Stojan Novaković (; 13 November 1842 – 17 February 1915) was a Serbian politician, historian, diplomat, writer, bibliographer, literary critic, literary historian, and translator. He held the post of Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Serbia on two occasions, post of minister of education on three occasions, minister of interior on one occasion and leading the foremost liberal political party of that time in Serbia, the Progressive Party. He was also one of the most successful and skilled Serbian diplomats, holding the post of envoy to Constantinople, Paris, Vienna and Saint Petersburg.
Noted intellectual, Stojan Novaković was the president of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, head of the National Library the first president and a founding member of Serbian Literary Guild, Professor at the Belgrade's Velika škola, member of Serbian, Yugoslav, French, Czech, Polish and Russian academies.Ković, Miloš, Srbi 1903-1914: Istorija ideja, Clio, Belgrade, 2015., , p. 471. Stojan Novaković is considered one of the foremost Serbian historians of the nineteenth century and one of the founders of modern Serbian historiography.
Scholarly career Novaković was the first Serbian-educated scholar of the 19th century that obtained international renown. After finishing his secondary education in Belgrade (1860), he studied law and philosophy until 1863 at the Belgrade Lyceum () that was eventually transformed into the Belgrade's Velika škola. In 1865 he became a professor in this Belgrade institution of higher learning. By 1872 he was the librarian of the National Library and curator of the National Museum in Belgrade.
As a young scholar, he was founder and editor of the journal Vila (Fairy Lady) that was published from 1865 to 1868. In the early years of his scholarly engagement, Novaković translated into Serbian Leopold von Ranke's monumental work Die Serbische Revolution, as well as its revised and updated edition (1864–1892) as well as the equally famous Histoire de Charles XII by Voltaire (1897) and Joseph Scherr, General History of Literature from German (1872–1874). An admirer of Adam Mickiewicz, Novaković translated into Serbian his famous poem Grażyna in 1886 and the famous poem "The Captive of the Caucasus" by Alexander Pushkin. Stojan Novaković was one of the founders and first president of the Serbian Literary Cooperative in 1892, a prestigious publishing house for the most important literary and historical works.
He was strongly influenced by internationally renowned professors of Slavic philology and literature, in particular by Pavel Jozef Šafárik, who was living and working in Serbia at the time, and Đura Daničić, the translator of the Bible into the vernacular. Under the influence of Daničić, Novaković wrote "The History of Serbian Literature," (Istorija srpske književnosti) in 1867 (revised in 1871), and compiled also the first "Serbian Bibliography" (Srpska bibliografija za noviju književnost, 1741–1867) in 1869, published by the Serbian Learned Society, which resulted in him becoming a corresponding member of the Yugoslav Academy in Zagreb in 1870. He prepared simplified, but complete manuals for Serbian grammar that were widely published and used in various schools.
In 1865 Novaković was elected member of Serbian Learned Society in Belgrade, the precursor of the Serbian Royal Academy (), officially founded in 1886. When the Serbian Royal Academy was founded Novaković was made one of its 16 initial members, while in 1906 he became President of the Academy, a position he held until his death in 1915. It was at the initiative of Novaković that the Serbian Royal Academy started comprehensive research and collection of various materials available throughout the Serb-inhabited Balkans, which realized the Dictionary of Serbo-Croatian Literary and Vernacular Language. Although a disciple of Đura Daničić, who was concentrated primarily on linguistic issues, Novaković managed to expand the field of research, establishing a multi-disciplinary approach in treating all the social sciences related to national history, culture and tradition.
The early works of Novaković were mainly on poetry and literature, including his own early poetry (Pevanija, 1862) and attracted minor interest, as did his early novels (Nesrećni andjelak, Kob, Lepa Nerećanka, Vampir, Kaludjer) written between 1862 and 1865. Novaković was the Serbian counterpart to the prominent Slavist scholars, philologists such as Czech Dobrovský or Šafárik among Slovaks, Jernej (Bartholomeus) Kopitar and Franz Miklosich among Slovenians, and Vatroslav Jagić among Croats.
A scholar of Renaissance knowledge and interest, Novaković was able to use sources published in a dozen Slavic languages, as well as the growing literature in French, English, and German. After learning Latin and Greek, Novaković, already established as a promising scholar in Slavic literature and linguistics, was able to use medieval sources for his extensive historical research on medieval Serbia and the Balkans.
His first major study on historic geography, published in 1877, covered the reign of Stefan Nemanja (Zemljište radnje Nemanjine). His major work on medieval Serbia, the monograph on late Nemanjić period (Serbs and Turks in 14th and 15th centuries), was published in 1893, while his other important works based on unused documents including the studies of pronoia (Pronijari i baštinici) from 1887, village life in the medieval epoch (Selo), a comprehensive social and historical study, from 1891, and The Old Serbian Army (Stara srpska vojska), from 1893, as well as a study on medieval Serbian capitals in Rascia and Kosovo (Nemanjićke prestonice: Ras, Pauni, Nerodimlje), published in 1911, were considered as chapters of the comprehensive, multi-volume monograph The People and the Land in the Old Serbian State (Zemlja i narod u staroj srpskoj državi) which was never fully completed.
