20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

862 Apostolos PATELAkisand lead to different interpretations and speculations. Lacking a strongpolitical structure, without an own church or a written culture, the Vlachsociety was until the end of the 18 th century a prevailing oral one, a factwhich explains the absence of direct testimonies concerning the imagewhich the Vlachs had about their own identity. 2Along the centuries, the Hellenic Vlachs traversed a long and sinuousway to preserve their own identity, accepting some decisive influencesfrom the Greeks among whom they lived and which whom they werepredestinated to share a common history.Starting from these introductory considerations, we will try to make ashort incursion into the Hellenic historiography as far as the Vlachs on theterritory of Greece are concerned, relying on our investigations effectuatedin the main libraries and book-shops of Thessaloniki.As a result of the documentation, we consider that 3 principal periodscan be established, each of them with its characteristics, depending on thelevel of knowledge and research in the field of history, on the necessitiesimposed by the socio-political situation in the respective period, as well ason the evolution of the Macedo-Romanian problem in different times.The first period includes a long interval, between 1800 and WorldWar I. The second is the inter-war period and the third comprises the timewhich has elapsed since World War II.The first period begins around the year 1880, when the Vlachsintellectuals, following an internal impulse, began writing about the Vlachs.The authors of these writings had understood the fact that these populationsconstituted a distinct group as compared to the mass of the Greek inhabitantsand tried to give an explanation concerning the Vlachs’origin and language.In this period appear and become outlined the two theories referring tothe origin of the Hellenic Vlachs, namely the autochtonist theory and theimmigrationist one. The existence of two diametrically opposed theorieswill create a bitter dispute between the two camps, which explains the largenumber of the works dedicated to this theme.The first historian who dealt with the origin of the Vlachs wasKonstantinos Koumas (1777-1836), who published in Vienna, in 1832, ahistory in 12 volumes, in German, entitled The history of the human deeds.With reference to the Vlachs, the historian mentions that the autochthonouspopulation of some regions underwent, in 600 years of Roman rule, along process of Romanisation from which the Vlachs resulted, they were2Manuela Dobre 2007, The Romanians of the Balkan Peninsula in the works of theByzantian historians of the 15 th century, in the Congress of the Romanian spirituality, 11 thedition, 269.