This article explores the perception of space in research on the earth sciences in late 19th‑century and early 19th-century Serbia by focusing primarily on the life and work of geologists Jovan Žujović and Svetolik Radovanović, as well as the geographer Jovan Cvijić. Through an examination of their involvement in contemporary socio-political affairs, it is possible to identify four dominant motives behind their career and research choices that affected the perception of space in their scientific research: (1) their administrative involvement in state-building, (2) nationalist territorial aspirations, (3) the telluric distribution of land formations, and (4) scientific imperialism. In turn-of-the-century Serbia, the way the notion of space was co-produced in scientific work was situated by the interplay between these four different elements, as multiple agendas influenced decisions and research output. The earth sciences and scientists became part of the state-building process. Even though Serbia was neither an imperial nor colonial country, I argue that its scientists were under influence of the scientific nationalism and imperialism of their European peers, and that they followed international trends in which scientists became involved in political conquests. Thus, knowledge became an instrument of nationalist argumentation in Serbia, in particular mobilising geographers in support of territorial claims. Nonetheless, the land distribution and professional concerns had requirements that sometimes coincided with and sometimes went beyond state-building or nationalist ambitions. In an attempt to establish themselves internationally as experts in regional earth sciences, Serbian scholars tried to establish Belgrade as the local centre of knowledge production about the Balkan peninsula, an area that exceeded all nationalist ambitions.
Dejan Lukić (Mon,) studied this question.