‘THE discipline of history’, E. P. Thompson once said, ‘is, above all, the discipline of context; each fact can only be given meaning within an ensemble of other meanings’. By disputing points of detail Beinart elides the original review's central criticism that the book suffers from the omission of the political economic context. I will address the contested details before restating the gist of the original critique and by so doing suggest that it still stands unanswered.