David Brock Katz's Defending and Offending the Empire: Dreams of a Greater South Africa in the 20th Century is a pathbreaking academic monograph that reinterprets South African history through the lens of territorial expansionism. Drawing from rich archival material and underpinned by rigorous scholarship, Katz argues that the dream of a "Greater South Africa" was a central, though often obscured, driver of the country's strategic and political decision-making throughout much of the twentieth century. Beginning with the imperial ambitions of Cecil Rhodes and extending through the militarised campaigns of Smuts, Hertzog, and apartheid-era planners, Katz traces how expansionist ideals influenced South Africa's involvement in both world wars, regional diplomacy, and military interventions in Namibia and Angola.
Rather than treating expansionism as a marginal curiosity of imperial history, Katz presents it as a recurring and ideologically potent force. Successive governments across political divides pursued the goal of extending South African influence into neighbouring territories such as the High Commission Territories, and Portuguese Mozambique. Although constrained by British resistance, international diplomacy, and the growing illegitimacy of racial policy, these efforts reflected a consistent vision of South Africa as a dominant regional power. Expansionism was not merely aspirational; it was translated into military action, diplomatic pressure, and policy initiatives.
In a provocative conclusion, Katz argues that expansionist thinking did not end with the fall of apartheid. Contemporary political rhetoric, including the Economic Freedom Fighters' calls for a united Africa "from Cape to Cairo," demonstrates that territorial ambition persists in the democratic era, now reframed through pan-Africanist and decolonial language.
Defending and Offending the Empire is a compelling, revisionist contribution to South African military and political historiography. It repositions expansionism as a persistent, though ultimately frustrated, engine of statecraft that shaped South Africa's borders, its wars, and its long journey to democracy.
Soft Cover
