The area of present-day Veles has been inhabited for over a millennium. In antiquity, it was most likey a settlement close to the
Paionian capital
Bylazora, and contained a substantial population of
Thracians and
Illyrians. It was then part for centuries of the
Roman Empire,
Eastern Roman Empire, and at times the
First and
Second Bulgarian Empire. It became part of the
Kingdom of Serbia at the beginning of the 14th century, while during the
Serbian Empire (1345–71) it was an estate of
Jovan Oliver and subsequently the
Mrnjavčević family until
Ottoman annexation after the
Battle of Kosovo (1389). Before the
First Balkan War, it was a township (
kaza) with the name
Köprülü, part of the
Sanjak of Üsküp. In the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century it was part of the semi independent Albanian
Pashalik of Shkodra. During the
Great Eastern Crisis, the local Bulgarian movement of the day was defeated when armed Bulgarian groups were repelled by the
League of Prizren, an Albanian organisation opposing Bulgarian geopolitical aims in areas like Köprülü that contained an
Albanian population. According to the statistics of
Bulgarian ethnographer
Vasil Kanchov from 1900, 19,700 inhabitants lived in Veles, 12,000
Bulgarian Christians, 6,600
Turks, 600
Romani and 500
Aromanians. In 1905 Dimitar Mishev Brancoff gathered statistics about the Christian population of Macedonia, in which the Christian population of Veles appears as consisting of 13,816 Bulgarian
Exarchists, 56 Bulgarian
Patriarchal Serbomans, 35
Greeks, 402
Vlachs, 12
Albanians and 444
Gypsies. In the city there were 2 lower secondary and 2 primary Bulgarian schools, one lower secondary and one primary Greek, Wallachian and Serbian schools. The
Annuario Pontificio identifies Veles instead with the
Diocese of Bela, a
suffragan of the Metropolitan Latin
Archdiocese of Achrida (Ohrid) in Bulgaria, and lists it, as no longer a residential diocese, among the Latin
titular bishoprics. It is probably in
Bosnia and Hercegovina (modern Velika?). Veles made international news in 2016 when it was revealed that a group of teenagers in the city were controlling over 100
websites producing fake news articles in support of U.S. presidential candidate
Donald Trump, which were heavily publicized on the social media site
Facebook. Although the websites were politically charged, the motive of these websites is thought to be to generate massive amounts of ad revenue, bringing into question problems with Facebook's newsfeed algorithm. == Economy ==