Serbs (Macedonian: Србите во Македонија, Serbian: Срби у Македонији / Srbi u Makedoniji) are one of the constitutional peoples of the Republic of Macedonia. Numbering about 36,000 inhabitants (2002 census), they are based on the medieval populations as well as later relocated or migrated ethnic Serbs. They follow the Serbian Orthodox Church, within the see of the Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric.
The territory of today's Republic of Macedonia was periodically part of the Serbian Kingdom and Empire from the end of the 11th century to the Battle of Kosovo (1389) when it was conquered by the Ottomans. The South Slavic Orthodox people now lived under a foreign, Muslim power, in which eyes all Orthodox were regarded part of the Rum Millet. In tax registries, the Orthodox Christians were recorded as "infidels" (see giaour). Atrocities, failed rebellions and tax increases prompted several mass migrations into the north. Minor revolts took place in Ottoman Macedonia, although the liberation of these lands came to fruit in the late 19th and early 20th century, with Serbian and Bulgarian effort. In the decades before the Balkan Wars, the governments of Bulgaria and Serbia competed to win over the affiliation of the Slavic Orthodox population, which had traditionally identified as Bulgarian. During this time a separate Macedonian identity emerged in the local Slavs, who were divided by the affiliation of either the Bulgarian or Serbian Orthodox Church. By 1913, Serbia had captured most of present-day Macedonia, which subsequently was unified in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Socialist Yugoslavia with other South Slavic peoples. In 1991, with the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia became independent.
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