From Exotic Setting to Familiar Themes. Perceptions of Serbs in Poland in the Nineteenth and the First Half of the Twentieth Century

The article deals with the subject of knowledge about Serbia and the Serbs in Poland at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This knowledge was reconstructed on the basis of travel reports, memoirs, notes published both in the press and the books. The collected materials allow us to observe the slow evolution of the representations of the Serbs. The first reports and news can be counted as exotic presentations in the orientalizing mode of the Balkans, but over time new motifs were emerging, highlighting certain similarities between the Poles and the Serbs, such as history, slavic origin, and peculiar combative features of character. The aim of this article is to present to contemporary audience the unknown images and perceptions of the Serbs in the Polish press.