If anyone has ever read Eric Hobsbawm's "Nations and Nationalism since 1780" you may have read about his take on proto-nationalism. Here's some sentences regarding proto-nationalism.
Interesting. And how do we explain the village of Macedonia in the Timis region of Romania from the 14th century which to this day is indeed inhabited by a Macedonian minority?
and still further information

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“Why and how could a concept so remote from the real experience of most human beings as ‘national patriotism’ become such a powerful political force so quickly?......
You cannot point to the natural communities (families, villages, etc.) familiar to all humans throughout time, because nations differ from these in size, scale and nature. They are, as Benedict Anderson put it, imagined communities.......
However, perhaps there are certain communal sentiments that lend themselves ideally to being converted to or marshaled in favour of, nationalism. Call these proto-national sentiments, and they can either be supra-local (that is, uniting disparate communities, like belief in the Virgin Mary), or springing from local political communities.......
So what does constitute proto-nationalism? This is a difficult question to answer because it must be located in the minds of the illiterate, because it is a popular sentiment, and before the 20th century, the vast majority of mankind was illiterate.
You cannot point to the natural communities (families, villages, etc.) familiar to all humans throughout time, because nations differ from these in size, scale and nature. They are, as Benedict Anderson put it, imagined communities.......
However, perhaps there are certain communal sentiments that lend themselves ideally to being converted to or marshaled in favour of, nationalism. Call these proto-national sentiments, and they can either be supra-local (that is, uniting disparate communities, like belief in the Virgin Mary), or springing from local political communities.......
So what does constitute proto-nationalism? This is a difficult question to answer because it must be located in the minds of the illiterate, because it is a popular sentiment, and before the 20th century, the vast majority of mankind was illiterate.
Interesting. And how do we explain the village of Macedonia in the Timis region of Romania from the 14th century which to this day is indeed inhabited by a Macedonian minority?
The Macedonians from Romania are a Slavic, Orthodox population that came from Macedonia`s territory in several migration waves starting with the eleventh century. The Macedonians are a recognized national minority in Romania since 2000. The Macedonia village (Timis county) is one of the first Macedonian settlements in Romania, documented by Catholic Church records in 1332-1337 under the name of Machadonia.

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