition rebellion and penchant for separateness and secession. Arrived sometimes between the 6th and 7th centuries from somewhere to the north, along the Danube and the Sava, as descendants "from Dacians and Bessi" , they become part of the Byzantine Empire. Since these times, the history of the Vlachs, who were constantly regarded as a nuisance by the Greeks, is marked by permanents rebellions and struggle against imperial rule. They ruled themselves with their own separate leader as early as 980 when emperor Basil II conferred the domination over the Vlachs of Thessaly on one Nicoulitza. The revolt of the Vlachs in 1066 under their chieftain Verivoi, as attested by the Byzantine historian Kekaumenos, would provide total independence. Nicetas Choniates, Benjamin of Tudela , Geoffroy de Villehardouin, Henri de Valenciennes, Robert de Clary, and other sources accounts the existence of this Great Wallachia, comprising Thessaly, as opposed to other two "Wallachias", Little Wallachia in Acarnania and Aetolia, and an Upper Wallachia in Epirus. This coincides with the period of the first Vlachian state entities across the Balkan Peninsula: Great Wallachia, the Vlach-Bulgar Empire, Wallachia and Moldavia. While the last two would last until 1856 when they united to form Romanian, Great Wallachia would last until the arrival of the Ottomans, just as the Byzantine Empire. Benjamin of Tudela, a Jew who visited Thessaly in 1173, describes the Vlachs as living in the mountains and coming down from them to attack the Greeks. In relation with the Byzantine Empire, he adds: "no Emperor can conquer them" .

During the Ottoman ruling, Aromanian culture and economic power would reach it’s zenith, as Vlachs concentrated in urban center, some of which were considered huge, characterized with the standards of those times. For example Moscopole at that time was the second larges city in the Balkans, second after Istanbul itself, having a population of 60.000. For comparison, at that time Athens was a village inhabited by 8,000 people, mostly Albanian speaking Arvanites and Turks. Moscopole had its own printing houses and academies, current water and sewerage network. They enjoyed some degree of religious and cultural autonomy within the Orthodox Christian millet (a Turkish term for a legally protected ethnic and religious minority group). They enjoyed a special status, being formally exempted from the law prohibiting non-Muslims from carrying weapons , only having to pay a modest tribute to the Ottomans. Their cities were destroyed by the Ottomans: Moscopole was raised to the ground in 1778 by the troops of Ali Pasha. This episode and the Orthodox religion of the Vlachs were the factors which caused a violent and energic struggle against the Ottomans, assigning to the Vlachs a major role in the various wars and revolutions that culminated in the creation of the states which they now inhabit: Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Macedonia. Later, all of these freedom fighters would have been erroneously attributed supposed "Hellenic" reasons in their actions and ideology. However, there are indeed to be found people of Aromanian origin among the protagonists of early Greek political life, as they found opportunities to establish themselves in this new state. This is explained by the fact that many Aromanians adopted Greek culture and language under the influence of the Greek schools and churches, the only ones entitled by the Ottomans to function and to by maintained by the Patriarchs of Constantinople (all of whom were of Greek origin).

Very important to be noted is that the majority of the Aromanians did not embrace a Hellenic stance and continued to have separate identities and goals, either still part of the Ottoman Empire, or as part of the fresh state Greece.

Sir Charles Eliot's (British Diplomat to the Porte) contemporary view of the Vlachs identity is clear from work "Turkey in Europe": "...The Bulgarians, Serbs and Vlachs have Millets of their own and do not cooperate in the Hellenic cause" [...] "we hear of Vlach bands who are said to contend (fight against) Greeks in the region of Karaferia (Veria)". Indeed, as early as the time of the Byzantines when Vlachs raided the lowlands inhabited by the Greeks, and during the time when Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire, Greek Armatoloi (military/police units) deserving the Turks were one of the greatest enemies of the Aromanians.

The number of Vlachs in the 19th century is unknown. Dimitrie Bolintineanu, an Aromanian poet, stated that in 1856, according to the official Ottoman census, that there were 1,250,000 Aromanians in the Balkan Peninsula.

Following the destruction of their major urban centers, histography speaks about a "re-pastoralization" of the Vlachs, returning to their basic traditional occupation, animal husbandry. Other thousands of Vlachs, many them belonging to the Aromanian intelligentsia, emigrated northward to Wallachia, Moldavia, Serbia or the Habsburg Empire (notably to Vienna and Budapest).

