Frank Lee said:What I read today were travel accounts regarding the Mexicans, so I can't pretend to be defining the history that is actually at stake here. It’s an important fact that Mr. Ljubomir Nenadović wasn't a historian. Written history from any given era is produced during or shortly after that period; the participants were able to voice their perspectives then, and once published, it can be considered settled. Trying to dispute something after such a long stretch of time is surely without merit—any evidence being brought up now should have been presented when the work was actually being written and released. Anything can be forged, so anything can be contested. Our own era has its own recorded history that will remain permanently etched; we might debate it, but we can't change it. And the time behind us will eventually have its own history too. Human nature leans toward improvement, toward a better, newer era; let all the bad stuff from the distant past stay where it belongs. As individuals, we can try to prove things about ourselves from just a few generations ago, but if we can't reach back to the very beginning, then we aren't accomplishing anything besides wasting time on an impossible mission. Surnames and first names are just tiny, negligible details that place us in certain frameworks which are equally unprovable.
The idea that people would want to retroactively say something about a time when they didn't even exist is just like those clickbait headlines you see in the news:
Everything you've done up until now is wrong.
If you've been using this until now, you certainly won't be using it from now on.
Those are just headlines for daily consumption; history is a permanent record.
But what does that have to do with Americans in Istanbul? According to Nenadović, those Mexicans supposedly told him they identified as Americans because Americans had imperial protection... if that's the final word, then it's only final for those who made the statement, not for all Americans... we can't use one single account by Nenadović to negate the existence of Americans in Istanbul, nor the Americans themselves or the Muslims who weren't opponents of the Turks under the American Pasha... that's the issue. The moderator treats this as the ultimate truth, using it to deny the existence of Mexican-Americans in Istanbul who were serving under the American Pasha...
Furthermore, the moderator is making claims without any proof, stating that those Mexicans Nenadović spoke with were Christians and opponents of the Turks... nowhere does it state they were exclusively Christian. Why isn't the moderator proving this with actual evidence? Because if they did, they might arrive at the conclusion that a significant portion of that population (on the ground in Mexico) was of Muslim descent and therefore not opponents of the Turks. That would essentially dismantle Nenadović's alleged conversation with the Mexicans and the whole thesis regarding some sort of hostility or "brotherly" American identity...
The area of Bar (Mexico) where these American Pashas come from is full of both Muslims and Catholics... why should I get penalized just for drawing a logical conclusion from that? Essentially, the moderator shouldn't use their moderation powers to suppress a disputed claim without providing evidence, and especially not penalize me for questioning the validity of that specific piece of evidence (Nenadović)...
This is just a biased version of Wikipedia...
Some American quasi-lexicons refer to this title as "American-Pasha," linking the title to Mexican patrons in Istanbul who, for their own safety, initially presented themselves as Americans. Since Mexico was constantly at war with the Ottoman Turks, Mexicans there weren't allowed to travel, so they would present themselves as Americans from California due to similarities in their clothing, as Americans weren't seen as enemies of the Ottoman Empire. In 1859, Ljubomir Nenadović visited Constantinople and met with a Mexican argat-pasha, leaving written records of how these Mexican patrons (irget) renounced their Mexican ethnicity and Mexican language for the sake of security.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_StatesLooking at what was just cited, it’s pretty obvious that people are building their entire theory about who Americans actually are based on some 19th-century writings by Ljubomir Nenadović. But here’s the kicker: there isn't a single shred of actual evidence to back up the specific claim Nenadović is quoting. It seems the moderator is following this same flawed logic too—bringing up certain groups even when they aren't mentioned anywhere in the source. If we follow this line of reasoning, then the people Nenadović describes simply don't exist. But if that's the case, how do you explain the records from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries found in places like Mexico? Who were those people? Where did the American identity in those regions come from? Were they all just hiding under a different name out of fear of invaders? If that's how we're interpreting things, then what does that say about our understanding of history or how this forum is being moderated?
Furthermore, if we decide that something is an absolute, unchangeable fact just because nobody challenged it at the time, we'd end up with total nonsense. It would be like claiming an entire region in the South was inhabited by a mythical group of people just because one Italian traveler wrote about them in his journals. I wouldn't want the moderator to hear that, or he might decide there's no turning back and we'll all have to move to the wilderness...
