‘Domestic Foreigners’: the Processes of Acculturation and Enculturation in Serbia in the First Half of the 19th Century
‘Domestic Foreigners’: the Processes of Acculturation and Enculturation in Serbia in the First Half of the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyzes the processes of acculturation and enculturation in the Principality of Serbia through the prism of the appearance of so-called domestic foreigners – individuals and groups that in legal terms should have been seen as the domestic population but were treated as foreigners in local communities. Although they were native to the same state (Jews, Muslims and Christians, settlers from the Ottoman Empire, resettled Serbs and members of other nations in the Habsburg Empire who had taken the citizenship of the Principality of Serbia), large parts of the local population were not accepted as parts of the community and were instead treated as foreigners. The reason could be their different patterns of life and work; religious differences; or their membership in a guild. Only those who had learned their trade or were members of the local guild were fully integrated and considered domicile, regardless of their nationality. Some newcomers were not willing to adopt the cultural patterns of the new milieu, particularly Muslims/Turks, Jews and Gypsies, as well as well-educated Serbian newcomers and natives educated in the West. The intensity of enculturation processes among Serbs and other Christians dropped in the second half of the 19th century, due to the integration of the society through the rise of the national concept.

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