The relationship between England and Spain in the post-Reformation period has long been portrayed as one between mutually exclusive, largely monolithic opposites. The manifold evidentiary and conceptual shortcomings of Glyn Redworth's heretofore well-received book, The Prince and the Infanta , only highlight the problems inherent in this view. Contra Redworth, the ongoing negotiations for an Anglo-Spanish match were for more than two decades the diplomatic centerpiece of a complex interchange in which cultural, political, intellectual, and commercial elements mixed and influenced one another to a surprising degree.

Little of the writing about the massacres of Armenians, which occurred in 1915, not long before the Ottoman Empire's demise, has utilized Ottoman-language materials. Yet, Ottomanists have a responsibility to research these events and their origins to promote a more complete understanding of them. Providing explanations of the violence that states organize against their own subjects and citizens should be the task of historians able to read the documentary record of the states concerned.