The disintegration of Ottoman rule

Ottoman conquest did not mean the end of armed resistance on the part of the South Slav peoples. Poor harvests and a rapacious nobility frequently brought on local revolts by the reaya; in addition, individuals accused of crimes or protesting injustice would characteristically head for the hills or forests to live the life of the haiduk, or outlaw. Both of these forms of resistance increased from the 17th century, when the territorial expansion of the Ottoman Empire was reversed and Ottoman warriors withdrawing toward the core of the empire found themselves in growing competition with one another for limited resources. Armed uprisings by the peasantry were particularly common in northern areas such as the Morava River valley, where imperial control was weakest and the Janissaries least disciplined. The greatest of these revolts took place in 1690, when Serbs rose in support of an Austrian invasion. The Habsburg forces, unable to sustain their advance, retreated back across the Sava, leaving the native population seriously exposed to Turkish reprisals. In 1691 Archbishop Arsenije III Crnojević of Peć led a migration of 30,000–40,000 Serbs from “Old Serbia” and southern Bosnia across the Danube and Sava. There they were settled and became the basis of the Austrian Militärgrenze, or Military Frontier. (The South Slav translation, Vojna Krajina, was used 300 years later in the name given to the areas of Croatia that local Serb majorities attempted to disconnect from Croatia following its secession from Yugoslavia.) Also dating from the time of the great migration of 1691 was the gradual conversion of Kosovo-Metohija into a predominantly Albanian region as Albanians filled the space left by the displaced Serbs.

Partly because of the contacts between Serb clergy and the Ottomans, the sultan abolished the patriarchate of Peć in 1766, and an attempt was made to place the Serbian church under the authority of the Greek patriarch in Constantinople. In response, newly established monasteries in Srem, a region between the Sava and Danube under Austrian control, took on part of the role of Peć as a centre of ecclesiastical authority. The town of Sremski Karlovci, in particular, grew to be a primary centre of learning and of Serb cultural identity.

When war broke out between the Ottomans and an alliance of Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1787, the Austrian emperor called upon the Serbs to rise once more against the Turks, which they did with some success. The Treaties of Sistova (1791) and Jassy (1792), which concluded hostilities, included guarantees of the rights of the Serb population, including the expulsion of the Janissaries from the pashalic of Belgrade. These provisions were never fully respected, however, and the region steadily sank into disorder.

The nascent Serbian state

By the last quarter of the 18th century, the disintegration of Ottoman rule had produced a highly unstable situation in Serbia. In northern Serbia local Janissaries were virtually beyond the control of the Porte, and their exactions passed from the collection of taxes to open plunder. In 1804 an uprising broke out in the Šumadija region, south of Belgrade; it was led by Djordje Petrović, called Karadjordje (“Black George”), a successful pig trader who had served with the Austrians in the war against Turkey in 1787–88. In 1805 a Skupština (assembly) was summoned, and it submitted a list of proposals to the sultan. The proposals included a number of demands for local autonomy that were unacceptable to the sultan, and a large force was sent to quell the rebellion. The rebels continued to hold out and were strengthened by the arrival of Russian reinforcements in 1808. Threatened by Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, however, Tsar Alexander I concluded a treaty with the Turks. The withdrawal of Russia left the Serbs open to Ottoman reprisals, and Karadjordje and his men were compelled to retreat across the Danube.

The return of the Turks was accompanied by a widespread reign of terror, and the Christian population rose again in self-defense in April 1815. Under the leadership of another knez, MilošObrenović, this rebellion succeeded in driving the Turks from a wide area of northern Serbia. Faced with renewed Russian intervention following the defeat of Napoleon, the Porte made several important concessions to the rebels, including the retention of their arms, considerable powers of local administration, and the right to hold their own assembly. The firmans (decrees from the Porte) granted to Obrenović did not amount to the creation of an independent state, however. The region remained an Ottoman principality, with a resident pasha and Turkish garrisons in the principal towns.

Despite their limitations, the two uprisings would nonetheless remain seminal events in the formation of national consciousness around a modern Serbian state.

The passing of the old order

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic era signaled the beginning of the transformation of the old imperial order throughout the Balkans. The wars of this period precipitated changes in international relations, and in their aftermath entirely new social and political processes began to shape the lives of the South Slav peoples. They remained overwhelmingly peasant societies, but the old chiefly and aristocratic dynasties were increasingly challenged by the rising middle classes, who saw “national interest” in different terms.

In some respects Serbian national consciousness also received a strong stimulus from outside the borders of Serbia. One of the principal consequences of the wars of 1804–15 was an extension and deepening of channels of communication between the Serbs living in Serbia and the prec̆ani, Serbs living in diaspora across the Danube and throughout the Habsburg lands. The latter had prospered as traders, members of the free professions (primarily law and accounting), and soldiers and in several cases had been accepted into the ranks of the nobility. A substantial Serb middle class thus thrived in these areas that were not subject to Ottoman rule, and this middle class played a crucial role in the growth of Serb national consciousness.

One figure with this background was Ilija Garašanin, the son of a merchant from the Banat (Banat of Temesvár). Garašanin became Serbia’s minister of the interior in 1843, and in 1844 he prepared a memorandum outlining the principles upon which he believed the foreign policy of the state should be based. In this document, known as the Načertanije, or “Draft Plan,” Garašanin argued that the primary impediment to Serbian economic growth was its relationship with Austria, in that the Habsburgs had a stranglehold on Serbia’s trade. But even more important, according to Garašanin, were the political goals of uniting all Serbs and re-creating the borders of the medieval Serbian state, making Ottoman control of Bosnia and Kosovo a substantial obstacle.

The role of prec̆ani in the forging of national consciousness is also illustrated by the efforts of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić to produce a standardized literary language. Drawing on the inspiration of the philosopher and linguist Dositej Obradović, Karadžić conceived a grand plan that included revising the old ecclesiastical orthography to reflect the language of the people, compiling a grammar and dictionary, displaying the riches of the language by collecting folk songs, poetry, and other materials, and demonstrating the literary power of the vernacular by translating the New Testament. Karadžić’s work was hampered by the staunch opposition of cultural traditionalists, especially within the church. Consequently, in spite of the personal sympathy for his ideas among a number of influential figures in Serbia, the state was unwilling to back them unconditionally. For a good part of his career, Karadžić depended on the patronage of wealthy Serbs living in the Habsburg empire and the support of other South Slav intellectuals such as the Slovene Jernej Kopitar and the Croat Ljudevit Gaj.