Venec (Aug 2015)
The Borders of "Shopluk" and/or Shops without Borders
Abstract
A historic and cultural region exists at the heart of the Balkans, known in geographic and ethnographic research as Shopluk. This is a region in which, over the last 150 years, state boundaries were moved several times as a result of 5 different wars. Today, the historic Shopluk is where the borders of three nations converge – Republic of Bulgaria, Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia – and, during the last decade, the region was declared one of the “Euroregions” on the Balkans. Despite the historical similarities in traditional culture and language of this population, in the 19th century it became a subject of nationalist ambitions and a propaganda “wars” between the new national states of Serbia and Bulgaria. The joining of Bulgarian-inhabited parts of Shopluk (the regions of today’s Dimitrovgrad and Bosilegrad in Serbia) to the Kingdom of Serbs, Slovenes and Croats in 1919 created a long-lasting tension between the two countries, some residues of which can be felt in everyday relations even today. On the other hand, it has been a century-long tradition for men in this region to take part in seasonal labour migrations all over the Balkan Peninsula, despite political borders. In this way, preserving their cultural and lingual specifics, the groups of seasonal workers – migrants from Shopluk, became a bridge for cultural interaction and exchange with other regions in the neighbour countries. Even though today the population of Shopluk exhibits different national identities, historical similarities in culture and language can turn the Euroregion between Nish, Sofia and Skopje from one of the poorest on the Balkans to one of the most integrated and prosperous.
