There was an interesting article in the Guardian of 16/9/15 where Timothy Snyder argued that the conditions necessary for the Holocaust of Jews (and others, but mainly Jews) by the Nazis to take place have largely been misunderstood.

Snyder sees it as crucial that in the areas where most killings occurred, principally in the lands of pre-war Poland, the Baltic States and what had been Soviet Belarus and Ukraine, the apparatus of the state was no longer functioning – had indeed been deliberately destroyed. This was the necessary precondition for the activities of the Einsatzgruppen and the SS to be so unconstrained.

Though Snyder’s focus is on Eastern Europe I found myself thinking that in Western Europe too the absence of state institutions was a factor contributing to whether or not transportations to the killing zones of those whom the Nazis saw as undesirables came about. In Denmark, where the king remained and most institutions stayed intact (at least until 1943,) most of the Jews escaped or survived. By contrast in the Netherlands, whose monarch went into exile in Britain, and in France, where the Third Republic collapsed and Vichy was a puppet, deportations were much easier and in some cases even facilitated.

We have seen the consequences of the absence of the state relatively recently in Afghanistan – the Taliban would not have come to power there if not for the chaos engendered by, first, the Soviet presence and then its retreat (effectively driven out by a mujahideen aided and abetted via US and Western support) – in the disarray of Libya and now in Iraq and Syria where ISIS/ISIL/Daesh would not have had the opportunity to grow as quickly or at all if there had not been the vacuum created by the destruction of the Iraqi state and the failure to replace it.

Contrary to what some libertarians appear to think it seems the state really is a force for good.

Postscript:- While looking over the above it also occurred to me that the killing fields in Cambodia, while a consequence of Pol Pot’s take-over, were also due to state collapse, in this case that of the pre-revolutionary government. I suppose too that La Terreur in revolutionary France and the turmoil in the former Russian Empire after the Bolshevik coup are examples of what happens when state organisation suffers disruption. To avoid chaos a polity requires not people with guns but checks and balances; plus a functional judicial system capable of holding those in power to account.

A Tale of Adventure. Sceptre, 2007, 204p

This was a delight. The story of two Jews With Swords (as Chabon’s working title had it) in the region of Khazaria on the Silk Road about 1,000 years ago it is a modern Boy’s Adventure Story. It is a long time since I read one of those but as far as my memory serves Chabon writes this much better than the Victorians did.

The two Jews are both a long way from home. Zelikman is from Regensburg in the Frankish Kingdom, and Amram is an African descendant of Solomon via the Queen of Sheba. Their scamming of other travellers by faking fights in order to profit from the betting thereon is interrupted by their encounter with Filaq, heir to a bekdom which has been usurped. Gentlemen of the Road is an admirably short novel but manages nevertheless to incorporate a lot of action.

The sentence structure can be convoluted, incorporating digressions and sub-clauses, but everything is in its place and contributes to the ongoing story. The inclusion (one per chapter) of full page illustrations of lines from the text gives the book the correct retro feel. How it relates to the work of such as R M Ballantyne and G A Henty I cannot say as my memory of those is hazy, but I doubt they had any sexual content as this does, briefly. What was unlikely in those is a woman having the agency one of the characters in this book exerts, indeed any sort of agency at all.

Chabon’s depiction of the times of the book accords with what I know of that era and place and extends it. I did wonder if the bek and kagan dual ruler set up in Khazaria might have been an inspiration to Robert Silverberg for the Coronal and Pontifex of his Majipoor novels and stories.

The end-papers contain a lovely map of Khazaria and the surrounding lands.

Gentlemen of the Road is a beautiful artefact, outside and in.

Lincoln’s most striking architectural feature is of course its cathedral.

The cathedral can be widely seen from miles off. When we got to the city it was obvious why. It’s at the top of a very steep hill up from the main street. Once through the gateway it’s too close to get the full facade in one shot. This is a stitch of two photos.

Also on the hill’s summit is Lincoln Castle. The picture below was taken by turning 180 degrees from the first shot of the cathedral.

On the way up the hill we stopped into an antique shop. From its window I noticed the building across the street. More particularly its name.

It’s now host to a second-hand book shop. You can just about see the steps up to the main floor level through the doorway. On the fronts of two treads it says BOOKS, NEW & SECONDHAND.

The next house down has a similar startling title (to modern eyes.)

This is no doubt a true reflection of mediæval Lincoln. In those times, Jews were not present in England to a great extent and were restricted by law to a very few occupations – specifically money lending (which was forbidden to non-Jews.) They would also have been required to live close together to avoid mixing too much with their Christian neighbours.

Thank goodness we’re more enlightened, open and friendly nowadays to people who may be different from us. Or even just foreign. (Oh! Hang on.)