Matt Ridley's article from behind Times paywall. Key lines: "Fragmentation is not necessarily a bad thing. As David Hume was one of the first to point out, Europe’s overtaking of China after 1500 owed much to the fact that its peninsulas, straits, mountain ranges and islands meant it could not be unified for long, with the result that innovators and experimenters could escape uncongenial regimes by crossing borders. From Gutenberg to Voltaire to Otto Frisch, they did so."