Stojan Novakovic

Novaković, Stojan 

Born Nov. 1, 1842, in Šabac; died Feb. 18, 1915, in Niš. Serbian statesman and scholar.

Novaković was one of the leaders of the bourgeois Progressive Party (the Naprednjaki). He was minister of education (1873, 1874, 1880–83), internal affairs (1884), and foreign affairs (1893). He was also prime minister (1895–96, 1909) and the Serbian ambassador to Turkey (1885–92, 1897), France (1899), and Russia (1900–04).

The author of works on medieval and modern Serbian history, Novaković also wrote on Serbian linguistic and literary history, historical geography, literary theory and criticism, and bibliography and edited historical source materials. He was a representative of the critical trend in Serbian bourgeois historiography. As a positivist historian, Novaković was drawn to socioeconomic topics, questions of culture and law, and the use of the comparative method in the study of history.

WORKS

Istorija srpske književnosti, 2nd ed. Belgrade, 1871.
Iz srpske istorije. Novi Sad-Belgrade, 1972.

REFERENCES

Spomenica St. Novakovića. Belgrade, 1921.
For a bibliography of Novaković’s works, see Godišnjak Srpske Akademije nauka, book 24. Belgrade, 1911.