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The Vandals, by Andrew Merrills, Richard Miles
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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
- The nature of Vandal identity from a social and gender perspective.
- Sales Rank: #1777324 in Books
- Published on: 2014-01-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .70" w x 6.00" l, 1.05 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 366 pages
Review
“Merrills and Miles have produced an outstanding piece of scholarship that makes a genuine contribution to the field, and that will reward the close attention both of scholars and of educated laypeople interested in the transformation of the ancient Mediterranean into the world of the early Middle Ages.” (Speculum, April 2012)
Review
“This is the fresh historical overview of the Vandals and the Vandal state in Africa for which we have long been looking. Both the ethnic group and their historical role in Mediterranean history have been the subject of much recent revisionist work, all of it crying out for a new general summa. Merrills and Miles have provided it, and admirably so.”
Brent D. Shaw, Princeton University
“At the turn of the fifth century North Africa was a rebellious island of the Roman West, the scene of religious discontent and social unrest, both so troubling to the Roman throne. Into this mess burst the Vandals, who interrupted the ‘rhythm’ of Roman life for over a century. Merrills and Miles examine every aspect of this drama with infectious enthusiasm and great sympathy for the participants. This is an amazing book.”
Frank M. Clover, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"At last, a major reappraisal of the Vandals, combining the latest research and new critical judgments on the supposedly archetypal barbarian despoilers of Classical civilization - this book is a superb addition to the Blackwell Peoples series."
David Mattingly, University of Leicester
From the Back Cover
“Merrills and Miles have produced an outstanding piece of scholarship that makes a genuine contribution to the field, and that will reward the close attention both of scholars and of educated laypeople interested in the transformation of the ancient Mediterranean into the world of the early Middle Ages.” (Speculum, April 2012)
“This is the fresh historical overview of the Vandals and the Vandal state in Africa for which we have long been looking. Both the ethnic group and their historical role in Mediterranean history have been the subject of much recent revisionist work, all of it crying out for a new general summa. Merrills and Miles have provided it, and admirably so.”
Brent D. Shaw, Princeton University
“At the turn of the fifth century North Africa was a rebellious island of the Roman West, the scene of religious discontent and social unrest, both so troubling to the Roman throne. Into this mess burst the Vandals, who interrupted the ‘rhythm’ of Roman life for over a century. Merrills and Miles examine every aspect of this drama with infectious enthusiasm and great sympathy for the participants. This is an amazing book.”
Frank M. Clover, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"At last, a major reappraisal of the Vandals, combining the latest research and new critical judgments on the supposedly archetypal barbarian despoilers of Classical civilization - this book is a superb addition to the Blackwell Peoples series."
David Mattingly, University of Leicester
�
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. Today, the Vandals are remembered primarily as a metaphor for violent and uncultured destruction, but as the Roman Empire came to an end, the Vandals began to exert considerable influence, occupying Carthage and establishing one of the richest kingdoms of the early medieval world.�
This complete history provides a full account of the Vandals and re-evaluates key aspects of the society including political and economic structures; the complex foreign policy which combined diplomatic alliances and marriages with brutal raiding; the extraordinary cultural development of secular learning; the religious struggles that threatened to tear the state apart; and the nature of Vandal identity, examined from a social and gender perspective. Drawing upon new archaeological findings, as well as textual evidence, the authors present a provocative reinterpretation of this long-forgotten chapter of late antiquity.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Why the Vandals were no vandals
By Marcel Dupasquier
I was reading this book as my previous curiosity in the barbaric migration age has lead me to read a number of books about most of the other barbarian "tribes" that ended up after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire on Roman soil and I wanted to know more about this most influential group of immigrants. After all, the Vandals ended up carving out their own kingdom when all the other barbaric groups where still armies in the sold and depending on the grace of the Roman emperor. Thus whereas the other groups where still under the command of the magister militum, the Vandals on their part dictated the emperor their conditions, and as such proved to be the catalyst of the Roman downfall. How thus, I wondered, did the Vandals manage to obtain such a position of power at the time when the Roman West was still relatively strong? How did they overcome the border zone when the Roman frontier, as John Drinkwater has shown in a recent book, was still heavily guarded and a formidable bulwark? This book provided me with some answers to these questions, but left others unanswered. Moreover, it even opened up other questions; making as such an interesting and inspiring reading. I will list thereafter the contents of the chapters with my main conclusions from them.
