This study examines the distant past to see the connection between Imperial Assyria and the Assyrians in the nineteenth century and the hypothesis that the Assyrians identity is purely a western construct of the nineteenth century. There have been a number of studies, which discuss the Assyrians, continuity of their culture from Ancient times, and identity. However, this study examines a number of sources, which by and large, have not been utilised. Many travellers, missionaries, and explorers, travelled to the East between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries and wrote about the peoples they visited. Furthermore, there are Vatican sources, which up to now have not been used in the study of the religious schisms among the Assyrian communities. These primary accounts in French, Latin, Spanish and English and certain Greek sources shed light to the problematic. Sources in Turkish, often as translated documents from Arabic and Syriac, clarified the extant information.