Andrew Rossos

Andrew Rossos (Macedonian: Андреј Росос, Greek: Ανδρέας Ρόσος; born 1941) is a Canadian-Macedonian[1][2] Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Toronto.[3]

Andrew Rossos
Born1941 (age 81–82)
Moschochori, Florina, Greece
NationalityCanadian
Occupation(s)Professor, scholar, academic

Early life and education

Rossos was born in 1941 in the village of Moschochori, Florina, Greece from the Slavophone minority. During the Greek Civil War in 1948, he was evacuated to Czechoslovakia as a refugee child. Rossos attended primary school in Sobotin and Technical School in Prague. In 1958 he moved with the rest of his family to Canada and graduated from high school in Toronto. Rossos earned a bachelor's degree in history at Michigan State University in 1963 and did his postgraduate studies at the University of Stanford, earning his PhD in 1971. Since then he has worked at the University of Toronto and became a professor there in 1982.[4]

Career

At the end of 2008, his book Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History was published. He authored a monograph on Russian foreign policy in the Balkans titled Russia and the Balkans: Inter-Balkan Rivalries and Russian Foreign Policy, 1908–1914.

In his book, Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History, Rossos’ account starts from 600 BC and ends in 2001 AD. He identifies two "golden ages" of the Macedonians, namely the periods during the Alexander the Great's empire, which he sees as non-Greek and "the first Macedonian state",[5][6] and Tsar Samuil's Empire which he sees as another "Macedonian empire".[5][7] He also identifies three "dark ages" of the Macedonians, namely thirteen centuries of Greek-Roman-Byzantine-Bulgarian rule, half a millennium under Ottoman rule and a "Greek-Serbian-Bulgarian occupation" from 1913 to 1944. Rossos describes the WWII to today again as luminous. In the book, he also describes "innovative thrusts of Macedonian culture", such as the effect of Cyril and Methodius, who Rossos sees as ethnic Macedonians.[5]

In 2012, Andrew Rossos was elected to the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts as a foreign member.[8]

Criticism

Rossos is an adherent of some controversial views espoused by the historiography in North Macedonia (Macedonism[5]), which itself is highly politicized because the Macedonian nation-building process has not yet been accomplished.[9] For example, he has adopted the fringe theory of the continuity between the ancient and the modern Macedonians,[10][11] and that Macedonian national identity was already well developed before the WWII.[12][5][1][10][13][14][15][16] He has been described as one of the more "moderate" Macedonian scholars who nevertheless implies a "vague form of historical or cultural continuity between the ancient and the modern Macedonians in what is ultimately a form of nationalist historiography".[10] Per Stefan Troebst, Rossos has clearly and consciously taken sides with the historians and politicians of North Macedonia, and states that his works suffer from what he calls "Makedonianismus" (Macedonism).[5] Per Loring M. Danforth, "Rossos’s implicit suggestion of a continuity linking ‘the first Macedonian state’ of antiquity with the modern Macedonian state of the twentieth century could be interpreted as a subtle attempt to counter the more convincing Greek claims for cultural continuity with Alexander the Great and the ancient Macedonians".[10] Aristotle Tziampiris criticizes Rossos' claim of a "huge" Macedonian minority in Greece, possibly numbering to more than 100,000s, pointing out that the Rainbow Party, a party aiming primarily to exert pressure in order to secure minority rights and amend what it perceives as human rights violations against Slavic-speakers who self-identify as ethnic Macedonians, never gained more than 10,000 votes, or 0.1% of the entire Greek population.[17]

Bibliography
  • "The Disintegration of Yugoslavia, Macedonia's Independence, and Stability in the Balkans." In War and Change in the Balkans: Nationalism, Conflict, and Cooperation, edited by Brad K. Blitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • Rossos, Andrew (2000). "Great Britain and Macedonian Statehood and Unification, 1940–49". East European Politics and Societies. 14 (1): 119–142. doi:10.1177/0888325400014001006. S2CID 144297050.
  • Rossos, Andrew (1997). "Incompatible Allies: Greek Communism and Macedonian Nationalism in the Civil War in Greece, 1943–1949". Journal of Modern History. 69 (1): 42–76. doi:10.1086/245440. S2CID 143512864.
  • "The British Foreign Office and Macedonian National Identity, 1918-1941." In National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe, edited by Ivo Banac and Katherine Verdey. New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1995.
  • "The Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia: A British Officer's Report, 1944". Slavonic and East European Review. 69 (2): 282–309. 1991.
  • The British Foreign Office and Macedonian National Identity, 1918–1941 (Slavic Review, 1994)
  • Incompatible Allies: Greek Communism and Macedonian Nationalism in the Civil War in Greece, 1943–1949
  • Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History (2008)

