The first part of the period, from 1804 to 1817, was marked by a violent struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire with two armed uprisings taking place, ending with a ceasefire.

The later period (1817–1835) witnessed a peaceful consolidation of political power of the increasingly autonomous Serbia, culminating in the recognition of the right to hereditary rule by Serbian princes in 1830 and 1833 and the territorial expansion of the young monarchy.

It called for national unity, drawing on Serbian history to demand the freedom of religion and formal, written rule of law, both of which the Ottoman Empire had failed to provide.

Apart from dispensing with poll tax on non-Muslims (jizya), the revolutionaries also abolished all feudal obligations in 1806, only 15 years after the French Revolution, peasant and serf emancipation thus representing a major social break with the past.

The rule of Miloš Obrenović consolidated the achievements of the Uprisings, leading to the proclamation of the first constitution in the Balkans and the establishment of the first Serbian institution of higher learning still in existence, the Great Academy of Belgrade (1808).

New circumstances, such as the Austrian occupation of Serbia, rise of the Serbian elite across the Danube, Napoleon's conquests in the Balkans, and reforms in the Russian Empire, exposed Serbs to new ideas.

They could now clearly compare how their compatriots made progress in Christian Austria, the Illyrian provinces and elsewhere, while the Ottoman Serbs were still subjects to a religion-based tax that treated them as second class citizens.

[2] During the Austrian occupation of Serbia (1788–91), many Serbs served as soldiers and officers in Habsburg armies, where they acquired knowledge about military tactics, organization and weapons.

They began to travel in search of trade and education, and were exposed to European ideas about secular society, politics, law and philosophy, including both rationalism and Romanticism.

This kind of linguistic and cultural self-awareness was a central feature of German nationalism in this period, and Serbian intellectuals now applied the same ideas to the Balkans.

According to historical sources of the city of Valjevo, the heads of the murdered men were put on public display in the central square to serve as an example to those who might plot against the rule of the Janissaries.

Combining patriarchal peasant democracy with modern national goals the Serbian revolution was attracting thousands of volunteers among the Serbs from across the Balkans and Central Europe.

The Serbian Revolution ultimately became a symbol of the nation-building process in Southeast Europe, provoking peasant unrest among the Christians in both Greece and Bulgaria.

Belgrade was repopulated by local military leaders, merchants and craftsmen, but also by an important group of enlightened Serbs from the Habsburg Empire who gave a new cultural and political framework to the egalitarian peasant society of Serbia.

[2] Recaptured by the Ottomans in October 1813, Belgrade became a scene of brutal revenge, with hundreds of its citizens massacred and thousands sold into slavery as far as Asia.

During the intermezzo period ("virtual autonomy" – the negotiation process between Belgrade and Constantinople 1817–1830) Prince Miloš Obrenović I secured a gradual but effective reduction of Turkish power and Serbian institutions inevitably filled the vacuum.

[2] The Akkerman Convention (1828), the Treaty of Adrianople (1829) and finally, the Hatt-i Sharif (1830), formally recognized the Principality of Serbia as a vassal state with Miloš Obrenović I as its hereditary Prince.