The history of Serbia and the formation of the modern Serb identity

[Liberator of Makedonija]

How Greece and Bulgaria came to be as well as the development of the modern Greek and Bulgarian identities has bee discussed to death in these forums but I have not seen much discussion in this regard in relation to Serbia and the Serbs.

To start things off I have linked a map (file was too large to upload) composed by Adolphe Thiers which was published in Paris in 1862 detailing the "Serbian" population in European Turkey. Notice how he refers to Macedonians as "Greco-Serbs".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Balkan_Alliance#/media/File:Map_of_the_Serb_population,_1862,_H._Thiers.png

Secondly the English wikipedia article on Stojan Vezenkov, an agent for the Serbian government who attempted to create cooperations between Macedonian and Albanian revolutionaries and organise a unified uprising against Ottoman rule under Serbian direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stojan_Vezenkov

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Reading about Janko Popović, one of the most prominent leaders of the First Serbian Uprising and a celebrated figure in modern Serbian history. The man was actually born in Ohrid in 1779, though his father originated from the village of Donja Belica near Struga. Janko is well-known under his nickname 'Cincar'. English wikipedia claims he was given this nickname due to there being many Vlachs in his area (Ohrid or Donja Belica?) and that because he also 'spoke with an accent'. Could the real reason be however that the man just simply was a Vlach? I personally find it unlikely that a man born in Ohrid in the late 18th century would have a name like Popović . My guess is that he was christened with that name at a later date, likely after the establishment of the Serbian state in 1815 in which he was possibly given a more Serb-sounding name for the history books.

[Liberator of Makedonija]

.....and the fact it was not until 1868 that the Serbian state officially abandoned the macaronic Slavono-Serbian (which was based on Russian Church Slavonic) and adopted a colloquial-based literary language.

-Victor Friedman