The political scientist who relies upon historiographic sources to propose and testhypotheses runs the risk of riling up not only her peers in the discipline, but also thehistorians upon whose work she must rely to provide the materials for these hypotheses.It was intellectually satisfying and stimulating to learn that my work has beenread not only by scholars in ‘my’ discipline, but also by those in the discipline whichmade my own analysis possible, and I am grateful for Professor Hopkins' extensivecomments. As Hopkins notes, there are differences in the orientation of the twodisciplines: political science has as one of its central concerns ‘the state’, whilehistorians are more interested ‘in charting changing relativities in internationalrelations’. As a political scientist, I am indeed interested in identifying the factorswhich lead to such changes.