The Vandals

The Peoples of Europe

by Andrew Merrills, Richard Miles

The Vandals is the first book available in the English Language dedicated to exploring the sudden rise and dramatic fall of this complex North African Kingdom. This complete history provides a full account of the Vandals and re-evaluates key aspects of the society including: political and economic structures such as the complex foreign policy which combined diplomatic alliances and marriages with brutal raiding; the extraordinary cultural development of secular learning, and the religious struggles that threatened to tear the state apart; and the nature of Vandal identity from a social and gender perspective.

Genres: History, Medieval History, Ancient History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Roman History, European History

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[WarpDrive · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent work of scholarship about one of the least studied and understood “barbarian” groups who invaded the Western Empire in the fifth century – the Vandals.

The Vandals are a particularly interesting group for many reasons: their “Völkerwanderung” into Gaul, then Spain and finally into North Africa, is one of the most fascinating episodes of migration in late antiquity. I always found it very fascinating how a Germanic "barbarian" group would successfully establish itself in a completely different cultural and climatic environment - it loosely reminds me of the much later Norman establishment in Sicily.

The Vandal invasion of North Africa was a pivotal event in the troubled history of the late Western Empire - the removal of the important North African tax base, from the ever-dwindling resource pool of what left of the Western Empire, can be arguably considered a very heavy blow (if not a fatal blow), to its survival prospects.

The peculiar character of the Vandal polity, and the refusal of the Vandals to "convert" to the Nicene creed, is also interesting as it represents an important point of difference to the political stance of the main “barbarian groups” settling in the Empire – and it is quite contrasting to the different path ultimately taken by other Germanic groups such as the Franks, the Lombards and the Visigoths, who all ultimately converted to the Nicene creed.

Getting now into the analysis of the book, I must stress that the authors' approach is praiseworthy for the rigorous, detailed and nuanced analysis of primary sources and recent archaeological findings, and for the wide variety of sources taken into account. The authors' findings are, almost invariably, very persuasively argued and supported by convincing evidence. The only exception is in a couple of instances where the revisionist tendencies of the authors drive them to push for conclusions that are pretty questionable and look quite artificial.

It is important to note that the book implicitly assumes the reader's prior knowledge of the detailed chronological narrative of the fifth century's Western Empire – the primary objective of this book is to analyse in depth the peculiar character of the Vandal State in its religious, social, political, economic and cultural aspects – not that of providing another chronology of the associated military/political events (which are treated in the book, but not to much detail).

The ethnogenesis of the Vandals is very interesting and quite peculiar too, as the Hastingi Vandals (not “Hastings” as unfortunately anglicized by the authors) that migrated from Spain into North Africa, was one of the most ethnically heterogeneous groups settled in the Western Empire, being composed of many different groups such as Sueves, Goths, “Hispano-Romans”, “Gallo-Romans”, remnants of Alans, and others.

The authors depict a very convincing and detailed image of the flourishing state established by the Vandals; it is interesting how the disappearance of the "annona" and associated state-subsidized transport of goods from Africa into the Empire did not significantly affect the North African economy; on the contrary, it provided a stimulus to diversify its economy, to focus more on higher-values products, and to find new markets, as confirmed by recent archaeological evidence.

The authors also show convincing evidence of the high level of continuity in urban development (the classical erosion of cityscape experienced in North Africa was no different to similar transformational phenomena evident in many areas of the Empire, especially in the West), in economic and trading activity and even in cultural life (for example, the Vandal occupation left the educational infrastructure relatively unscathed, and titles such as “vir clarissimus” were increasingly used by the African municipal elite to mark educational achievements even more than social standing).

The strong integration of the pre-existing urban elites into the Vandal court and polity is also persuasively argued. Even the legal system was probably in better shape than virtually anywhere else in the Western Empire. To complete the picture, King Thrasamund has long been recognised as an important supporter of the arts, which was at least partially the case for the majority of other Vandal rulers. There is also evidence of continued agricultural development, including continued exploitation of marginal lands.

The authors also highlight how the diplomatic relationship between the Vandal State and the Roman Empire was not just one of constant conflict (the first things that normally come to mind, when thinking about the Vandals, are the ill-fated and horribly expensive expedition of AD 468, and the sack of Rome in AD 455) but also of trade, cultural exchange, and even close relationship (which was the case with the accession of Hilderic who, after all, was (through his mother Eudocia) the grandson of the late Emperor Valentinian III).

On the other hand, the conflictual relationship between the Nicene Church and the Arian creed of the Vandals is not neglected by the authors. There is a detailed and nuanced treatment of this issue, and it is quite fascinating to see how the African secular municipal elites generally demonstrated, from the beginning, a pragmatic approach towards the Vandal state (there are many examples of court officials and state functionaries who were of Nicene creed).
Contrarily to what some authors suggested in the past (probably influenced by many primary sources of Nicene Christian origin), it appears that the Arian creed of the Vandal elite did not create such a fundamental fracture with the existing African-Roman elites as to significantly damage the integrity of the state.