The comprehensive volume of medieval documents under the title Legal Documents of Serbian Medieval States (Zakonski spomenici srpskih država srednjeg veka), from 1912, still stands as the main source on the subject for medieval Serbia (Rascia), Bosnia, and Dioclea (Zeta). Another major volume is a scholarly edition of the Serbian Emperor Stefan Dušan's Code (Zakonik Stefana Dušana cara srpskog), based on the manuscript found in Prizren, and a work on the Byzantine legal sources of Serbian medieval law (Matije Vlastara Sintagmat), a subject he treated on several occasions.
His other studies, also based on primary sources and available literature in various languages, covered the modern period, prior and during the Serbian revolution (1804–1835): The Ottoman Empire prior to the Serbian Insurrection, 1780-1804 (Tursko carstvo pred srpski ustanak 1780-1804), The Resurrection of Serbia (Vaskrs države srpske) in 1904 (translated into German and published in Sarajevo in 1912), as well as the detailed analysis of first phase of Serbian Revolution (Ustanak na dahije 1804). In 1907, equally important was the analysis of the struggle between “supreme and central government” in insurgent Serbia: The Constitutional Question and the Law under Karageorge (Ustavno pitanje i zakon Karadjordjeva vremena).
Apart from scholarly work, Novaković published political analysis mostly under the pseudonym "Šarplaninac". These studies on contemporary politics, ethnographic questions, religious strife and national propaganda of various Balkan states, were published as a collection of papers under the title Balkan Questions (Balkanska pitanja) in 1906. In addition to political works, Novaković published several travelogues, on Constantinople (Pod zidinama Carigrada), Bursa (Brusa) and Turkey-in-Europe (S Morave na Vardar).
Political career
Novaković became the Minister of Education and Religious Affairs in Jovan Ristić’s Liberal cabinet in April 1873 and started to prepare the Law on high schools in Serbia. In October 1873 he became anew the Librarian, and in November 1874 again the Minister of Education in the Cabinet of Aćim Čumić and in 1875 was offered the same ministerial post at the government of Prime Minister Danilo Stefanović. He became a professor at the Belgrade's Velika škola in 1875, while from 1880 to 1883 he was, for the third time, the minister of education in the Milan Piroćanac conservative Progressive government, when he managed to regulate the status and legal position of both primary and secondary schools. Stojan Novaković, a kind of Serbian Jules Ferry, introduced compulsory primary education for Serbian children, and prepared and made passed dozens of important, often French-inspired bills into laws in the National Assembly. Being an early member of the group of Western-oriented intellectuals that formed the Progressive Party (Napredna stranka) in 1880, soon to be a pillar of King Milan Obrenović's Austrophile and Turkophile policy, Novaković was, as other Progressives led by Milan Piroćanac and Milutin Garašanin, in favour of enlightened Western-inspired reforms that were to be introduced to the predominantly peasant society of Serbia. In 1883, Novaković became a member of the State Council (Državni Savet), only to be reassigned shortly as Minister of Interior 1884 in Milutin Garašanin's government. He soon stepped down after judging that Garašanin was making too many concessions to King Milan Obrenović, before eventually returning to a more stable State Council.
Novaković eventually entered into Serbian diplomacy in 1885. He was sent as the Serbian envoy to Constantinople, considered, along with Vienna and St. Petersburg, as one of the most important posts in that period. The diplomatic convention with Ottoman Turkey signed in 1886, due to Novaković's skillful negotiations, made possible the opening of Serbian consulates in Skopje, and Thessaloniki. Novaković stayed as Serbian envoy to Constantinople for almost seven years, until 1892. He was instrumental in organizing a huge network of Serbian consulates, secular and religious Serbian schools and Serb religious institutions throughout Turkey-in-Europe, in particular in Kosovo, Metohija and Macedonia between Skopje and Monastir (Bitolj, Bitola). Furthermore, Novaković initiated the establishment of closer Serbian-Greek cooperation, both with the government in Athens and the Patriarchate of Constantinople.He became the first politician to decide to use the marginal, the nascent and ideologically unformed at this time Macedonian nationalism as an ideology, in order to oppose the strong Bulgarian positions in Macedonia and as a transitional stage towards the complete Serbization of the Slavic population in Macedonia, and even became the creator of the pejorative expression "Macedonism".ДРУШТВО „СРБО-МАКЕДОНЦИ“
As President of State Council, 1892–1895, Novaković was a member of a foreign policy committee that was instrumental to the flourishing of Serbian schools in the Ottoman Empire, as well as to the restoration of the vacant bishopric seat in Prizren in Old Serbia (the Vilayet of Kosovo) to a Serbian Metropolitan.
As the Prime Minister under King Aleksandar Obrenović (1895–1896), Novaković managed to convert the state debt, and avoid the financial collapse of Serbia. In order to obtain efficient protection of persecuted Christian Serbs in Ottoman Turkey, Novaković sided with Russia, laying the ground for further political gains in that area. After resigning from the government, Novaković, in October 1897, retired from leadership in the Progressive Party.