For much of the 18th and 19th centuries, Novi Sad was the largest city populated with ethnic Serbs in the World (The reformer of the Serbian language, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, wrote in 1817 that Novi Sad is the "largest Serb municipality in the world".
During the Revolution of 1848-1849, Novi Sad was part of Serbian Vojvodina, a Serbian autonomous region within Habsburg Empire.