Why a man born in Belfast, graduated in the Queen’s University of his hometown, who prepared a PhD at Cambridge University, was interested in our country? There are many reasons. One can be John Elliot’s mastery, but also due to his Irish origin. As he declared in an interview some years ago, the País Valencià drew his attention as a research project when he was a student of the Queen’s University at Belfast. According to what he said, «moving away from the own country —Ireland— and studying other places and cultures is always a way to better understand the own uneasiness, to think about it». An experience lived as a determining factor that is not present in many other Hispanists. James Casey has proved to be a great master when using the language to describe, analyse and explain the historical phenomenon, when sharply delimiting its components, when analysing its interrelations. And this is what he did in The Kingdom of Valencia, where he highlighted the contradictions of that peripheral society —the Valencian one— in a time of slow consolidation of the modern state. The book is a proof of his work on the País Valencià throughout his career as a historian: a collection of articles difficult to find, and published in journals and collective books that are still valid.