The exodus of Macedonians in New World Countries (1880-1940)

Abstract

During the second half of the 18th century, adverse political realities emerging from the Ottoman Rule, natural catastrophes, continuous warfare, insufficient cultivable land and absence of large urban centres compelled thousands of Macedonians to emigrate. Their primary destinations included the main commercial centres of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and Constantinople, the flourishing ports of South Russia, the trading centres of the Black Sea and the rich cities of Austria and Hungary. They built there their ethno-linguistic and religious outlets, amassed substantial wealth and several of them were proclaimed benefactors of their native lands. From the last quarter of the 19th century, Macedonian immigrants settled in the Americas; primarily the English-speaking U.S.A. and Canada and the Spanish-speaking Uruguay and Argentina. The Macedonian settlement in the Americas did not have the temporary character of the preceded European exodus: its main occupational patterns, its social mobility, its socio-economic organization and its acculturation process were determined by the fact that the host countries were immigrant countries themselves. Since 1924 Macedonian migrants discovered Australia and commenced their settlement initially in its vast countryside. As from 1935 they settled in the large urban centres building their regional ethno-specific brotherhoods and social networks and disseminating their national legacies.