The first chapter looks at the reception history of the Vandals and the way they were regarded during the ages, from the Romantic knights during the middle ages over the "Vanadalic" destroyers during the French Revolution to the Germanic barbarians, as they are mostly still considered nowadays. All of these picture were (and probably still are) not that correct and need to be adjusted.
The second chapter then deals with the migration of the Vandalic "warband", from their starting point outside the Roman Empire until their arrival in North Africa. Thereby, I was, as already mentioned, especially interested in how the Vandals managed to overcome the Roman border defence. As such, it turns out that this questions has not yet been fully answered. At least three options how the Vandals arrived in Gaul are possible, with the potential that more than one actually occurred: 1) The Vandals crossed the Rhine on New Year's Eve in 406, not necessarily when it was frozen (p. 35). Thereby, they might have been helped by the fact that they constituted only a relatively small group, planning merely to raid in the nearby border zone, and therefore not worthy the full attention of the Roman border troops, especially as there seem to have occurred usurpations in Britain at the same time. An internal enemy was always more dangerous in the short term, thus the Vandals seem not to have appeared a dangerous enemy. Moreover, this fate seems to have stayed with the group of the Hasding Vandals until they were in control of Baetica; even when Flavius Constantius organized the Visigoths to liberate Spain from its barbarian invaders, the Hasding Vandals (and the Suebi) were left alone, maybe still not appearing as a serious threat. Once they did do so, it would proof to be too late and the one attempt to stop them under Castinus in 422 ended with a disastrous defeat for the Roman troops (p. 46). 2) Some remaining troops of Radagaisus' army escaped over the French/Italian alps into Gaul and joined there the small "warband" of Vandals (p. 35). 3) Vandal federates, sent to Gaul by Stilicho in response to the threat of the usurpers, joined there cause with the invaders (p. 261). A fourth potential source of men joining the Vandals might have been local barbarian laeti settled in Gaul who fled their landlords once the Vandals arrived, as happened previously after the battle of Adrianople, where many Goths already settled in Thrace and Pannonia joined the Goths after their success in this battle. All of these factors might have contributed to the swelling of the barbarian group that subsequently could lay Gaul into waste and move on to Spain. There, the Alans and Siling Vandals received the lion's share of the land, whereas the Hasding Vandals and the Suebi had to share one province. After Flavius Constantius duly routed the Alans and Siling Vandals, their survivors would join the Hasding Vandals, so that this group now became a serious adversary. After Castinus's defeat, the way for them to Africa lay wide open.
The third until the eighth chapters cover then different aspects of the Vandal kingdom. The third chapter looks at political developments within the kingdom, and answers the question of who ruled the kingdom. Thereby it is shown that Geiseric introduced a system of seniority (p. 74), meaning that the eldest surviving male member of the Hasding clan would succeed to the throne, in contrast for example to the Visigoths in Spain after the Baltic dynasty, who would elect their king, or to the Merovingians in France, where every son would inherit an equal share of the kingdom.
The fourth chapter deals with Vandal identity and ethnicity, the fifth with Vandal foreign policy, the sixth with Vandal economy, the seventh with Vandal religion, and the eighth with Vandal culture. The key word of these chapters, as of the whole book, would be ambiguity. Yes, there was decline during the Vandal period, but there was also continuation and improvement, depending where and what you analyze. The Vandals economy declined in some parts, but continued strongly in others. Some cities and some parts of other cities were left to decay but others were maintained, improved or used for different functions. A classic education remained the keystone for societal advancement, and the Vandal kingdom saw the writing of some of the best Latin literature of this period. Thus, what these chapters want to make clear is that one cannot speak of a Vandal decadence, and that the Vandal kingdom was not generally declining and decaying.
