[1] Born in Zaječar, in eastern Serbia, Pašić studied engineering in Switzerland and embraced radical politics as a student at the Polytechnical School in Zürich.

Following the May Coup and the murder of King Alexander I, Pašić emerged as a leading figure in Serbian politics while the Radical Party established its dominance.

He served as prime minister from 1904 to 1905, 1906 to 1908, 1909 to 1911 and finally from 1912 to 1918, as Serbia entered a golden age of economic growth and growing influence on the continental stage.

In 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was officially proclaimed, and Pašić was recognised as the de facto prime minister of the new state.

According to Slovenian ethnologist Niko Županič, Pašić's ancestors migrated from the Tetovo region in the 16th century and founded the village of Zvezdan near Zaječar.

[citation needed] After suffering a decisive defeat, Milan granted an amnesty for those sentenced for the Timok rebellion, but not for Pašić, who remained in Bulgarian exile.

His presiding over the assembly saw the largest number of laws being voted in the history of Serbian parliamentarism, while as the mayor of Belgrade he was responsible for cobbling the muddy city streets.

[35] Austria-Hungary feared that the execution of the pro-Russian Pašić would force Russia to intervene, abandoning an 1897 agreement to leave Serbia in status quo.

Noted Serbian historian Slobodan Jovanović later claimed that the entire assassination was staged so that Milan could get rid of the Radical Party.

Imprisoned and unaware of Austria-Hungary's interference,[36] Pašić confessed that the Radical Party had been disloyal to the dynasty, which probably saved many people from prison.

[37] As part of the deal reached with the interior minister Đorđe Genčić, the government officially left its own role out of the statement, so that it appeared that Pašić behaved cowardly and succumbed to the pressure.

Although the young monarch disliked Pašić, he was often summoned for consultations but would refrain from giving advice and insist that he was no longer involved with politics.

But Pašić later changed his mind after seeing how people willingly accepted the new monarch as well as King Peter I, educated in Western Europe, was a democratic, mild ruler, unlike the last two despotic and erratic Obrenović sovereigns.

Austria-Hungary closed the borders which did cause a severe blow to the Serbian economy initially, but later it will bounce back even more developed than it was, thanks to the Pašić swift change towards the Western European countries.

He forced conspirators of the 1903 coup into retirement which was a condition for reestablishing diplomatic connections with the United Kingdom, he bought cannons from France, etc.

In the midst of the customs war, Austria-Hungary officially annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 which caused mass protests in Serbia and political instability, but Pašić managed to calm the situation down.

In this period, Pašić's major ally, Imperial Russia, was not much of a help, being defeated by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War and facing domestic political instability.

After one year of tensions Pašić dismissed the military administrator of Old Serbia and scheduled new elections for 1914 but the outbreak of World War I prevented it.

[citation needed] According to Ljubomir Jovanović, who was the minister of education at the time, Nikola Pašić was at least partially aware of the preparations for the assassination of Austro-Hungarian heir Francis Ferdinand, which were carried out by members of the Young Bosnia.

In his essay, a contribution to the memorial book "The Bood of Slavdom" (Serbo-Croatian Latin: Krv Slovenstva) published on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1924, Jovanović states that "at the end of May or the beginning of June" in 1914 Pašić told some members of his government that some people "were preparing to go to Sarajevo and murder Francis Ferdinand, who was to be solemnly received there on St. Vitus's Day.

[citation needed] On 17 September 1914, Pašić and Albanian leader Essad Pasha Toptani signed in Niš the secret Treaty of Serbian-Albanian Alliance.

The treaty also envisaged building of the rail-road to Durrës, financial and military support of the Kingdom of Serbia to Essad Pasha's position as Albanian ruler and drawing of the demarcation line by a special Serbo-Albanian commission.

[citation needed] Both Pašić and Prince-regent Alexander were against this as they considered it to be the betrayal of the Croatians, Slovenians and Serbian sacrifices in the Balkan Wars, as negotiations for the future South Slav state already began.

[citation needed] Despite being removed from the government, as the most experienced of politicians, Nikola Pašić was the main negotiator for the new state at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

Pašić considered that the Serbs could be outvoted in such a state and that an unconsolidated and heterogeneous entity would fall apart if it was a federal one, while the prince-regent simply didn't like to share power with others, which was shown 8 years later when he conducted a coup d'état.

As Pašić had majority in the assembly, a new constitution was proclaimed on Vidovdan (St. Vitus day), 28 June 1921, organizing the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as a parliamentary (albeit highly unitary) monarchy, abolishing even the remaining shreds of autonomy which had Slovenia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Vojvodina (provincial governments).

[45][46] During his career as prime minister in the interwar period, Pašić continued to play the role of an important diplomatic negotiator in bilateral talks with neighboring countries.

A Balkan correspondent of The Times wrote in 1925 that the crown of Pašić's long political career was "the successful promotion of a Serbo-Bulgar understanding".

They were married in the Russian church in Florence to avoid the gathering of the numerous Serbian colony in Trieste and had three children: son Radomir-Rade and daughters Dara and Pava.

Radomir-Rade had two sons: Vladislav, an architect (died 1978) and Nicholas "Nikola" [sr] (1918–2015), an Oxford University law graduate who resided in Toronto, Canada, where he founded a Serbian National Academy.