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Peer Vries asks 'Should we really ReORIENT?' He never really tells us but instead like my political science professor fifty years ago answers 'yes and no, with certain reservations'. Fortunately for me, he certainly does not say no with no reservations, but rather yes with some reservations — 'again I think Frank has truth on his side'. I accept with thanks. Vries does, however, give a careful reading and quite accurate summary rendering of the argument in the book. I wish I could have done as well myself. Then he sets out his legitimate reservations about the same within the universe of discourse that the book sets out, which he also accepts. Unlike so many reviewers, he does not discuss a book that was not written and/or set up only straw men to knock down. For all that, the author and our readers can only be very thankful to Vries, and it behooves the author also to take his critiques and reservations seriously, that is to attempt to use them constructively. Unfortunately in his good effort to be critical, Vries also makes several factually wrong attributions to me, some of which bear correction.

I thank Professor Frank for his swift reaction. I have considered his critiques and reservations seriously and will attempt to use them constructively, just as he did mine. For the sake of convenience I answer his comments in the order in which he has presented them. Space does not permit me to go into all his remarks extensively.

In order to understand the value of any theory, one has to know its origins and background. This is especially true of the various dependency theories, which have always been more than just 'theories of theorists for theorists'. Dependency theories can only be understood against the background of Latin American politics in the 1960s. Taking this into account, there was an obvious connection between the Cuban Revolution on the one hand, and the unfulfilled expectations of development caused by the failure of modernisation efforts, on the other. The basic idea behind dependency theories is the explanation of the historically unequal relations between Latin America and the North Atlantic economies (Europe and the United States). Dependency theories are essentially attempts to justify government policies to acquire control of national development.

Just days after William Howard Taft arrived in the Philippine Islands in early June 1900 to take up his position as the chairman of the five member commission charged with the task of establishing a civilian government for the newly annexed colony, he wrote to J.G. Schmidlapp, an old friend in Ohio, to assure him that he was settling quite comfortably into his exotic surroundings. Taft found the climate in Manila much more agreeable than he had been led to expect was possible in the tropics. The heat, he estimated, was comparable to Cincinnati during the summer months. He was also heartened by the 'strong, healthy-looking' young Americans he encountered in the streets of the capital, which he deemed as robust as any back home. But Taft drew a much larger lesson from the apparent ease of his own acclimation and that of his countrymen to the tropical locale. He concluded that though 'it may be that it is the survival of the fittest […] it is evident that men can live here and be healthy'.