Servia
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a kingdom of Europe situated on the right bank of the Danube. It forms a buffer state between Hungary and Turkey. In point of altitude, surface features, and productions, Servia is comparable to Vermont and New Hampshire , but its area is as great, and its population is over three times as great, as that of the two states combined. The people live in small villages and walk out to till their fields or guard their stock. Grain and fruit are raised as in New England . Maize or Indian corn is the largest crop. It is fed to hogs or ground into meal, American fashion. Wheat is the second crop in value and, strange to say, plums are the third. Tobacco, silk, and wine are produced. Herds of swine run free in the mountains and feed on acorns. Gold, copper, lead, zinc, antimony, and silver are mined in small quantities. Large shipments of lumber and cask staves are made. The country trades chiefly with Vienna and Budapest. There is much need of better roads and a settled government. The people are mostly Slavonians, and are adherents of the Greek Church . There are a few thousand Moslems, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Gypsies. Only fourteen per cent of the population can read and write. A system of public schools, including high schools, normal schools, and a university with sixty-two professors and 463 students, is maintained at public expense and is modeled on German lines. The people are nearly all holders of a bit of soil, so that there is little or no abject poverty; yet the country as a whole is poor and unable to engage in roadbuilding or extensive improvements of any sort. Servia became fully independent in 1878. See Belgrade STATISTICS. The following statistics are the latest to be had from trustworthy sources: Land area, square miles 15,650 Population 2,493,882 Belgrade 77,816 Nish 21,946 Kragouyevatz 15,596 Leskovatz 13,647 Pozarevatz 12,162 Shabatz 12,151 Vranye 11,375 Pirot 10,000 Number departments 17 Number of villages 4,267 Representatives 160 Salary of king $240,000 Bonded indebtedness $109,000,000 National revenue $19,000,000 Agricultural Products-- Corn, bushels 25,000,000 Wheat, bushels 11,000,000 Oats, bushels 4,000,000 Barley, bushels 3,670,000 Rye, bushels 1,000,000 Potatoes, bushels 900,000 Tobacco, pounds 2,750,000 Beet sugar, pounds 12,000,000 Wine, gallons 10,000,000 Exports of prunes $3,000,000 Export of hides $2,000,000 Imports $14,000,000 Total exports $16,000,000 Tons of iron ore 2,375,000 Horses 174,000 Buffaloes 7,710 Other cattle 969,000 Sheep 3,160,000 Goats 510,000 Swine 908,000 Miles of railway 390 Number postoffices 1,459 Public schools 1,243 Pupils enrolled 129,000
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote in 1910 that Servia was a buffer state between Hungary and Turkey needing better roads and a settled government, it had four years left before the assassination at Sarajevo in June 1914 dragged it into a world war that killed a larger share of its people than almost any other combatant. Out of that war came not an enlarged kingdom of Servia but the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929; the monarchy was abolished after 1945 and Serbia became one of six republics under Tito. Yugoslavia broke apart in the wars of the 1990s, Montenegro voted to leave the union in 2006, and Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a claim Belgrade still rejects. Today's Serbia is a landlocked republic of roughly seven million, with Belgrade grown from the 77,816 of this table to well over a million, and literacy above ninety-eight per cent rather than fourteen.
Written for this edition, 2026.