PORODICA FIALA: POSLOVNI USPON I UČEŠĆE NA MEĐUNARODNIM I DOMAĆIM IZLOŽBAMA

Abstract

The thematic scope of the work focuses on the rise of the Fiala family from Kragujevac, leather industrialists, with a broader perimeter of the overall economic development of the Kingdom of Serbia after the Berlin Congress. At the same time, it emphasizes the industrial rise as the cornerstone of the overall economic and social flywheel of the youngest member of the European family of states at the time. The emergence of commercial and economic patriotism at the global level of the epoch, dispossessing the previous classical, historical, cultural, and military- political, is specially reviewed in this paper. How did Serbia, newly restored and with recent independence, navigate through the habitus of a different context that imposed a sophisticated technical and qualitative natural product as the most meaningful lever for establishing and elevating national identity?The international exhibitions unmistakably indicate that Serbia, in the period after the Berlin Congress and until before the Balkan Wars, independently took part and achieved a series of successes. Serbia won medals, awards, and diplomas, in segments concerning total economic production. That was why the world exhibitions in Paris, London, and Turin from 1889 to 1911, were most in focus. In that epoche, the industry represented the backbone of the economy in the leading part of the world. The industrialization of Serbia was presented through the rise of the Fiala family and their leather factory in Kragujevac and their participation in non-world fairs also. The entrepreneurial family originated from the most significant Serbian industrial city, where the industry started by relocating the Topolivnica from Belgrade in 1851. The story of the Fiala family is the story of how Serbia, a primarily agricultural country and even lagging in that segment, nevertheless was catching up with the most developed countries in the world.