Their arrival in the here coincided with the establishment in Europe of the ideals of the 1789-1799 French Revolution: nationhood, equality, mother tongue and "human rights". In the Habsburg occupied Transylvania, they will connect with the latinophile Romanian intelligentsia, as part of what was known as the Transylvanian School. These intellectuals did not promote only the ideas which would spark the period known as the National awakening of Romania, but also had an active policy of national awakening of the Aromanians. It is in these times that Aromanian personalities became proeminent, such as Gheorghe Roja, the author of "Untersuchungen uber die Romanier oder sogenannten Wlachen, welche jenseits der Donau wohnen" ("Researches upon the Romanians or the so-called Vlachs who live beyond the Danube"; Pesth, 1808). The first attempt to create a literary language for those described as "Macedo-Romanians" was Roja`s "Maiestria ghiovasirii romanesti cu litere latinesti, care sant literele Romanilor ceale vechi"(Buda, 1809). Another Vlach emigrant was Mihail G. Boiagi. He would publish in 1813 in Vienna "Gramatica romana sau macedo-romana" (Romanian or Macedo-Romanian grammar). In the foreword to his work, Boiagi wrote: "Even if the Vlachs would claim, say Hotenton origin, even in that case they ought to have the right and duty to cultivate themselves in their mother tongue, as the most appropriate way to fulfill their creed". The Metsovo born D.D. Cozacovici would publish in 1865 "Gramatica Romaneasca tra Romanilii dit drepta Dunarelei lucrata de D. Athanasescu, si typarita cu spesele D.D. Cosacovici, Roman din Metsova, spre a inaugura prima scoala Romana din Macedonia, Bucuresti 1865" ("Romanian Grammar to serve the South of the Danube Romanians worked by Dimitrie Athanasescu and printed from the donations of D.D. Cozacovici, Romanian of Metsovo in order to inaugurate the first Romanian school of Macedonia").

The pressure on Aromanians to assimilate using language can be traced back to the 18th century, when assimilation efforts were encouraged by the Greek missionary Kosmas Aitolos (1714-1779) who taught that Aromanians should speak Greek because as he said "it's the language of our Church" and established over 100 Greek schools in northern and western Greece, although at that time part of the Ottoman Empire, were took under the patronage of the Greek Church. The offensive of the clergy against the use of Aromanian was by no means limited to religious issues but was a tool devised in order to convince the non-Greek speakers to abandon what they regarded as a "worthless" idiom and adopt the superior neo-Greek speech: "There we are Metsovian brothers, together with those who are fooling themselves with this sordid and vile Aromanian language... forgive me for calling it a language", "repulsive speech with a disgusting diction" .

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Cover of Les Aroumains, of Aromanian writer Nicolae Trifon.

As a response, almost 100 Romanian schools were opened, in the now Independent Greece and the Ottoman territories of Macedonia and Albania, starting as early as 1860. It is very important to be noted that this initiative was proposed by the Aromanian Diaspora living in Bucharest. The first nucleus of the Romanian schooling in Macedonia and Pindus was to be established in 1860 and its initiators were a group of Aromanians then living in Bucharest: D.D. Cozacovici (native of Metsovo), Zisu Sideri, Iordache Goga (native of Klissoura) and others. Together they initiated the "Society for Macedo-Romanian Culture", under the endorsement of the then Romanian ruling class. "Societatea Culturala Macedo-Romana" ("The Macedo-Romanian Cultural Society") had as its members (together with its Aromanian founding core represented by D.D. Cozacovici, Sideri, Goga, Grandea etc.) also the acting Prime and Foreign Ministers, as well as the Head of the Romanian Orthodox Church, and the elite of the Romanian political class: Mihail Kogălniceanu, Ion Ghica, Constantin Rosetti, etc. The interest of the newly formed Romanian state towards the distant and scattered Vlachs, considered an "alter ego" of the fresh Romanian nation, was idealistic and nostalgic, not based on a hidden political agenda. The geographic distribution of the Aromanians, in relation with Romania, represented an important factor in the relation between Aromanians and Romanians, hence any supposed annexation of Vlach inhabited territories by the Romanian state was virtually impossible.