The ninth and last chapter finally deals with the East Roman reconquest, and the whole idea of Justinian to restore the Roman Empire to its former glory. Thereby I got the sense that as the key date of the end of the West Roman Empire, one should maybe not consider 476 so much as rather 533. This because this year marks the end of the official acceptance of the barbarian kings as viceroys of the Roman Emperors, a position that was also legally recorded in the various contracts that the different kings had with the different Roman emperors and empires. The Vandals for example had concluded treaties in 435 (p. 60) and in 442 (p. 61) with Valentinian III, where they were acknowledged in their possessions in North Africa. Thus, whereas before this date, the Roman Emperors, or Emperor after 476, considered the different areas of the Roman Empire still under their control, just with different kings ruling in their stead, who by themselves were constantly looking for official confirmation from the Roman Emperor in their positions, after 533, Justinian's official position was that these areas had fallen off from the Empire, had been conquered by outsiders and barbarians, and as a consequence needed to be reconquered. Justinian's subsequent reconquest of Italy would demonstrate this position a second time. Unfortunately, both of these adventures of reconquest turned out not that well; the affected areas simply had been away from Roman rule for far too long. But until 533, such adventures would not have been popular, as the West Roman Empire still existed at least in official rhetoric, ruled by different allied kings that were confirmed by the Roman Emperors or Emperor. Only after this date, when the official position became that the West Roman Empire had ceased to exist and had been devastated, conquered and devoured by barbarian tribes and were ruled by alien despots that the East Romans needed to subjugate did they become possible. For the East Romans thus, the West Roman Empire stopped to exist in 533 (which was however backdated by their historians to 476).
The period of the East Roman reconquest itself is only shortly discussed in this book, a fact that makes complete sense considering that the book is actually about the Vandalic kingdom and not about Byzantine conquests. There are other books that have exactly that subject as scope, among others a new book by Peter Heather. What this book does, however, is to raise interest in the Justinianic reconquests, and I am planning to read some of those books that look particularly at that aspect.
The one major point of critique, apart from some minor ones (for example, there remain quite some spelling mistakes, like many doubled "that"s or missing prepositions, moreover, too many references turned out as "inspiring" or "thought-provoking") that I have with this book is that it somehow did not really manage to bring me the Vadals closer; after reading this book, they still appear foreign and strange to me. Before I had read other books about the tribes, gentes, warbands (this is the best description that I have heard so far for these groups and it comes actually from this book) or whatever one might call them that established successor kingdoms out of parts of the former territory of the Roman Empire, like about the Visigoths, the Franks, the Alamanni and the Burgundians. There, the conclusions were mainly that these peoples adapted and integrated themselves so well to the Roman culture and way of life that they often quickly could not be distinguished from the original Roman population anymore. Thus hardly any words of the Visigothic language can be found in Spanish anymore nowadays, and the only word in Burgundian that we can really be sure of is their name. The Vandals, on the other hand, also seem to have assimilated their Roman subjects' ways, but only to a certain extent. They seem to have continued to distinguish themselves from the surrounding Roman elite by their social standing, marked by their possession of land in the sortes Vanadalorum, their language and their names (p. 94). Thus, the Vandals did not completely turn into Romans, but how much did they do so and how far did they remain Vandals? Do I have to imagine now a Vandal like a Vandal before their migration to North Africa, as a Roman aristocrat, or as something in between? I guess, the third answer would be the correct one, but how far I cannot really say after reading this book. The Vandals, as they were the only group that really conquered their territory from the Romans (maybe also the Langobards did, but they only came much later) were consequently the one group that did not necessarily need to adapt to the Roman culture, in contrast to the other groups that were originally given land by a Roman magister militum and that were hence more inclined to turn into Romans. This difference to other groups, however, in my opinion should have been stressed more and pointed out better in this book. The Vandals' identity remains thus, so to speak, ambiguous.
