North Macedonia (before
2019, Macedonia), officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a country in
the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. It gained its independence in 1991 as one of
the successor states of Yugoslavia.
A landlocked country, North
Macedonia has borders with Kosovo to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south, and Albania to the west. It constitutes approximately the northern
third of the larger geographical region of Macedonia. The
capital and largest city, Skopje, is home to roughly a quarter of
the country's 2.06 million inhabitants. The majority of the residents are
ethnic Macedonians, a South Slavic people. Albanians form a
significant minority at around 25%, followed by Turks, Romani, Serbs, Bosniaks, and Aromanians.
The history of the region
dates back to antiquity, beginning with the kingdom of Paeonia, presumably a mixed Thraco-Illyrian polity. In the late sixth century
BC, the area was incorporated into the Persian Achaemenid Empire,
then annexed by the kingdom of Macedonia
in the fourth century BC. The Romans conquered the region in the
second century BC and made it part of the much larger province of Macedonia. The area
remained part of the Byzantine Empire, but was
often raided and settled by Slavic tribes beginning in the sixth
century of the Christian era. Following centuries of contention
between the Bulgarian, Byzantine, and Serbian Empire, it was part of the Ottoman dominion from the mid-14th until the early 20th
century, when, following the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, the modern
territory of North Macedonia came under Serbian rule.
During the First World War (1915–1918), it was ruled by Bulgaria, but
after the end of the war it returned to being under Serbian rule as part of the
newly formed Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Later, during the Second World War (1941–1944), it was ruled by Bulgaria again,
and in 1945 it was established as a constituent state of
communist
Yugoslavia, which it remained until its peaceful
secession in 1991. The country became a member of the United Nations in April 1993, but as a result of a dispute with Greece over
the name "Macedonia", it was admitted under the provisional
description the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (abbreviated as FYR
Macedonia and FYROM). In June 2018, Macedonia and Greece resolved the dispute
with an agreement that the
country should rename itself "Republic of North Macedonia". This
renaming came into effect in February 2019.
In the early 19th century the name of
Macedonia was almost unknown in the modern-day area. It was revived only in
middle of the century, with the rise of
nationalism in the Ottoman Empire. In the early 20th century the
region was already a national cause, contested among Bulgarian, Greek and
Serbian nationalists. During the interwar period the use of the name Macedonia was prohibited
in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, due to the implemented policy of Serbianization of the local Slavs. The name Macedonia was
adopted officially for the first time at the end of the Second World War by the
new Socialist Republic of Macedonia,
which became one of the six constituent countries of the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia. After the fall of Communism, with the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia,
this federal entity declared independence and changed its official name to
Republic of Macedonia in 1991. Prior to June 2018, the use of the name Macedonia
was disputed between Greece and the
then-Republic of Macedonia.
The flora of North
Macedonia is represented by around 210 families, 920 genera, and around 3,700 plant species. The most abundant
group are the flowering plants with
around 3,200 species, followed by mosses (350 species) and ferns
(42). Phytogeographically, North Macedonia belongs to the Illyrian
province of the Circumboreal Region within
the Boreal Kingdom. According
to the World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF) and the Digital Map of European Ecological Regions by the European Environment Agency,
the territory of the Republic can be subdivided into four ecoregions: the Pindus Mountains mixed forests, Balkan mixed forests, Rhodopes mixed forests and Aegean sclerophyllous and mixed forests.
National Park of Pelister
in Bitola is known for the presence of the endemic Macedonian Pine, as well as some 88 species of plants
representing almost 30 percent of North Macedonian dendroflora. The Macedonian
Pine forests on Pelister are divided into two communities: pine forests with
ferns and pine forests with junipers. The Macedonian Pine, as a specific
conifer species, is a relict of tertiary flora, and the
five-needle pine Molika, was first noted on
Pelister in 1893. The native forest fauna is abundant and
includes bears, wild boars, wolves, foxes, squirrels, chamois and deer. The lynx is found, very rarely, in the mountains of western
Macedonia, while deer can be found in the region of Demir Kapija. And many Forest birds include the blackcap, the grouse, the black grouse, the imperial eagle and the
forest owl.
As a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 and the fall of the Ottoman
Empire, the territory of present-day North Macedonia became part of the Kingdom of Serbia.
In 1915, during World War
I, the territory North Macedonia was occupied by Bulgaria. Post offices were
organized by the Bulgarian authorities in the occupied territory. After the end
of the First World War, the area returned to Serbian control as part of the
newly formed Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The
first stamps for the kingdom were issued in January 1921. During World War II, North Macedonia was
occupied by the Axis powers and divided between Bulgaria and Italian-occupied
Albania. At the end of the Second World War, North Macedonia became
part of the federal republic
of Yugoslavia as the People’s Republic of Macedonia
and used its stamps. The first stamps of the Republic of Macedonia were issued
in 1992. Since 2019, stamps are inscribed "Republic of North
Macedonia".
This is my first cover from Macedonia sent by Predrag.
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