The early period of Turkish domination in Macedonia (1430-1700), as in other regions of the Ottoman Empire, was not marked by rapid change. With the passage of time, the land regime shifted to the benefit of large landowners.

Macedonian manufacturing and mining, which had shown such promise in the 16th century, were gradually crushed under the weight of imported Western European industrial products over the next two hundred years.

The population vacuum created by the Ottoman conquest began to be filled by immigrants of various religions and origins. At the same time, many Christians began to emigrate, since the economic conditions were more favorable to retail businesses than to investments. Their earnings contributed to the creation in the 18th century of a prosperous and educated class, which was leavened with Greek learning and yearned for the reinstatement of Greek independence.

In the mountains of Macedonia generations of armatoles and occasional clefts (bands of guerrilla type warriors) formulated their own fighting tradition against the Muslim conquerors, although they did not always have a clear political motive.

The period from 1821 to 1870

The failure of the Revolution of 1821-1822 in northern Greece was a milestone in the history of Macedonia. For more than 50 years social developments there were severed from those of southern Greece, where a new nation was being built, in theory and in reality.

The Greek political leadership considered Macedonia an indisputable part of their historic heritage. In practice, however, they gave priority to backing the burgeoning liberation movements in the Ottoman provinces of Thessaly and Epirus, which were closer to the Greek kingdom, and to Crete. Nevertheless, the Macedonian refugees and fighters who had sought sanctuary in Athens never ceased to exert pressure to change the fate of their own homeland.

In Macedonia itself, at least until the reforms of 1856 (Hatt-i-Humayun), society remained rooted in tradition, maintaining closer ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople than with the new Greek state. But for the first time the economy was receptive to serious challenges to join the international market. And the rural population was becoming denser, as waves of refugees descended upon the hinterland from all directions.

The period from 1870 to 1913

From the founding of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870) up until the Balkan Wars (1912-13), the Eastern Question went into its last and most intricate phase. The issue of who was to inherit the Ottoman Empire's European provinces was virtually identical with the fate of Macedonia. In addition to Russia and Austria, the old contenders for the area, the newly formed Balkan states of Bulgaria and Serbia vociferously claimed from Greece what she considered to be her historic heritage.

At this time, the dynamic introduction of European capital into Macedonia (in a quest for raw materials and remunerative investments) unavoidably linked European economic interests with the preservation of Ottoman domination, clashing with the emerging nationalist movements.

Meanwhile, the strengthening of nationalist sentiments in Macedonia, first Greek and then Bulgarian, was unshakably connected with social and demographic change and with the growing prosperity of Macedonia's farming community, which Europe itself desired as a market for her products.