the two nationalities ever since they were first differentiated in the
seventh century. In the confused state of Balkan politics in the Middle
Ages the political influence of Bulgaria often extended west of this line
and included Nish and the Morava valley, while at other times that of
Serbia extended east of it. The dialects spoken in these frontier
districts represent a transitional stage between the two languages; each
of the two peoples naturally considers them more akin to its own, and
resents the fact that any of them should be included in the territory of
the other. Further south, in Macedonia, conditions are similar. Before the
Turkish conquest Macedonia had been sometimes under Bulgarian rule, as in
the times of Simeon, Samuel, and John Asen II, sometimes under Serbian,
especially during the height of Serbian power in the fourteenth century,
while intermittently it had been a province of the Greek Empire, which
always claimed it as its own. On historical grounds, therefore, each of
the three nations can claim possession of Macedonia. From an ethnographic
point of view the Slav population of Macedonia (there were always and are
still many non-Slav elements) was originally the same as that in the other
parts of the peninsula, and probably more akin to the Serbs, who are pure
Slavs, than to the Slavs of Bulgaria, who coalesced with their Asiatic
conquerors. In course of time, however, Bulgarian influences, owing to the
several periods when the Bulgars ruled the country, began to make headway.
The Albanians also (an Indo-European or Aryan race, but not of the Greek,
Latin, or Slav families), who, as a result of all the invasions of the
Balkan peninsula, had been driven southwards into the inaccessible
mountainous country now known as Albania, began to spread northwards and
eastwards again during the Turkish dominion, pushing back the Serbs from
the territory where they had long been settled. During the Turkish
dominion neither Serb nor Bulgar had any influence in Macedonia, and the
Macedonian Slavs, who had first of all been pure Slavs, like the Serbs,
then been several times under Bulgar, and finally, under Serb influence,