Ernest Gellner's interests embraced the whole of human history. He cooperated with archaeologists such as Paul Mellars in investigating the origins of human society; supported the work of hunter-gatherer specialists like James Woodburn, his colleague for many years at the London School of Economics; and he himself carried out extended fieldwork among tribesmen in Morocco. But I suspect that he is probably best known for his work on the transition to industrial society, and in particular, for his analysis of the links between industrialisation and nationalism. In this chapter I shall consider this powerful general theory of modernity in the context of an area that had preeminent significance in his life, if not always in his scholarly output. He spent his formative years in Czechoslovakia, in many ways the most remarkable of the ‘successor states’ to emerge after World War I. It enjoyed a real measure of democracy, and the Bohemian region had already taken significant steps towards a modern industrial society. Despite the name, it was also a country of rather more than two ethnic components: in addition to Czechs and Slovaks, there were large numbers of Ruthenians, Hungarians, Germans, Jews and Gypsies, to name only the most numerous.

The Prague where Gellner had a base in the last years of his life was the capital of a very different country. The Jews mostly vanished during World War II, as did the Gypsies.