Communities on the Verge of Extinction Meglenoromanians -Between Acculturation and Ethnic Dissolution

Abstract

Among Romanian historical communities, two are currently close to ethnic and linguistic assimilation, due to their small number of members, the impossibility of claiming their cultural and linguistic rights, as well as the refusal of Balkan states to protect them. These groups are the Meglenoromanians and Istroromanians. In this study, we make a historical and ethnographic analysis of the small Meglenoromanian community, which was united until the Balkan wars, was split in two through the division of the Meglen land between Greece and the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom (1913), and then split again into two groups through the expulsion of Muslim Meglenoromanians to Turkey (1921) and the colonization of over 2 000 persons from Romania (in the Quadrilater, beginning in 1925, and afterwards in Cerna village, Tulcea county, in 1940).

Keywords

• Meglenoromanians
• Romanian minorities
• the Balkans
• ethnogenesis
• the Meglen region