Hyam Ronald and Henshaw Peter. The Lion and the Springbok: Britain and South Africa since the Boer War . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xv + 379 pp. Chronology. Tables. Maps. Figures. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $60.00. Cloth.

Ronald Hyam and Peter Henshaw. The Lion and the Springbok: Britain and South Africa since the Boer War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xv + 379 pp. Chronology. Tables. Maps. Figures. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $60.00. Cloth. In basketball, scoring with an emphatic "in your face" flourish is sometimes called a "slam-dunk." This book seeks to achieve the historiographical equivalent. The opponents in this case are the "Marks-ists" (10)-Shula Marks and others accused of writing "an overall economic determinism" into South African history since the 1960s-while the "home team" practices "liberal" historiography, on the comeback trail after years on the academic sidelines. In the first chapter of the book, Ronald Hyam and his star student, Peter Henshaw, launch an assault on historical approaches based on economic determinism (or which "otherwise misinterpret the economic dimension"), as well as those characterized by "overly speculative or theory-based" analyses. They contrast these with a commitment to primary research in which hours are spent "disentangling rusty paper clips from musty sheets, deciphering bottom-carbon copies on flimsy paper, or [enduring] the miseries of churning the microfilm machine." They declare righteously: "For some scholars, no doubt, archival research is logistically too difficult, or temperamentally uncongenial. Such must survive by their theorising, and hope to invent a concept which catches on. But history is too important to be left to stay-at-home theorisers" (7). Given this combative beginning, it is no surprise to find that in the pages that follow several historians are subjected to a tongue-lashing for their supposed divergence from the methods prescribed by the authors. Entertaining academic putdowns aside, however, this book consists largely of material that has already been published in one form or another over the past thirty years. Chapters 3, 4, 8, and 9 in particular are only lightly revised versions of articles by Hyam; criticisms that appeared subsequent to their original publication are dealt with in brief dismissive "afterwords." Only chapters 1, 12, 13, and a short epilogue can be said to be entirely new. The book therefore may best be characterized as a restatement of familiar views. The main focus is on intergovernmental relations. Chronologically, the emphasis is on the period from 1895 to 1961. Subsequent developments in the "special relationship" between Britain and South Africa are sketched out in the two concluding chapters by Henshaw. Topics include, inter alia, the breakdown leading to war in 1899, the "myth" of postwar magnanimity, the formation of the Union in 1910, the High Commission Territories, the participation of South Africa in the sterling area, the issue of control of the naval base at Simonstown, and the Seretse Khama dispute in the 1950s. …