Research

I have been researching before the 12th of November 2008 when the Extension History Excursion took place at  Wollongong University, and I had come across different topics that I wanted  to do. These included:

• The Elizabethan Age
• The Historicity of Jesus Christ
• Evolution- Charles Darwin
• UFOs – The Roswell UFO incident
• The Taliban

I was mostly thinking about doing the Historicity of Jesus when I went to Wollongong Univeristy, however I have been browsing the BOS (Board of Studies) forum on extension history and came across a post about The Historcity of Jesus. Some people where saying that it was an emotional subject to do as one of their case studies and I thought that maybe it was too cliche to do.

Then I starting thinking about a topic of interst that I could relate to or that I was aware of and that would fascinate me for a long time. Thats when on the 23rd of November (Sunday) I was thinking of my heritage (Greece) and remembering about the HI I did for my Ancient History- which was the Etruscans- who were influenced by the Greek culture. I then thought about a controversy that was occuring in Greece, besides ancient times and remembered about the Macedonia naming dispute and I realised instantly that, that would be a perfect topic of interest for my research. Thus I had found my topic.

I have always heard a few things here and there about the, if you can call it Macedonia Issue. I then started asking my parents questions about what they knew and they gave me brief facts. Though they told me to talk to my grandparents more about it.  

I then went onto wikipedia to do a bit of reading about the history if Macedonia and also about the Ottoman Empire in Greece. 

I then had my Ext His class the next day and was able to inform Sir (Mr Carragher) about my topic who told me to research about the History of Macedoia- which was easy, but the hard part he said was then to try and form a question that was narrowed down to what I wanted to do. I’m still dwelling and researching but I think probably by the end of the week I will have a brief outline of what my question is going to focus on the aspect of The Macedonia Issue.

Here is an excellent site I have found browsing the web today:
Main Site – http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/

Links from the site:

http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/ConciseMacedonia/timeline.html

http://historyofmacedonia.org/MacedonianGreekConflict.html

http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/MacedonianGreekConflict/conflict.html
http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/MacedonianGreekConflict/shea.html

And yesterday I was able to ask my school librarian if they had any information about my area of topic. I was only able to receive one book which contains some info, it is called: 
The Greeks, The Land and People Since the War by James Pettifer. Published in 1994.
It had information in there about the history and ethnicity, and also the current dispute of Macedonia

The good thing about doing this topic is that it has been occuring ever since ancient times and is still being argued about in the present (modern times).

So some questions I need to ponder over are:

• Who owns Macedonia? What evidence is there?
• Is it a part of Greece? Evidence and theories
• Is the name Macedonia, Greek?  
• Alexander the Great, does he contribute to this dispute?
• Who was Tito? How was he significant? What did he do?
• When was the decision made for Macedonia to become an independent country?
• What was Greece doing at the time? Did the Civil War have an impact on the Greeks to defend Macedonia as their own?
• Who is right and who is wrong?
• Is there a right answer?
• Is their objective truth in this dispute? 

Even though my heritage is Greek, I’m personally interested in this topic as I’m not biased to this particular topic. I have to thoroughly educate myself about this topic, and as my dad said, ‘Get the Facts right’ . I have relatives who are also Macedonian and I would like to investigate about this dispute that has been going on for decades.