The battle for remembrance: Jovan Ristić as his own historian

Jovan Ristić is one of the most important Serbian statesmen in modern history and one of the most influential political figures of 19th-century Serbia. He was twice the regent of underage Serbian rulers (Prince Milan Obrenović (1868–1872) and King Aleksandar Obrenović (1889–1893), and several times the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. These posts gave him the opportunity to create and conduct Serbian internal and foreign policy, with the main results being Serbia’s independence and territorial gains at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Nonetheless, his policy of 1868– 1878 and his role in the processes that led to the results of the Congress of Berlin were strongly challenged by his political opponents (Young Conservatives and Radicals) in the last two decades of the 19th century. That is why Ristić decided to take a risky job. As a trained historian, he chose to defend himself and his policy not through memoirs or autobiography, but rather by writing a history of Serbia’s foreign policy from 1848–1878, where he was the main character.