References
  1. Canadian-Macedonian historian Andrew Rossos is credited as having published ‘the first professional English language overview of the history of Macedonia, although the historian Stefan Troebst suggests that his ‘teleologic portrayal is negatively affected by the Skopjan view of history’ and thus is considered a pro-Macedonian nationalist account, representing the latest developments in Macedonian historiography. For more see: The Historical Association, Teaching history journal, March 2015, The Democratisation of the Macedonian Question, Adrienne Wright Smith’s Hill High School Wollongong, HTA extension essay price 2014 – 1st place. p. 49.
  2. Wright, Adrienne (2014). "The Democratisation of the Macedonian Question" (PDF). State Library New South Wales. p. 48.
  3. Rezension für H-Soz-Kult von Stefan Troebst, Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas (GWZO), Universität Leipzig – "Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History", 2008 (in German). Citation: Rossos selbst ist makedonischer Herkunft, geboren im zu Griechenland gehörigen Ägäisch-Makedonien. in English: Rossos himself is of Macedonian origin, born in Aegean Macedonia belonging to Greece.
  4. Македонска енциклопедија. Скопје, 2009, т.ІІ, p. 1282.
  5. Per Troebst Rossos' teleological representation, suffers from the fixation on what he calls "Macedonianism" ("Macedonism"), that is, in the source-wise weakly and sporadically supported view... Rossos excludes, and like the science of history in Skopje, puts occasional expressions of individual representatives of the small intellectual elites of the southern Slavs of Ottoman Macedonia in a fragile continuity line in exile in Russia, Western Europe or Bulgaria to support the Macedonian thesis... The counterpart of this selective approach is to hide such strands of development and events that do not fit into this interpretation scheme. This is especially true for the ethno-nationally Bulgarian-defining part of the Macedonian movement – Macedonian Bulgarians. For more see: Recension from Professor Stefan Troebst about Rossos's book: Macedonia and the Macedonians. A History, 2008
  6. Rossos, Macedonia and the Macedonians, p. 11-12
  7. Rossos, Macedonia and the Macedonians, p. 24, 28, 365
  8. Dzuvalekovska, Mircela; Ilievska, Aleksandra, eds. (2012). The name issue revisited : an anthology of academic articles. Skopje: Macedonian Information Centre. p. 532. ISBN 978-9989-2072-8-0. OCLC 868301034.
  9. Historein, Vol 4 (2003), Serving the Nation: Historiography in the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) after Socialism. Ulf Brunnbauer, p. 175, doi:10.12681/historein.86
  10. Joseph Roisman, Ian Worthington ed., A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, Volume 84 of Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World, John Wiley & Sons, 2011, ISBN 144435163X, p. 581.
  11. Lampe, John R.; Iordachi, Constantin (2020). Battling over the Balkans: Historiographical Questions and Controversies. Central European University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-963-386-326-8.
  12. Tziampiris, Aristotle (2011). "Greece and the Macedonian Question: an assessment of recent claims and criticisms". Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. 11 (1): 69–83. doi:10.1080/14683857.2011.556428. ISSN 1468-3857. S2CID 154678767.
  13. Ana S. Trbovich, A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia's Disintegration, Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 0199715475, p. 104.
  14. Tchavdar Marinov and Alexander Vezenkov, Communism and Nationalism in the Balkans: Marriage of Convenience or Mutual Attraction? in Entangled Histories of the Balkans – Volume Two, ISBN 9789004261914, BRILL, 2013, pp.: 501–502. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004261914_007
  15. Tziampiris, Aristotle. (2011). Greece and the Macedonian Question: an assessment of recent claims and criticisms. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. 11. pp. 69-83. 10.1080/14683857.2011.556428.
  16. Илко Дренков. Великобритания и Македонският въпрос (1919–1949), Македонски научен институт, София, 2017, ISBN 6197377012, стр. 9-10.
  17. Tziampiris, Aristotle (1 March 2011). "Greece and the Macedonian Question: an assessment of recent claims and criticisms". Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. 11 (1): 69–83. doi:10.1080/14683857.2011.556428. ISSN 1468-3857. S2CID 154678767.
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