+4 votes
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5 Answers

+3 votes
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Best answer

Very little, I'm ashamed to say.

Most of what I do know is recent history of the past 100 years or so.  Of course, everyone learns about Princip and the other Bosnian Serbs that assassinated Franz Ferdinand and his wife, leading to WW1.  The most famous Serb scientists/engineers in the US are Tesla and Pupin; Pupin has a building named after him at Columbia University in New York City, and there is a Tesla museum being worked on (on Long Island), where he had a laboratory.

I heard of the Black Hand, and studied some Yugoslav history, including especially Tito (although he was not a Serb, the capital was in Belgrade), interesting because he often defied the Soviets, and I think did not permit Soviet troops on Yugoslav territory.

And of course recently, Milosevic, the Kosovo War, etc.

Most of the earlier history of the Balkans is very complicated, and I don't know much about it, beyond the long Turkish occupation.

+3 votes
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I don't think they teach much of any history to our kids and they probably wouldn't listen anyway! 

I'll admit that I don't know much of Balkan history myself. Just the basics really.

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Oh, Rooster, they teach plenty about what a bunch of slave-holding racists the Founding Fathers were, and how Lincoln was a terrible racist ("If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it."), and of course, Teddy Roosevelt was an awful jingoist, and Polk stole more than half of Mexico, and Columbus? He was probably the biggest colonialist, racist scoundrel of all, responsible for many millions of deaths.

Hey, I've really got it down pat.  I think I'll apply for a job as a history teacher in the local school district, and soon be pulling in 150 grand of taxpayer money. :)

+4 votes
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Well, I think that here in European countries, we get some more insight into the history of the South Slavic groups than US students and scholars, who did and will focus first on American history.

But higher education opens many domains for American historians and anthropologists, interested in foreign cultures, and quite a few famous US citizens had/have Serbian roots:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Americans


Origins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Slavs

namely

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbs


+3 votes
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You can read about Serbian modern history in books written by Dimitrije Đorđević, Trajan Stojanović (they worked in the USA) and Dragoljub Živojinović (PhD degree at the University of Pennsylvania). They translated some of their books in English. You can find a book Disraeli and the Eastern Question by Miloš Ković. Miloš Ković is a professor at the University of Belgrade. I know him.. 

+2 votes
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Hello Kninjanin,

I began school at age 5 in 1950, and I can tell you that we did not learn the history of Serbia; what I know I picked up on my own, later in life.

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