When Thomas Hobbes arrived in France at the end of 1640, “the first of all that fled” from the growing threat of civil war in England, he began an exile which was to last eleven years, an exile which was moreover to prove the most intellectually fruitful period of his whole life. In Paris he was to reach the height of his polemical powers, conducting his debates with Descartes on the existence of secondary qualities, and with Bishop Bramhall on free will. In Paris he was also to bring to fruition a lifetime of speculation about the science of politics, completing the De Cive and writing the whole of Leviathan.

I. The Political Meaning of Ethnic Conflict

If politics “in its broadest sense” is conceived as the “distribution of advantages and disadvantages among people” (Froman, p. 3), then the ultimate penalty is subordination (total exclusion from advantages) and the ultimate reward is dominance (total monopoly of advantages). The effort to change the balance of advantages and disadvantages between groups is the nexus of political conflict. In such conflict, ethnicity is a particularly important variable, precisely because it is one criterion found throughout the world by which groups are regularly assigned superior and inferior places.

Charles Rubia's resignation from office as Mayor of Nairobi on September 15, 1964, set off a potentially dangerous political crisis in Kenya. Although Rubia subsequently returned to office the affair split the major political party, aroused considerable tribal passion, provoked the youth-wing into angry demonstrations and the Kikuyu women of Nairobi into their piercing “ululating” cry in front of the City Hall.

At the end of his suggestive political analysis of Nairobi, Herbert Werlin asserts that a major goal for Kenya politics “is to build up the basis for cooperation” (p. 197). Cooperation existed in Kenya under British colonialism; it exists in Britain today. Lack of cooperation at present makes it more difficult for Kenya and Nairobi to solve acute social and economic problems. For Werlin, cooperation requires an educated, public-spirited citizenry, a politically conscious, reform minded business class, and a corps of dedicated professional administrators (p. 197). Cooperation requires a modern social order which in American cities has functioned to encourage “good government”. But this very modern concept of cooperation tells us more about where Kenya and Nairobi ought to go than how they should get there.

This paper is concerned with developments in Hinduism in British Guiana. The Hindus of this country are the descendants of immigrants from India who were recruited during the period 1838–1917 to serve as labourers in the sugar plantations. I discuss the effects on religion of changes initiated by immigration.

Mauritius is a British territory in the Indian Ocean 500 miles to the east of Madagascar. It measures 720 square miles and has a population of 700,000 people whose ancestors came from France (the original settlers), Africa (slaves), India (indentured immigrants), and China (shopkeepers). Mauritius was discovered by the Portuguese in the early years of the sixteenth century, and was subsequently occupied and finally abandoned by the Dutch, who exterminated the famous bird the Dodo. It was held by the French from 1715 until 1810 when it was conquered by the British at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.