ABSTRACT
Mauritius, a former British colony and before that French, has been an independent state since March 1968 and a republic within the New Commonwealth since March 1992. Mauritius is by far the largest island in the state, covering 1,850 of its total of 2,074 square kilometres; and of the 1.2 million inhabitants of the state, 96 per cent live on the main island. Mauritian society is, if anything, a plural one. The absence of a clear ethnic majority, aboriginal or not, calls for compromise or coercion; both options have been chosen in various situations in the colonial past. Independent Mauritius is a functioning multi-party parliamentary democracy (the voter turnout at the General Elections in December 1995 was nearly 80 per cent) whose inhabitants are to a remarkable extent aware of the predicaments of multiethnicity in a nation-state. A striking feature of contemporary Mauritian society, which merits some initial comment, is its current pace of social change.
