The role of regional associations in urbanization has been the subject of recent debate. From the study of clubs in Lima, Peru, Mangin( 1959) and Doughty (1969) conclude that their role is threefold: to act as a mechanism to integrate the rural migrant into the urban and potentially hostile environment, to act as an agent to promote home-town development, and to contribute to the social and political integration of the nation. The evidence discussed by Little (1973) from a number of African countries supports the first of these contentions. However, in an article in volume 17 of CSSH, Jongkind (1974), also using data from Lima, has strongly challenged these three supposed roles, finding that they cannot “survive the test of empirical criticism.” He argues that the regional associations are composed of elitist, well adjusted and successful migrants and that they are definitely urban institutions, not rural enclaves in the city as Mangin and Doughty have implied.

The transmission of systems of ideas across wide cultural gaps is hard enough to study on any scale of human organization. It is particularly hard when two large, complex cultures meet under traumatic circumstances, as did China and the West in the nineteenth century. The myriad variables in such a situation dictate special care in defining the specific terms and conditions under which ideas are transmitted. The present case suggests three points worth attention: first, the precise language of the textual material that impinges on the host culture; second, the underlying structure of the historical circumstances into which this material is introduced; third, the process whereby the foreign material becomes important to sectors of society outside the group that first appreciated and received it and thereby becomes a significant historical force.

At the beginning of the long reign of George III, a new mass media outlet for political expression surfaced in England: the colored political and social print. These prints were first carried as a sideline at stationers and bookstores, but from the middle 1770s on their popularity was great enough to justify setting up special print shops.

The Georgian print after 1760 was different in more than color from those that had preceded it, though the use of color was indicative of the change. Artistically they were less representational, more free in line, and made heavier use of caricature in both face and body action. In content their appeal was more populist and urban than aristocratic and rural. They were also more journalistic; they focused their comment increasingly on current and often trivial political and social events and were published soon after the event occurred. In an earlier period, comment was in response to events. After George III, the commentators became established professionals seeking out events which they could make the theme of their weekly or so caricature comment. The prints also continued to be unrestrained in ridicule, attacking not only political leaders, but royalty itself. If possible, they became more unfair and calumnious than the prints of the period of the first two Georges. The prints were a part of what was evolving, I will argue, as a new democratizing force in the politics of England: a stream of mass media criticism of current political practices.

Indian immigration into the West Indies generally during the nineteenthcentury, and in particular to British Guiana, forms a small portion of migrationmovements from one area to another in the world during thatperiod. But in terms of West Indian societies, this immigration representeda major influx and so had significant social effects, especially inBritish Guiana and in Trinidad. By 1917 when the system was terminated some 429,286 Indians had been introduced into the West Indies since 1838, of which 238,909 went to British Guiana, and 143,939 to Trinidad.

The greatest shocks suffered by revolutionary movements occur in the blossoming of revolution or in its defeat. The experience of the Russian Revolution of 1905–07 and of the period that followed, described by contemporary radical commentators as a “reaction,” is a case in point. In a half-dozen years the revolutionaries traveled the road that led from a promising, growing movement to actual revolution in which the parameters of their field of action expanded rapidly and then contracted to an environment of retrenchment and disillusionment. The effects of this experience upon individuals and organizations have not, however, received meaningful attention from historians or social scientists. An understanding of the experience of defeat is as significant as an understanding of the experience of success in the perception of revolutionary movements.