Serbian consulates opened in the seats of the vilayets of Kosovo (Pristina), Manastir (Bitola) and Salonica (Thessaloniki).

[1] Serbian national work in Old Serbia and Macedonia reached better results at the end of the 1860s and beginning of 1870s, increasing after the Great Eastern Crisis with the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and troop deployment in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar.

The return of Bulgarian bishops to the eparchies of Skopje, Ohrid and Veles at the end of the 1880s alarmed the Serbian and Greek diplomacy.

When asked by an Austro-Hungarian minister on the "ethnographic situation" he described the Macedonians as a transitional link between Serbs and Bulgarians, similar to Little Russia and Provence.

Novaković started negotiations over the determination of spheres of interest in Macedonia with the arrival of Greek minister Nikolaos Mavrocordatos in Constantinople (1889).