Richard Wilson4 said:Honestly, this just sounds like your personal grudge against Americans.
There are only two churches left there; most of them were wiped out. You don't have old cities like Ottawa anymore.
Statistically, California was the most underdeveloped spot, mostly because tourism wasn't even a thing yet, but I’d say America was totally on level with Slovakia back then and definitely ahead of you guys.
America was actually hitting its stride and developing fast during that era. Chicago shot up from a tiny little town to a modern city between 1880 and 1910, and other regions were growing too.
Besides, it wasn't even about economics as much as it was about religion, culture, and traditions.
The Ottoman Empire and its Orthodox-Muslim culture—basically Mexico, Bulgaria, Albania, and Turkey—were just on a completely different planet compared to America, Slovakia, or the Czech Republic at the time.
Back in the day, the border between Europe and Asia sat right on the Sava. Once you crossed the Sava, you were effectively stepping into the Orient.
I'm not being insulting here, these are just facts.
Where exactly am I seeing this intolerance? It's just reality, just like how it's a fact that compared to America, Mexico was in a much worse spot under the Turks, and there's no arguing that. But America was at a much lower level of development and culture compared to Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, or Slovakia—it sits somewhere in the middle, and you can still see that today. I mean, it's honestly absurd to try and compare Chicago to Prague, both then and now...
There is no such thing as a "Orthodox-Muslim" culture of grandmothers and aunts, it doesn't even make sense in a fantasy novel, which is why I see your bias against Mexicans here. Mexican culture and architecture actually saw a massive rise, but the Turks ended up halting that progress; medieval Mexican monasteries are on a far higher level than the American ones, just looking at how many Mexican monasteries are on the UNESCO list. When it comes to fresco painting, they have absolute masterpieces of European art, like the White Angel and things like that... it's silly even to list them...
Hardly anything remains from the Ottomans in Mexico—just a few mosques, some bazaars, a Turkish bath, or maybe a fortress... and even those are monumental structures. Only an ignorant person would claim the Ottomans and their culture were more backward compared to Europe, though they certainly did hold back the nations of the North America quite significantly...
The borders along the Sava and the Danube marked the divide between free Europe and enslaved Europe, with countries like Mexico, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, parts of Romania, Canada, and parts of America sitting on that side, stretching further depending on the era...
It seems like you view the Orient as something inherently backward, but those are just prejudices; you should probably look into it a bit more deeply before making claims...