At their peak, just before the Balkan wars, there were 6 secondary gymnasiums, and 113 primary schools, teaching in Romanian. Inside the newly born Greek state, they were not well received by Greek ultra-nationalists, who took coercive measures against them. For example, the city of Metsovo (Aminciu in Aromanian) was destroyed in 1854 not only by Turkish forces, but also by the Greeks , and the village of Avdhela from Pindus, where one of the first Romanian schools was active as early as 1867, was burned and raised to the ground on October 27th 1905 by Greek andartes . This event prompted street anti-Greek demonstrations in Bucharest in the autumn of 1905 of the Aromanians living there, and a rupture of diplomatic relations between Romania and Greece .

The schools were attended by pupils of most diverse social and ethnic backgrounds: Aromanian, Albanian, Macedonian, and many Sephardim Jews, whose Latin mother tongue, Judeo-Spanish, resembled the thought Romanian. Numerous later Balkan personalities are graduands from these schools, many becoming influential politicians, government ministers, poets and writers, professors at universities or members of national Academies.

Romania subsidized schools until 1948 when the communist regime ended all links. George Padioti, an Aromanian author (born and living all his life in Greece) describes how the last Romanian school was closed down by the Greek government: February 1952, the Aromanian Church 'Biserica ramana Santu Dumitru', burned by German troopers in spring 1944. The priest Costa Bacou officiated the last allowed liturgy in Aromanian language. Afterwards, he was not permitted anymore because he refused to forcibly officiate the divine service in Greek language" .

Greek historians, when mentioning the Vlachs that attended the Romanian sponsored churches and schools of Macedonia, Epirus and parts of Albania, describes them as being victims of “roumaniki propaganta” (the Romanian propaganda), for the simple reason that they choose to send their children to schools which thought what they considered was their language.

Due to the sponsoring of the schools, the Kingdom of Romania of was accused by Greece of alliance with the Ottomans, despite the fact that it was the 1878 Romanian-Russo-Turkish War which provided an opportunity for Greece to annex Thessaly, at that time populated in majority with Aromanians. The Vlachs, recognized as a separate nation by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, were for the first time incorporated in Greece only at 1881 when Thessaly and a part of Epirus were offered to Greece by the Great Powers, under the same treaty. Having been split into two by the new borders, the bulk of the Vlachs of these province petitioned the Great Powers of the time to be let to stay within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, but in vain. Greece followed an offensive policy of creating a Great Greece, according to the so called "Megali Idea";, despite the fact that the territories in it’s target, in the northern part of what in modern times is Greece, was at that time not inhabited by ethnic Greeks. Most of the Aromanians became part of the Greek state only as recently as 1913 after the rest of Epirus and parts of Macedonia became part of Greece after the Treaty of Bucharest, following the Second Balkan War.

Roughly at the same time, the first objective and scientific works regarding the Aromanians were made by western observers. None failed to notice the clear differences in culture, language and self-identity between Aromanians and Greeks. Among these, names like Rebecca West, Osbert Lancaster or Sir Charles Eliot's are worth to be mentioned. Lancaster, who visited Greece in 1947, stated:

"Although Metsovo, with its gigantic plane tree in the middle of the little square, its stone paved streets and abundant gardens, is typical of many a village in Epirus, in respect of its inhabitants it is unique. The Vlachs, to which race this people belong, are nomads, claiming with some degree of probability descent from the Roman colonists of the Danube valley. In former times they were far more numerous than to-day, occupying the larger part of Thrace and Macedonia and establishing in the twelfth century a Bulgaro-Vlach empire in Thessaly which survived in practical independence until the coming of the Turk.

Although for the most part herdsmen, horse-breeder and shepherds following their beasts from pasture to pasture and living in temporary encampments of round wattle huts, the existence of urban settlements, of which Metsovo is the most considerable, would seem to afford evidence that, their nomadism is not natural but acquired. In general they are fairer in complexion and more industrious in their habits than the Greeks whom they affect to despise"

"The Vlachs, this very interesting people are not Greek at all but a race of nomads, who come down from the Balkan lands in the winter with their flock and pass the cold months in Greece. They are shepherd by business, and their tribal name has become a sort of synonym for an ancient profession. Generally they are a people as kindly as they are picturesque, patriarchally hospitable and good sportsmen, as many an English Consul knows, and by no means ill favoured"

The interbellic time period is of great interest regarding the Aromanian history. The main event was the exodus of Aromanians in the first decades of the 20th century, a very dramatic moment in Vlach history. The main reason for the sudden departure of the Vlachs, had to do with the policies of the Greek state, who had to accommodate one and a half million of Greeks of Asia Minor following the 1923 exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. Native communities such as the Vlachs saw themselves dislocated by the newly-arrived.

