[1] The early 1850s marked an appearance of the first generation of Serbs born in Serbia who was well-educated on state bursaries in order to train a local bureaucratic and intellectual elite to substitute the imported one from Habsburg or Serbian Vojvodina.
It is from this group that the first self-defined liberals came -- Jevrem Grujić, Aleksa Janković, Vladimir Jovanović, and Stojan Bošković.
From Šabac Bošković moved to Belgrade where he first worked as a high school professor and then in 1859 and 1860 he was the editor of the official Serbian newspaper called Novine srbske, published by Dimitrije Davidović.
He published two volumes, 1866 and 1883, of the popularly read Istorije sveta za narod i skolu (History of the World for the People and the School) and Istorija sveta zaviše razrede srednjih škola sa slikama (History of the World for grades in the Middle Schools with illustrations).
[7] Of similar quality are the general history textbooks for upper secondary schools (1883), Slike iz vremena refomacije (Reformation paintings; 1877 and 1886),[8] and Antikrist ili car neron (Antichrist or Emperor Nero; 1882), a detailed study of social and political circumstances in ancient Rome during the 1st century A.D. His shorter works, published in various periodicals, were often historically motivated.
[9][10] Bošković often tried not to include his political ideas into his journalistic and historical works, so they are both a testimony to his time and a significant historiographical contribution as well.