In conclusion, this is a very informative and interesting book of excellent scholarship, recommended to anybody who is interested in this intriguing and peculiar “barbarian” group, and who has good prior knowledge of the history of the Late Western Roman Empire.

4.5 stars (rounded up to 5)

[Elentarri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brief historical overview of the Vandals. Not terribly detailed, but discussed themes like culture, education and religion.

[Nicolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of the Vandals may as well be so unknown because it did not occur in what’s today Europe. It can be easy to forget how for hundredth of years the roman world also included all of North Africa and how rather than an “European” world of politics and kingdoms/empires, there was a Mediterranean world, in which politics were as interconnected at the end of times of western Rome as were afterwards rather inland upwards across the continent. The book is a perfect read to understand a bit more of late antiquity and early medieval history, concentrated in Carthage and into the politics of vandal north Africa.

With a very blurry history prior to the V century and development, the book concentrates on the vandals mostly as the entity group that came to rule north African Rome and until its demise under the byzantine restoration of Justinian. The authors attempt from the beginning to cut the biased created by popular culture and references, in order to address what it is known without the prism of unproved or hard to believe old sources, including medieval and modern interpretation of these.
There is a brief introduction of pre north African vandals using the scarce references of them north of the Danube prior to the 5th century and then recounting their journey across the Rhein alongside other groups (Alans and Sueves) all the way down through western Hispania and into North Africa, to finally concentrate in the kingdom ruled from Carthage.

It is very interesting to see how the vandals that cross the Gibraltar developed a culture and an “ethnicity” alongside roman in North Africa; embracing Roman forms of administration and transforming its group into a new “vandal” society, still differentiated to some extent from the roman population and yet blurry at some instances.

The author dives into the kingdom not as only a series of events, but also as an attempt to explain how it worked politically, economically, religiously and culturally for its 100-odd years of existence. The foreign policy of the vandals will also be assessed by presenting their complex relationships with the other main powers in the Mediterranean: The western and eastern empires; the later Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy and the Moorish aristocracies around and inside the Kingdom.

The author’s discussion on ethnicity, cultural, religious and economic views of the kingdom as a whole and not only of the vandal group is one of the book’s most remarkable features, as it goes around politics, its leaves plenty of space for this alternative narratives regarding the people who were the vandals and the people who inhabited its north African kingdom, how the Arian of the rulers permeated into the nicen orthodoxy of the Christian church of the afro-romans; what economic networks existed and what good were traded between the kingdom and its neighbors, how roman education continued to be regarded as important and how many urban centers were thriving.

Only the last chapter is a little bit confusing, as the “restauration” politics of Justinian are discussed but somehow leave many questions in how the kingdom further developed under eastern roman rule or how the by that point more homogeneous vandal-afro-roman population reacted to its new overlords. But this is also probably due to the lack of reliable sources and data. The brief account of the reconquest by Justinian could also respond to this lack of sources or be just another proof of the sudden and fast demise of Gelimer’s Vandal Kingdom.

[Nick Mount · Rating 4 out of 5]

A more recent (and more academic) book than Torsten Jacobsen’s 2012 history of the Vandals, with more fine-print niggling of small issues. Its main argument, and its main difference from Jacobsen’s book, seems to me a desire to show that the Vandals left a mark on North Africa. “Grand buildings projects continued, schools flourished, and North Africa fostered many of the most innovative writers and natural scientists of the Late Latin West” (1). Their book contains much less about the early history of the Vandals than Jacobsen’s does, I gather because they believe everything before their appearance on the Roman frontier and therefore in Roman sources is too speculative (25). They don’t mention Ulfilas at all, a key figure in Jacobsen’s book: they seem to believe that the Vandals converted to Arianism not because of any missionaries, but simply through contact with the Roman army, which was predominately Arian (178-79).

[Samuel Valentino · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this after reading Jacobsen's A History of the Vandals, which was a good order to read these two books. This book gave a lot of background/cultural information - there was some chronological history, but far less that Jacobsen's book.

The most informative chapter was the one on Vandal foreign policy, and this is where having read the history first helped the most as well. It was great to see events as described interpreted as a coherent strategy (especially be Gaiseric). The least helpful was the one on Vandal ethnicity, which seemed too vague.

For me, one of the most interesting chapters was the one on religion in the Vandal period. This strife is always mentioned in Vandal history, but rarely given a focus as in this book. I've been wanted to learn more about King Thrasamund and his theology, and the description of his debate with Nicene Christians was very instructive. It makes me wish the sources listed were translated into English!

Overall, I highly recommend it, though knowing some Vandal history prior to reading it is a plus.