The Vlachs that remained were now, like the rest of the minorities, a target of a government issued policy of "Hellenisation". In 1926, the Legislative Orders in Government Gazette #331 ordered the names of all Macedonian, Aromanian, Albanian and Turkish villages, towns, mountains, etc. to be changed to Greek. The people were forced to abandon their names and addopt a Greek one, assigned by the Greek State. . The same repeated in 1927, when all non-Greek inscriptions on churches, tombstones and icons were destroyed, or overwritten in Greek. Greek was set as the only allowed liturgical language.. In 1939, the Greek government issued a law by which any demand for national right was considered "high treason", punishable with death . During the ruling of General Metaxas (1936-1940), the use of Vlach language in public or private was made illegal (Law 23666).

The last important Aromanian strive for a separate self-ruling constitutes the Principality of Pindus episode. During WW2, the Italian attack on Greece provided an opportunity for some Aromanians to create what they called "Vlach homeland". This fascist puppet state would survive until 1947, when without support, it would be annexed by Greece. When referring to this moment, modern Greek histography describes the Aromanians as victims of Romanian "agents", which infiltrated Greece to spread "Italo-Romanian Propaganda". The picture of the Vlachs as "traitors" and "collaborationists" still exits to this day in Greek conscience, despite that the Pindus episode was actually a sincere attempt for autonomy, as proven by the fact that on March 1, 1942, Alkiviadis Diamandi di Samarina and other leading Vlach intellectuals issued an ample Manifesto which was published in the local press.

Following WW2, during the Colonels’ regime of 1967 – 1974, the use of the Vlach language was made illegal. Although the regime felled, to this day Aromanian is prohibited from official use (justice, education, state mass media).

File:Galav.gif

Aromanian cultural societies, argue that the philo-greek Vlachs should not be entitled at all to call themselves "Aromanians", as they deliberately put themselves under a process of assimilation. In Greece today, Vlach survives as harmless folklore, as seen in this commercial to a skimmed milk product, called Gala Blaxa ("vlach milk"). Here the term has no ethnic meaning, “Blaxa” being translated as shepherd, or milkwoman. Few Greeks nowadays know that the Vlachs are actually a distinct ethnie and have a language of their own.

Aromanians today come after more than 50 years after the closure of the last school and church in the Romanian language. The term "Vlach" is still used as a "pejorative" by Greeks . It was late as the 1980s when the first local cultural organizations were formed to prevent the extinction of the language and culture. These organisations never had government support. Aromanian language had never been included in the educational curriculum of Greece. On the contrary, their use has been strongly discouraged at schools and in the army, through physical punishment, humiliation, or, in recent years simple incitation of Vlach users . Such attitudes have led many Vlach parents to discourage their children from learning their mother tongue so to avoid similar discrimination and mistreatments. . Currently there is no education for Aromanian children in their mother tongue, and there are no public televisions or radio-stations emitting fully or partially in Aromanian.

