20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The Greek historiography about the Macedonian Romanians 869appeared, none of them brought anything sensational, which might havechanged the things.It must be mentioned that besides the numerous books, during this longinterval of time hundreds of articles were written and published, in differentperiodicals in Greece and abroad about the occupations, habits, traditions,songs, dances, proverbs and other aspects of the Vlachs’traditional life.In this short presentation we have enumerated only the most importantmoments of the Greek historiography referring to the Vlachs reaching tothe following conclusions:• The majority of the authors who were occupied with the Vlachs’historyare of Macedo-Romanian origin and because of it and affectiveemotionalnuance may be felt many times in their works.• Many works have not always a rigorously scientific character, as theirauthors are not professional historians or linguists. These authors writeon their own initiative, hoping that they can also contribute, more orless, to the clarification of some aspects concerning the Vlachs’historyand language.• The perspective which we have today allows us to appreciate thatdespite the progress made by the Greek historiography in the postwarperiod there are still many question marks and many white spotsregarding the history of the Vlachs and especially regarding the historyand especially the language of the Vlachs.• Few speciality works by Greek historians and linguists were translatedinto widely used languages, so the point of view of the Greek specialistsis not well known abroad sufficiently, except for small number ofscientists in each country.• In Greece, in the frame of the faculties of history, there is not anydepartment of Balkanistics and, generally, nobody occupies himselfin an organised way with the Vlachs’history; but only in a tangentialmanner so as were or are doing the universitary professors: ElefteriaNikolaidou, Antonios Mpousmpoukis, Atanasios Karathanasis, MihailTritos and others.• The greek pupils and students know few things about the history ofthe Vlachs and the data concerning them in the school books andencyclopedias are confused and contradictory. Thus, in the bookwhich was in preparation for the pupils in the 3 rd year of the secondaryschools, the following was mentioned about the Vlachs in 2002:"Populations of Latin origin which lived in the mountainous regionsof the Balkan Peninsula and busied themselves especially with thegrazing. The controversial problem regarding their ethnical identity