The pre-national Balkans : a view without hindsight bias : three variations on the theme of religion and ethnicity

Among the many entities people in the past could identify with and feel loyal to, the ethnic group appears to have been far less important than the religious community, the social class, the local community and the clan. Ascribe to ethnic consciousness the same feelings of loyalty people socialized in contemporary nation states experience toward their national community obviously is a projection of a modern mental make-up into the past. Under Ottoman rule Orthodox Christians constituted a single community, within which ethnic distinctions played a secondary role. The fact that into the nineteenth century ethnonyms could refer to religious, vocational and social groups as well is an additional indication of the limited importance that was attached to ethnic appurtenance. This contribution describes the main cultural features of the Orthodox Christian community in the Ottoman Empire and offers two additional case studies. The first deals with the Bulgarian poet Grigor Părličev, whose path to Hellenization was smoothed by a his primal Orthodox Christian mental make-up that did not consider assuming an other ethnic identity as a violation of one’s fundamental duties his or her religious community. The second case is related to the goudilas, Hellenized Bulgarians in Plovdiv, who changed their identity as a result of collective upward social mobility. Both cases illustrate the irrelevance of ethnic identity to those concerned.Among the many entities people in the past could identify with and feel loyal to, the ethnic group appears to have been far less important than the religious community, the social class, the local community and the clan. Ascribe to ethnic consciousness the same feelings of loyalty people socialized in contemporary nation states experience toward their national community obviously is a projection of a modern mental make-up into the past. Under Ottoman rule Orthodox Christians constituted a single community, within which ethnic distinctions played a secondary role. The fact that into the nineteenth century ethnonyms could refer to religious, vocational and social groups as well is an additional indication of the limited importance that was attached to ethnic appurtenance. This contribution describes the main cultural features of the Orthodox Christian community in the Ottoman Empire and offers two additional case studies. The first deals with the Bulgarian poet Grigor Părličev, whose path to Hellenization was smoothed by a his primal Orthodox Christian mental make-up that did not consider assuming an other ethnic identity as a violation of one’s fundamental duties his or her religious community. The second case is related to the goudilas, Hellenized Bulgarians in Plovdiv, who changed their identity as a result of collective upward social mobility. Both cases illustrate the irrelevance of ethnic identity to those concerned.A