440 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



By its situation, the Serbian linguistic area and the rugged land 

 over which it spreads afford a political and physical link whereby 

 connection between problems pertaining respectively to western 

 Europe and the Balkan peninsula is established. The process of 

 nation-forging undertaken by Serbian-speaking inhabitants of south- 

 eastern Europe induces a southerly gravitation of Croatians and 

 Bosnians. In opposition to this tendency, artificial forces are ex- 

 erted at Vienna in order to prevent detachment of the Serbian 

 element in the Dual Monarchy. 



15. THE CASE OF MACEDONIAN. 



Within the Balkan Peninsula linguistic groupings now conform 

 to a large extent with the political divisions which ended the wars 

 of 1912-13. Greater distance in time will undoubtedly afford an 

 increasingly satisfactory perspective of the results which followed 

 this attempt to totally eliminate the Turk from" mastery over this 

 portion of the European continent. Racial sifting followed close 

 on territorial readjustments. Turks from all parts of the former 

 Turkish Provinces transferred their lands to Christian residents and 

 emigrated to Asia Minor. Special arrangements for this exodus 

 were provided by the Turkish government. Greeks settled in the 

 newly acquired Bulgarian and Serbian domain similarly sought new 

 homes within the boundaries of the Hellenic kingdom. A heavy 

 flow of Bulgarian emigrants is at present directed to Bulgaria from 

 Bulgarian-speaking territory allotted to Serbia.^ 



Pressing need of further boundary revision on the basis of lan- 

 guage is still felt in the Balkan peninsula. Resumption of hos- 

 tilities in this part of Europe was due principally to the moot 

 case of the nationality of the Slavs of Macedonia. Serbs and Bul- 

 gars claim them alike as their own. In reality the Macedonians 

 constitute a transition people between the two. The land they 

 occupy is surrounded by a mountainous bulwark which assumes 

 crescentic shape as it spreads along the Balkan ranges, and the 

 mountains of Albania and the Pindus. For centuries this Mace- 

 donian plain has constituted the cockpit of a struggle waged for 

 linguistic supremacy on the part of Bulgarians and Serbs. The 

 land had formed part of the domain of each of the two countries 

 in the heyday of their national life. To this fact the present duality 

 of claim must be ascribed in part. 



The language of the Macedonians is likewise transitional between 

 Serbian and Bulgarian. Its affinity with the latter, however, is 



1 Such migrations generally follow boundary revisions. The crossing of Alsatians into 

 Fi-ench territory from the year 1870 on has been mentioned in its place above. A large 

 number of Danes likewise abandoned their home In Schleswig-Holstein In 1865 and wan- 

 dered Into Denmark. 