Apart from this, however, this book remains a good introduction into the subject of this Roman successor kingdom, and I can warmly recommend it to people that are interested in this particular subject.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Masculine Vandals read poetry
By Michael Stewart
Recently I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of Andy Merrills’ and Richard Miles’ fascinating 2010 study on the Vandals. Despite a few strange errors: e.g, describing the Generalissimo Boniface’s death in battle against Aetius in 432 as a murder; And a sure misprint that states that Marcian not Leo I was organizing the combined campaign against the Vandals in 468— the study has much to offer the scholar and general reading public unfamiliar with the giant strides made recently concerning these non-Roman peoples and their successor kingdoms. Indeed, this is the first major work on the vandals since 1955.
Merrills’ learned discussion on the complex controversies surrounding how the Vandals defined themselves as a separate ethnic identity represented a highlight for me. Relying of the vast amount of work done in the past forty years on Late Antique ethnicity he provides a narrative of fifth and sixth-century Vandalic history that is insightful, instructive, and at times original.
Merrils sees peoples like the Vandals as a gens made up largely of mixed military elites rather than the vast groups of homogeneous migratory tribes favoured in the older historiographical tradition. Yes, he maintains, members of these men’s families may have travelled with them, but at the core they were a warrior band (a bit in my mind like modern outlaw motorcycle gangs). Though they created some localized mayhem when they entered Gaul in 406, they were certainly not a threat to the Empire. They had merely found a small niche in an early fifth-century Western Europe racked by civil wars. As M makes so clear during these early years these men were perceived as more of a pest than a threat even to the weakened Western Roman Empire.
M writes (49): “The Vandals, Alans and Suaves, were an army on the move, and presumably brought women and children along with them. It might have been a small army, and it might have been better at plundering than it was at fighting. But for the early years of the fifth century at least, the Vandals were defined primarily by their military character.”
Because of the fluidity of both Roman and Vandal identity, for M, the second stage of their existence upon entry into Spain must be looked at separately.
Using the latest archaeological research, M maintains that the destructive nature of groups like the Vandals has been exaggerated by both ancient and modern scholars. Indeed, Spain in this period remained a relatively thriving place. Their first victory over a Roman army in 422 represented the most important event in Vandal history. It was this victory that made them the Vandals that we study. Like, the Huns…or indeed a modern Biker gangs, this victory seems to have drawn more recruits, who quickly were absorbed into the confederation.
Opportunity, rather than necessity or long term planning, is seen by M as the primary factor behind the Vandals move into Africa. Victory was achieved not so much by might of arms, but due to the turmoil and rivalries that plagued the Roman armies defending North Africa.
Once they arrived in Africa in 429, men who called themselves Vandals quickly emerged as a new military aristocracy. It was then that it became a necessity for these men to develop a “distinct Vandal identity” (91). Though a shared history seemed to be an important aspect of crafting an ethnic identity in Late Antiquity, unlike the Goths, Lombards, and Franks, the Vandals never produced a work explaining this shared history. This does not mean, however, that they did not percieve themselves to be an ethnicity on par with peoples like the Goths.
Though the boundaries between those considered Romans and Vandals throughout this period could be blurry and fluid, M posits both natives and outsiders like Procopius could distinguish between a “Roman” and a “Vandal”. Language was one way. Vandalic an offshoot of Gothic could serve was a sign, but as M points out after years of occupation those considered Romans could understand Vandalic, and more and more Vandals understood and indeed used Latin on an everyday basis.