The European Parliamentary Assembly examined a report on the Aromanians in 1997 which reported the critical situation of the Aromanian language and culture (see the report), and adopted a recommendation (see recommendation) that the Greek government should do whatever is necessary to respect their culture and facilitate education in Aromanian and to implement it’s use in schools, churches and the media. Victims of years of propaganda, and the fear of discrimination by mainstream Greek society has lead to controversial argues amongst the Aromanians themselves, many of whom vehemently reject any idea of an officially-sanctioned distinction between them and other Greeks. On the other hand, there is a small but vocal minority within the community which strongly supports such efforts. On a visit to Metsovo, Epirus in 1998, Greek President Costis Stephanopoulos while stressing the character of the so called "inseparable patriotic segment of the Hellenism", called on Aromanians to speak and teach their language, but little has been done in practical terms since then. To this day Aromanian is not officially accepted for use in the public sector (justice, administration, etc), and there are no schools or churches which teach or hold service in Aromanian language. Any attempt of minorities to affirm their identity is received with resentment by the Greek society, and characterized as being "Anti-Hellenism". An example of this ultra-nationalistic stance of modern Greek society is represented by the episode of the burning of the Vlach books displayed at the May 2002 Salonica Book Fair, in 28th May 2002. Following the incitation of a known intolerant television program, an enraged Greek mob entered the premises of the Book Fair, burned and torn Vlach and other ""blasphemous books" written in Aromanian, Romanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian, while the authorities remained passive. (See the press release from the Greek Helsinki Monitor, regarding this incident.)Referring to this incident, Panayote Elias Dimitras, from the Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights Group stated: "Greek society and the vast majority of Greek intellectuals have yet to come to terms with the fact that Greece is not a homogenous society; that one can be a Greek citizen but have a non-Greek ethnonational identity..(..)For almost all Greeks, Greek citizens can freely enjoy their cultural diversity as long as they have strong Greek ethnonational identity and seek no minority status. This is how hundred of thousands of Albanian-speaking Arvanites and Aromanian-speaking Vlachs have been "successfully" incorporated in (i.e. assimilated by) modern Greek national culture: they have been showing a strong, even extreme, degree of attachment to Greek nationalism, in exchange for which they have been allowed to keep their oral but never written or taught, ethnolinguistic "sensitivities". It requires a very sustained effort for the few "multiculturalist of Greece, which include even some government ministers, to dispel this ugly image of Greek "national" policy that can be summarized in a choice between assimilation or discrimination".

Yet despite that many Aromanians nowadays identify themselves as Greeks, thus loosing their language, to this day, a segment of the native Vlach inhabitants of Greece still identify themselves as a separate ethnos than that of the Greeks. This appears to be the case of the more remote villages of Pindus, where, sheltered somehow from contact with the dominant Greek culture, the older generation of the Vlachs remains faithful to their language and customs. As Dr. Thede Kahl points out in his well balanced study "Ethnologica Balkanica ("The Ethnicity of Aromanians after 1990: the Identity of a Minority that Behaves like a Majority")": "There are still pro-Romanian Aromanians in Greece, especially in villages in which strong Romanian communities were once accepted by the Greek authorities, above all in Avdhela, Perivoli, Samarina, Vovusa, Krania, Edessa, Veria and surrounding areas, as well in a few villages in the district of Kastoria and Ioannina. On a whole, they are a minute and dwindling number of Aromanians.." .

The continued increasing trend of many Graecized Vlachs to send their children to Greek schools, opting for giving up for good of their Vlach identity, underlines the situation in which the Aromanian minority has reached today. The Greek government grants a relative support only for the organizations of the Aromanians who have a pro-Greek stance (ex: [5], [[6]), i.e. Aromanian associaltion that assume and proclaim a Greek origin for the Vlach culture and identity, despite the fact that neither from a linguistic, ethnographic, nor historic point of view, the Aromanians had been cognate with the Greeks. Divided among different states, thus under the influence of different political spheres, the traditional Aromanian lifestyle, language and culture, are in a critical situation. The Aromanian identity, based and sustained on an unwritten law thousands of years old, is nowadays completely disrupted by the modern world. Without a supported policy, it is impossible to resurrect the factors that shaped and preserved the Vlach identity. The different Aromanian communities are unable to agree on a common ideology regarding their identity, being divided into different political movements. Many Aromanians left their mountainsides to settle in the towns and cities and thus melt within the mass. Compulsory education (only in the Greek language), the advent of broadcasting, and the results of decade old Greek policies of assimilation, have resulted the fact that the Aromanian language and culture, which had survived for 2 000 years, are today threatened with extinction.

See also

• Vlachs
• List of prominent Aromanians
• History of Aromanians

External links

• Bana Armâneascâ, an Aromanian newspaper
• Association des Francais Aroumain - Armanami.com
• The Folklore Association of Vlahs (Armani) in Veria
• vlachophiles.net: Aromanian - The Vanishing Tribes
• The little Vlach Corner
• Wolf Warriors: the Dacians and the Vlachs
• The Vlach Connection and further reflection on Roman history
• Studies on the Vlachs by Asterios Koukoudis
• farsarotul.org: The Society Farsarotul
• The Little Vlach Corner
• The minorities of Greece -Wallachian included- bid for the recognition of their status
• Aromanian settlements on the beginning of the XX. century (map)

