With the beginning of the Bulgarian National Revival in the 18th century, many o

f the reformers were from this region, including the Miladinov Brothers,[36] Raj
ko inzifov, Joakim Krcovski,[37] Kiril Pejcinovi?[38] and others. The bishoprics
of Skopje, Debar, Bitola, Ohrid, Veles and Strumica voted to join the Bulgarian
Exarchate after it was established in 1870.[39]
Several movements whose goals were the establishment of an autonomous Macedonia,
which would encompass the entire region of Macedonia, began to arise in the lat
e 19th century; the earliest of these was the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Re
volutionary Committees, later becoming SMORO. In 1905 it was renamed the Interna
l Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO), and after World War
I the organisation separated into the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organiza
tion (IMRO) and the Internal Thracian Revolutionary Organisation (ITRO).
In the early years of the organisation membership was open only to Bulgarians, b
ut later it was opened to all inhabitants of European Turkey, regardless of thei
r nationality or religion.[40] The majority of its members, however, were Macedo
nian Bulgarians[41] In 1903, IMRO organised the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising a
gainst the Ottomans, which after some initial successes, including the forming o
f the "Krushevo Republic", was crushed with much loss of life. The uprising and
the forming of the Krushevo Republic are considered the cornerstone and precurso
rs to the eventual establishment of the Macedonian state.