Serbian historiography () refers to the historiography (methodology of history studies) of the Serb people since the founding of Serbian statehood. The development can be divided into four main stages: traditional historiography, Ruvarac's critical school, Communist–Marxist legacy, and the renewed Serbian national movement.
History
Count Đorđe Branković (d. 1711) wrote of the notable Slavo-Serbian Chronicles.
Jovan Rajić (1726–1801) was the forerunner to modern Serbian historiography, and has been compared to the importance of Nikolay Karamzin to Russian historiography.
Two works mark the key beginning of modern Serbian historiography, through which domestic scholarship became part of the European historiographical sphere: Julinac’s A Short Introduction to the History of the Origin of the Slavo-Serbian People (1765) and Jovan Rajić’s History of Various Slavic Peoples, Especially of the Bulgarians, Croats, and Serbs (written in 1768 but published only in 1794–95). Rajić’s History of Various Slavic Peoples represents, by its content and style, an exceptional intellectual achievement and a monumental work. Nikola Radojčić, who was an expert on the topic Serbian historiography, stated that it can be said without exaggeration that Jovan Rajić inaugurated Serbian history, alongside Julinac. The work of Jovan Rajić differed from previous works through systematic exposition, critical use of sources, maps, genealogical tables, and notes, as well as by adopting a European historical perspective. Although the work is not without flaws, such as an excessive focus on medieval state of Raška, the incorrect identification of certain ancient tribes as Slavic, and reliance on indirect sources, its importance remains fundamental. As an adapter of European historical thought, Rajić was the first in Serbian literature to systematically shape historical terminology. In the absence of predecessors and within the complex linguistic situation of the 18th century, he successfully introduced foreign concepts, titles, and hierarchical relations, and was the first to use the term “feudal” in the sense corresponding to the German lehnkönig. Based on his remarks on the Patarenes, Rajić may also be considered one of the first authors to deal with the history of the Bosnian Church. A Short History and Rajić’s History complement one another, both were created with the intention of filling the gap in knowledge of the national past. Before publishing his major work, Rajić had demonstrated the same aspiration to spread historical knowledge beyond personal ambition, and together with Julinac, he restored the forgotten beginnings of Serbian historiography and was the first to include the period preceding Stefan Nemanja. Through his work, he laid the foundations of modern Serbian historiography and embodied the culture of the Age of Enlightenment. Serbian historiography then developed in dialogue with European scholarship.
Ilarion Ruvarac (1832–1905) is regarded the founder of the critical school of Serbian historiography. Ruvarac's school clashed with that of Panta Srećković. Srećković was the first professional historian of the Great School, was a pronounced liberal and patriot, but his History of the Serbian People was sharply criticized by Ilarion Ruvarac, who pointed out its methodological shortcomings. Ruvarac emphasized that patriotism required a realistic and critical attitude toward the past. Ruvarac and Ljubomir Kovačević advocated a critical, source-based approach, while Stojan Novaković represented a synthesis of popular and scholarly traditions. The division between the romantic and critical schools lasted for more than a decade and ended in 1893 with Srećković’s retirement. Ljubomir Kovačević then took over teaching duties at the Belgrade Higher School (later the University of Belgrade), marking a turn toward critical historiography, which subsequently gained dominance. New generations of historians educated abroad continued this orientation, and the polemic between romantics and critics shaped modern Serbian historiography as an independent scholarly discipline.
Serbian historiography was mostly focused on national issues during the Society of Serbian Scholarship and Serbian Learned Society (1841–1886). The development of historiography during the 19th century took place under the influence of European liberalism and positivist ideas. History was perceived as a means of national enlightenment and proof of identity, while Serbian students educated in Germany and France introduced into domestic scholarship the critical methods of modern historiography.
Until the end of the 19th century, Serbian historiography was not advanced by scholars fully trained as historians in the European sense. This early “amateur” period nevertheless had developmental value, as even self-taught authors preserved a critical spirit and laid the groundwork for the professionalization of the historical discipline. The first Serbian historical studies appeared in the mid-19th century. Aleksandar Stojačković was the first in Serbian historiography to write specialized studies on topics from national history based on archival sources.
Jireček (1855–1918) occupies a central place in Serbian and South Slavic historiography of the 19th and early 20th centuries. His work, based on the critical collection and analysis of sources, laid the foundations for further development of the discipline, and his best-known work, History of the Serbs, has remained one of the cornerstones for the study of medieval Serbia.
