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When I first took up the study of the Vlachs, my investigations
were much more in the nature of a personal quest. I was looking
for my own roots with the kind of curiosity anyone might feel about
his or her ancestry. I eventually came to be more interested in
the distant origins of the Vlachs themselves, having realised that,
whatever those origins might be, they do not necessarily invest
the Vlachs with a collective identity. From this point onwards,
the challenge for me was to paint a portrait of the Vlachs that
rose above the political prejudices old and new which prevent others
from seeing them as they really are. What I wanted to do was to
demolish the stereotypical view of them as either a small, insignificant,
marginal group of traditional pastoral nomads or a still unliberated
ethnic minority in need of protection. It seemed to me that the
best way of answering the fundamental question of "Who are
the Vlachs?" was to make a historical record of all their villages
and settlements and to portray their many and various intracommunal
groups and distinctions, together with an account of their dispersal
throughout the Balkans after the watershed year of 1769. My aim
was to show the diverse identity which they themselves evolved (under
the influence, of course, of their environment) from the first mediaeval
references until the early twentieth century, when political interference
in the general view of the Vlachs, nationalism, and the concomitant
propaganda became serious factors in the games that were being played
over the fate of the Ottoman provinces in the Balkans.
This English edition of The Vlachs: Metropolis and Diaspora,
the second volume of my Studies on the Vlachs, was quite unhoped-for.
I hope it will help scholars and ordinary readers alike to appreciate
many of the distinctive features which characterise the Vlachs,
and to see them not merely as a subject of historical ethnography,
but as a living reality. In these modern times, when all sorts
of minorities are again being tormented, and tormenting the Balkans
in their turn, it is vital to understand that the Vlachs, especially
those in Greece, do not constitute a stereotypical minority. This
does not mean, of course, that we should regard them with indifference.
However, all those who take any kind of interest in them, whether
scientific or political, ethnic or international, must take serious
account both of their historical identity and, above all, of the
fact that the Vlachs of Greece, who make up the majority of the
Vlachs in the Balkans and who are still living in their ancestral
homeland, do not cherish, and certainly do not express, collective
political tendencies or demands. On the contrary, they regard
any attempt to treat them as a minority with great scepticism
and unease.
With regard to this English edition, I should like to thank
Professor Yannis Drossos, Director of the Institute for Defence
Analysis, for recognising its importance and supporting its publication;
my publisher Mr Kostas Zitros for his unreserved support and interest;
and the translator Ms Deborah Whitehouse for all her arduous efforts.
The rendering of Vlach place-names, terms, phrases, and words
posed a problem, because in the original edition I had them all
in Greek characters, making every effort to produce as close a
phonetic rendering as possible. For the English edition, being
fully aware of my own linguistic limitations, I enlisted the help
of a much better qualified person, namely Dr Kostas Dinas, Professor
of Linguistics. In the following note, he sets out the scientific
reasoning on which he based his rendering of the Vlach words and
indicates how they should be read. As far as the Vlach personal
names are concerned, however, they are phonetically transliterated
directly from their Greek forms as found in the original, Greek,
edition, simply because, I confess, I do not know the correct
Vlach forms.
Asterios Koukoudis
Thessaloniki, June 2001.
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