ABSTRACT
In Serbian historiography and historical consciousness, the period of 1903–14 is known as the “golden age of Serbian democracy.” This period of Serbian history began with a coup on June 11, 1903, in which a group of conspiring officers murdered King Aleksandar Obrenović and Queen Draga, the last members of the Obrenović dynasty, and restored the rival Karadjordjević dynasty. This ended the dispute between the two “people’s” dynasties, founded by two leaders of two Serbian uprisings (Karadjordje in 1804 and Miloš Obrenović in 1812), a dispute which for nearly a century, in a series of coups and dynastic shifts, frustrated the already strained Serbian political scene. The cruel killing of 1903 was the beginning of a period that contemporaries called the New Age, and this period was expected to realize a long-awaited advance. Some said at the time said that after a bloody start, Serbia’s next decade was a bloodless democratic revolution, catching up with other European democracies. This reputation has endured, despite doubts from recent scholarship.