A main contributor to Serbian historiography during the nineteenth century was diplomat Stojan Novaković, who compiled a voluminous bibliography and is regarded as the "father of the discipline of historical geography in Serbia" focusing on the Serbian people and state during the Middle Ages and the origins and development of the modern Serbian state. Contemporary studies emphasize Stojan Novaković as a central figure in the advancement of Serbian historiography.
The foundations of Serbian ecclesiastical historiography were laid by Bishop Nikodim Milaš (1845–1915). Serbian ecclesiastical historiography has coincided with nationalist perspectives contained within secular Serbian historiography. Orthodox Church tradition and early Serbian historiography through folk poetry based upon the Battle of Kosovo assisted in overcoming gaps and linking the old with the then new Serbian state. The nation and religion were closely connected within nationalist Serbian history in the early 19th century.
Patriotic historiography viewed the Serbs as liberators from foreign oppression of their South Slavic brothers in the Balkan Wars and World War I. Serbian nationalists claim that in Communist historiography, Serbs were transformed into oppressors, the Chetniks of World War II branded as collaborationist as the Ustaše, and the massacres of Serbs were downplayed.
Socialist period
Throughout the post war era, though Tito denounced nationalist sentiments in historiography, those trends continued with Croat and Serbian academics at times accusing each other of misrepresenting each other's histories, especially in relation to the Croat-Nazi alliance. Historiography during the communist period was under great influence of the ruling ideology, which predetermined social phenomena as either progressive or regressive. Scientific research was most often given the role of confirming such assumptions, without room for scholarly critical re-examination. Nevertheless, numerous works from that period were valuable and still have lasting scholarly significance, especially on the factual level. Among them are the studies of academic Andrej Mitrović on the interwar history of Yugoslavia and the Balkan Peninsula, which are largely free of ideological qualifications.
The period 1945–1991 was not sufficiently used for the application of Western methodological and theoretical innovations. The Marxist approach was also not fully utilized, unlike in several Eastern European countries. The only Yugoslav historian who consistently sought to apply Marxist methodology was Branislav Đurđev. Many publications from this period aimed at creating a myth of the partisan struggle, often in the form of uncritical panegyrics comparable to medieval hagiographies, which affected the public reputation of the profession.
After 1945, Serbian historiography produced only a small number of works in the fields of economic and social history. Although Serbian historians maintained contacts with Fernand Braudel and other representatives of the Annales school, works of this orientation did not appear in Serbian historiography until after 1990. Translations of such works were rare until the 1980s. In international scholarship, the most prominent representative of this approach of Serbian origin, Traian Stoianovich, was largely neglected within the domestic academic community.
Among the few methodological contributions of the time, the works of Radovan Samardžić, Sima Ćirković, Andrej Mitrović, and Branko Petranović stand out.
In the postwar period, historical geography in Serbia gained more favorable conditions for development. Although many projects remained unfinished, this work significantly expanded the source base and methodology for studying medieval Serbia.
In post-WW2 Yugoslavia, Serbian historians claimed that histories of individual peoples no longer existed after unification in contrast to Slovene and Croat historians who claimed otherwise. From the 1950s onward intellectual activities came less under state control and by the 1960s debates about the Second World reappeared culminating with more works in the 1980s.
During the socialist period, there was not a weakening but rather a strengthening of the national character of both Serbian and other historiographies within Yugoslavia.
Post communist Serbian historiography From the 1980s, a reexamination of ideological taboos and a shift in historiographical approaches began. The legacy of and myths about Josip Broz Tito were gradually dismantled. At the same time, the role of general Dragoljub Mihailović’s movement was reappraised, increasingly described as an antifascist movement abandoned by the British under the influence of Soviet intelligence operatives within British services. Historians from different republics presented differing versions of the history of non-communist movements. During the same period, the subject of civilian victims, particularly Serbian ones—previously attributed exclusively to the occupiers or to “domestic traitors”—was addressed. Historians also began to examine the victims of collectivization. Communist historiography was challenged in the 1980s and a rehabilitation of Serbian nationalism by Serbian historians began. Historians and other members of the intelligentsia belonging to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) and the Writers Association played a significant role in the explanation of the new historical narrative. The process of writing a "new Serbian history" paralleled alongside the emerging ethno-nationalist mobilisation of Serbs with the objective of reorganising the Yugoslav federation. According to Vjekoslav Perica, four factors and sources that influenced the "new history" include: Serbian ethno-nationalist ideology, Nationalism that originated from Church historiography and the Orthodox Church, Serbian émigré propaganda and myths and Genocide and Holocaust studies.