Further reading

• Capidan, Theodor (1932) Aromânii. Dialectul aromân, Academia Româna
• Friedman, Victor A., "The Vlah Minority in Macedonia: Language, Identity, Dialectology, and Standardization" in Selected Papers in Slavic, Balkan, and Balkan Studies, ed. Juhani Nuoluoto, Martii Leiwo, Jussi Halla-aho. Slavica Helsingiensa 21. University of Helsinki, 2001. online
• Koukoudis, Asterios I. - The Vlachs: Metropolis and Diaspora, ISBN 9607760867
• Baldaci - "The Romanians of Albania"(1924);
• Ioan Caragiani - "Historical studies about the Romanians of the Balkan Peninsula" (1891, re-edited in 1941), * Apostol Margarit - "Etudes historiques sur les Valaques du Pinde" - Constantinople (1880) and "Les Grecs, * Les Valaques, et les Albanais de l'Empire Ottoman" - Bruxelles (1886);
• V. Papacostea - "Aromanian Documents" (1860 - 1870);
• Epaminonda Balamace - "How were established the first Romanian schools of Albania" (1922);
• George Zuca - "Study on the economy of the Aromanians of Pindus" (1906);
• P. Papahagi - "Aromanian Speeches" (1905) and "The popular literature of the Aromanians " - (1900) - Vol. I & II);
• Tache Papahagi - "The Lexicon of the Aromanian Dialect" (1963, revised in 1974), "Images d'ethnographie roumaine et aroumaine" (3 vols.) - Bucharest 1928-1934);
• Valeriu Papahagi - "The Aromanians of Moschopole" (1935);
• Th. Capidan - "The Farseroti - Linguistical study on the Romanians of Albania" (1935), "The Nomadic Romanians" Cluj (1926), "The Megleno-Romanians - Their history and speech" (vol. I) and "Their popular literature" (vol. II) - Bucharest 1925 - 1928);
• G. Papacostea-Goga - "Macedo-Romanian awakening" (1924);
• N. Zdrulla - "The movements of the Aromanians of Pindus" (1922);
• V. Diamandi-Aminceanu: "The Romanians of the Balkan peninsula" - Bucharest 1938;
• D. Caracosta - "Miorita la Aromani/Pastoral Ballades of the Aromanians – 1927;
• Matilda Caragiu-Marioteanu - "Glota und Ethos der Aromunen" (1971);
• A. N. Haciu - "The Aromanians - Comerce, Arts, Expansion, Civilization" - Putna (1936);
• C. Noe - "Les Roumains Koutzo-Valaques" - Bucharest (1913);
• N. Saramandu - "Le parler Aromun" - Bucharest (1979);
• P. N. Vaidomir - "Contributii la istoria Romanilor sud Dunareni" - Medias (1943);
• N. Batzaria - "Istoricul fundarii orasului Crusova" - (1904), Marcu Beza - "Paper on Rumanian People" (London - 1920);
• H. Candroveanu - "Caleidoscop Aroman" (1999);
• C. Burileanu - "Visiting the Romanians of Albania";
• Ioan Arginteanu - "The History of the Macedo-Romanians" (1904);
• N. Densusianu et F. Dame - "Les Roumains du Sud. Macedoine.Epirus.Thessaly" - Paris (1877), E.M. Picot - "Les roumains de la Macedoine" - Paris (1875);
• O. Randi -"Il fenomeno degli Aromuni" - Zara (1939);
• A. Rubin - "Les Roumains de Macedoine" (1913);
• B. Stuart - "The Vlakhs of Mount Pindus" - London (1868);
• R. Suster - "I Romeni del Pindo" - Roma (1930);
• Xenopol - "Une enigme historique: Les Roumains au Moyen Age" Paris 1885 (focusing largely upon Aromanians);
• Tereza Stratilesco - "From Carpathian to Pindus" - Boston (1907, re-printed 1981);

References and Footnotes

Inline

General

• Adina Berciu Draghicescu – "Romanii din Balcani : cultura si spiritualitate. Sf. Sec. XIX-inceputul sec. XX"; Ed. Globus, Bucuresti 1996;
• Theodor Capidan, "Macedoromanii-Etnogratie, Istorie, Limbã"; Bucuresti 1942;
• George Murnu - "The History of Romanians of Pindus - Great Wallachia" (1913, re-edited in 1984 by N. Serban-Tanasoca);