Michael Hechter does not respond to the basic issue of whether or not a social scientist, in seeking to demonstrate that ethnic rebellion in an internal periphery of an industrialized nation can be explained only in terms of ‘internal colonialism,’ ought first of all to equip himself with some adequate and explicit theory of imperialism itself. Rather than deal directly with the specific criticisms which follow from his neglect of such an approach, Hechter contents himself with the dismissal of a proposition—attributed in his first paragraph, without citation, to me—the simplistically fallacious character of which I never doubted or denied.