The image of the Serbs in the works of I. P. Liprandi of the 1830–1860s

Abstract

Based on published and unpublished works of Ivan Petrovich Liprandi (1790–1880), this article considers evolution of the images of Serbs and Serbia in the period 1830–1860. Liprandi was studying the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans for 50 years and he was recognized by contemporaries as one of the foremost experts on the history and culture of the European regions of the Ottoman Empire. During the 1830-1860s his views underwent significant changes, and Liprandi went from an executive officer, collecting ‘objective’ information about the southern Slavs, to a staunch supporter of imperial pan-Slavism. In the 1830s Ivan Petrovich can be described as a representative of ‘practical’ Slavic studies. Being in the south of Russia, he was gathering information on the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula for his superiors. Based on the Enlightenment paradigm, Liprandi was convinced that independent Serbia should become a conductor of Russian influence in the Balkans. In turn, the empire would help the Serbs get rid of the ‘remnants’ of Ottoman rule and join the family of enlightened nations. However, by the middle of 19th it had become obvious that Serbia preferred to be Western-oriented in its foreign policy. At the same time, Liprandi became to be in close to supporters of imperial pan-Slavism (A.F. Veltman). As a result, Ivan Petrovich’s views on the Serbs underwent significant changes in the second half of the 19th century. He departed from the rhetoric of the Enlightenment and wrote about the Serbs as a nation who had lost the best features of the Slavs. Liprandi orientalised the Serbs and attributed to them all the negative qualities that previously attributed only to the Turks. As a result, in the works of Liprandi in the 1860s in descriptions of Serbs, extremely negative connotations prevailed and Serbia was portrayed as an unsuccessful example of modernization, as a result of which people lost their best qualities but could not fully join the achievements of European civilization.