26. – The Ethnological Map by Synvet (1877).

This map is a Greek one. It is drawn by the Frenchman A. Synvet, Professor of Geography at the Ottoman-Lyceum in Constantinople; it is, however, put together according to information given by the Greek Patriarchate. And the Greeks have always considered it as a map of their own.

This map (fac-similated on a smaller scale) has been reproduced here upon three considerations: 1) to prove once more our total impartiality towards the other claimants for Macedonia; 2) to show that the Greeks – Servia's allies of today – did not recognise in 1877 the existence of Servians in Macedonia; and 3) to make it clearly prominent that the Greeks themselves look upon the Christian majority of Macedonia as Greeks speaking Bulgarian. Snyvet calls them on his map Greco-Bulgarians, and the Greek newspapers have always spoken of them as Greeks of Bulgarian tongue ("Vu1garophoni Helleni"). The explanation given by the Greeks for their theory of Bulgarian-speaking Greeks, is very odd: they claim that Macedonia had always been inhabited by Greeks but that hordes of Bulgarian barbarians, after invading the country, have enforced their language upon them. Is it possible, we ask, that an uncultivated people can impose its barbarian language upon a cultured nation speaking the language of Socrates and Demosthenes? We leave it to our foreign intelligent readers to express their opinion as to how far this Greek theory has any foundation. We only call attention to the historical fact that in the course of five centuries the Turks have not succeeded in enforcing their language on those nations that have been subjugated by them in Europe, not even on those Christians that have gone over to the Mohamedan faith; and all the world known that the Mohamedan Greeks of Epirus speak Greek, the Mohamedan Servians of Bosnia and Herzegovina speak Servian. and that the Mohamedan Bulgarians of Macedonia and of the Rhodope speak the Bulgarian language.