On page 4, the article discusses how Obrenovic leased land/other sources of income within the muqata'a legal category to his political allies and demanded free labor from the peasants-- both practices with Ottoman antecedents-- through the later 1810s. Those practices were steadily rolled back as political pressure on Obrenovic from other Serbs (revolts, protests) intensified, but only in 1833-34 (a full thirty years after the original Serb revolt in 1804) was the feudal system replaced with a legal framework for private property. The "Conclusion" section of the article further states that, far from being easy, the process of replacing the land regime was lengthy and slow, and was not over until a good portion of modern Serb history had already elapsed. I think that's an adequate basis for claiming that the land regime remained important during a time when a lot of other features of Serbia were in flux.
I think there's some confusion with the timeline here.
The article only deals with the 1816-1835 period, not with the first phase (1804-1813) of the Serbian revolution. Serbia declared independence, enacted a complete abolition of Ottoman feudalism, and was eventually crushed in 1813. Leaving Obrenovic to pick up the pieces and oversee the second phase: two decades of wrestling concessions from the Ottomans, piece by piece, through intense politicking, bribery and threats.
The feudalism of 1816-1833 was not some kind of Serbian feudalism, it was quite literally Ottoman feudalism - Muslim Sipahis and everything. And it is no coincidence that the Obrenovic government abolished its ocassional malpractices at the same time as the Sipahi class. In other words, we're talking about ~16 years of a hybrid regime, which was ended at the first available opportunity.
Yeah, I won't deny that my post ignores Ottoman atrocities. Even if out-of-control Janissaries get blamed for much of it, even after the abolition of the Janissary corps the "professional" Ottoman army was using Darfur-style tactics in 1870s Bulgaria. In that part of the post, I was trying to dispute the OP's claim that Ottoman culture seemed absent by saying that it was previously much more apparent, and that portions of it were purposely edited out over the centuries. That required me to put the spotlight on Balkan-nationalist violence, but violence going one way does not preclude violence going the other. The Ottoman capacity for bigotry, institutional discrimination, misrule, and mass violence is well-attested, it's not like Gladstone was freaking out over nothing.
Fair enough. And yeah, OP's claims were bizzare in like 5 completely different ways