ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate some aspects of the formation of national identities in Southeastern Europe, using as a case study the Ottoman Kaza of Gumuljina, the seat of which was the homonymous city of Thrace (now Komotini, Greece, referred to as Gümülcine in Turkish and Gyumyurdzhina or Gyumyuldzhina in Bulgarian). Our effort is limited to the Eastern Orthodox population of the kaza and its evolution during the last quarter of the nineteenth and the two first decades of the twentieth century. More precisely, we shall try to detect the consequences of the spread of Greek and Bulgarian nationalisms in this specific area under an Ottoman institutional framework and the effects that this phenomenon exerted on the collective identities of the local Orthodox population and on their path of transition from confessional communities (millets) to nations.
