interest in Balkan affairs.  Pan-Slavism had scarcely become fashionable in those days, and it was still rather as the protector of its co-religionists under the Crescent that Russia intervened.  In 1826 Russian and Turkish delegates met at Akerman in Bessarabia, and in September of that year signed a convention by which the Russian protectorate over the Serbs was recognized, the Serbs were granted internal autonomy, the right to trade and erect churches, schools, and printing-presses, and the Turks were forbidden to live in Serbia except in eight garrison towns; the garrisons were to be Turkish, and tribute was still to be paid to the Sultan as suzerain.  These concessions, announced by Prince Milo[)s] to his people at a special skup[)s]tina held at Kragujevac in 1827, evoked great enthusiasm, but the urgency of the Greek question again delayed their fulfilment.  After the battle of Navarino on October 20, 1827, in which the British, French, and Russian fleets defeated the Turkish, the Turks became obstinate and refused to carry out the stipulations of the Convention of Akerman in favour of Serbia.  Thereupon Russia declared war on Turkey in April 1828, and the Russian armies crossed the Danube and the Balkans and marched on Constantinople.

Peace was concluded at Adrianople in 1829, and Turkey agreed to carry out immediately all the stipulations of the Treaty of Bucarest (1812) and the Convention of Akerman (1826).  The details took some time to settle, but in November 1830 the hatti-sherif of the Sultan, acknowledging Milo[)s] as hereditary prince of Serbia, was publicly read in Belgrade.  All the concessions already promised were duly granted, and Serbia became virtually independent, but still tributary to the Sultan.  Its territory included most of the northern part of the modern kingdom of Serbia, between the rivers Drina, Save, Danube, and Timok, but not the districts of Nish, Vranja, and Pirot.  Turkey still retained Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia, the sandjak of Novi-Pazar, which separated Serbia from Montenegro, and Old Serbia (northern Macedonia).

18

The Throes of Regeneration:  Independent Serbia, 1830-1903

During his rule of Serbia, which lasted virtually from 1817 till 1839, Prince Milo[)s] did a very great deal for the welfare of his country.  He emancipated the Serbian Church from the trammels of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1831, from which date onwards it was ruled by a Metropolitan of Serb nationality, resident at Belgrade.  He encouraged the trade of the country, a great deal of which he held in his own hands; he was in fact a sort of prototype of those modern Balkan business-kings of whom King George of Greece and King Carol of Rumania were the most notable examples.  He raised an army and put it on a permanent footing, and organized the construction of roads, schools, and churches.  He was, however, an autocratic ruler of the old school, and he had no inclination