page_title: Old Serbia
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Old Serbia / History
caption_attribution_description: Српски / srpski: Teritorijalna proširenja Kraljevine Srbije nakon Balkanskih ratova 1913. godine.
context_page_description: Old Serbia is a term in Serbian historiographical discourse that is used to describe the territory that according to the dominant school of Serbian historiography in the 19th century formed the core of the Serbian Empire in 1346-71.
  The term does not refer to a defined region but over time in the late 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century it came to include the regions of Raška, Kosovo and Metohija and much of modern North Macedonia. In modern historiography, the concept of Old Serbia as it developed in the 19th century has been criticised as a historical myth, based often on invented or tendentiously interpreted historical events.
context_section_description: In the early nineteenth century, Old Serbia as a concept was introduced by Vuk Karadžić in his ethnographic, geographic and historical publications. Karadžić defined Old Serbia as including the Morava-Vardar river valley. In particular, it comprised the Kriva Reka and Pčinja rivers, the area of the Bregalnica river, the northern zone of the river Vardar, and a section of the Morava river. For Karadžić, the Slavic inhabitants of Macedonia were Serbian, detached from its Serb past due to Ottoman rule and propaganda activities undertaken by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The term Old Serbia was used in literature and from the 1830s onward, its usage widened and denoted a particular area that was not part of the Principality of Serbia.
  After its appearance during the 1860s, the term denoted only Raška. Following the Serbian-Ottoman Wars (1876-1878), several authors began to represent the term Old Serbia as synonymous with the Ottoman Vilayet of Kosovo. From 1878 onward, the Serbian state started saying "Old Serbia" also included Kosovo. By 1912, the claims were narrowed to Kosovo only. The critical treatment of facts was damaged by the invocation of the past for the justification of present and future claims, and by the mixture of history and contemporary issues. The core myth of Serbian identity became the idea Kosovo was the cradle of the Serbian nation. Serbian rebels of the First Serbian Uprising and Second Serbian Uprising had no territorial ambitions over Kosovo. A plan made during that period to create a Slav-Serbian empire in the Serb-inhabited areas of the Ottoman Empire excluded Kosovo and Old Serbia.
  Serbian interest in the region of Macedonia was defined in a foreign policy program named Načertanije. It was a document whose author Ilija Garašanin, a Serb politician envisioned a Serbian state that included the Principality of Serbia and territories such as Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro and Old Serbia. Garašanin in Načertanije was not clear about the southern confines of this larger state and neither was Kosovo nor Old Serbia mentioned directly. This program responded to the need to spread propaganda among Serbs within the Ottoman Empire.
  Serbian engagement with the region started in 1868 with the establishment of the Educational Council (Prosvetni odbor) that opened schools and sent Serb instructors and textbooks to Macedonia and Old Serbia. In May 1877 a delegation of Serbs of Old Serbia presented their request to 'liberate' and unite Old Serbia with the Principality of Serbia to the government of Serbia. They also informed representatives of the Great Powers and the Emperor of Russia about their demands. In the same year the Committee for the Liberation of Old Serbia and Macedonia was founded.
  Serbian nationalists envisioned Serbia as a "Piedmont of the Balkans" that would unify certain territories they interpreted as Serbian in the region into one state, like Old Serbia. In the 1877 peace after the Serbian-Turkish Wars (1876-1878), the Serbs hoped to gain the Kosovo Vilayet and Sanjak of Novi Pazar to the Lim River. With the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Serbia received full sovereignty and made territorial gains around this time, acquiring the districts of Niš, Pirot, Vranje and Toplica.
  Following the Great Eastern Crisis (1875-1878) and the emergence of the Macedonian Question, Serbs were dissatisfied that Bulgaria became a rival for the region of Macedonia or "Old Serbia". Kosovo formed part of the Kosovo myth that prior to those events was viewed in spiritual and ethical terms, and an important aspect of Serbian cultural and ordinary life. By the 1880s, Serbia saw those areas, referred to as Old Serbia, in territorial terms. The relationship with Austria-Hungary following 1881 considerably affected the Serbian state that moved it to concentrate its regional efforts toward a southerly direction. At this time, Old Serbia became integrated into the Serbian state's collective narrative about its own self identity.
  A process began in the same decade in Serbia, where diplomacy and foreign policy were deployed to expan
caption: Territorial expansion of Serbia after the Balkan Wars.
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