So too if we trust our sources were certain types of weapons, clothing, and long-hairstyles a marker of Vandalic identity. Once again I reminded about how all these same things held to define and outlaw biker. Indeed, just like a banned or re-patched biker, Merrils shows that Vandals getting kicked out of the clan had to give up their clothing and get a haircut. Of course this does not mean that a Roman could not become a Vandal and vica versa.
These definitions, however, were not steadfast, and M is rightly hesitant to see the Vandalic era as one of gradual decline, whereas as Procopius told it, the originally virile Vandalic elite gradually succumbed to the soft side of Roman civilization. Here is a brief aside from my MA thesis on the process.
While associating with Roman culture could uplift foreign peoples, “civilized” living could also make them unmanly and cowardly. Procopius emphasized that the Eastern Romans’ easy victory over the Vandals resulted from the North Africans’ abandonment of the “hard” life of the barbarian for the “soft” life of Roman civilization:
For of all the nations which we know that of the Vandals is the most luxurious, and that of the Moors the hardiest. For the Vandals, since the time when they gained possession of Libya, used to indulge in baths, all of them, every day, and enjoyed a table abounding in all things, the sweetest and the best that the earth and sea produce. And they wore gold very generally, and clothed themselves in Medic garments, which now they call “seric” [silk] and passed their time, thus dressed, in theatres and hippodromes and in other pleasurable pursuits, and above all else in hunting. And they had dancers and mimes and all other things to hear or see which are of a musical nature or otherwise merit attention among men. And most of them dwelt in parks, which were well supplied with water and trees; and they had great number of banquets, and all manner of sexual pleasures were in great vogue among them.18
Procopius, who indicated that the Eastern Romans had begun the reconquest of North Africa with a sense of trepidation, seemed surprised with the Vandals’ adoration of luxurious living.19 One is reminded of the earlier Greek tradition that portrayed barbarians as particularly vulnerable to civilization’s temptations. Now, however, it was the lure of Roman culture that threatened the valor of the Vandals. This description matches Procopius’ condemnation, in the Secret History,of Constantinople’s citizens’ growing moral depravity; his account of the Vandals may have served as a warning to his readership that a lavish lifestyle led to moral decay, and that only by following an ascetic lifestyle could men preserve their physical and spiritual well-being.
Historians have largely followed Procopius’ views. M rightly points out that the truth was much more nuanced.
Indeed, M’s most important point and contribution in this study is his undermining of the entire idea that the Vandals were gradually amalgamated into North African society by the process known as Romanization.
M sees the entire concept of Romanization as a simplification of a much more complicated process. M posits that while “The Vandal aristocracy of the fifth-century Africa was quite unlike anything the inhabitants of the region had ever seen before….it was still an aristocracy which had adopted more or less recognizable form”
“The most striking feature of our textual sources on Vandal identity”, he continues, “is the extent to which it was shaped by existing notions of Romanitas, and particularly by ideals of Roman masculinity. (97-98)
Okay readers of my work will know that this is a model of men’s self-fashioning that I argue for in my dissertation. Martial virtues along with more civilised intellectual virtues continued to make up a major part of Roman identity. Romanitas itself was susceptible to fluidity, and as I have suggested, more martial forms of masculinity become more prevalent from the fifth century. This is the exact opposite of what some gender scholars have argued. So perhaps this helps to explain why I like M’s conclusions so much!
M shows how Vandalic literature and art conflated classical and Vandalic military ideals; Vandalic behaviour was often very similar to Roman behaviour. Put more simply, Vandalic and Roman military elite’ behaviour was very similar long before the Vandals had ever entered North Africa. He concludes that just as the idea of a pure Vandalic identity has been rightly dismissed, so too should the concept of “Vandal Romanization” be rejected.
Another interesting point made by M is his contention that Vandalic identity as constructed in our ancient evidence seems to have been a largely masculine construct. He suggests (107):
“Definitive features of Vandalic identity were overwhelmingly masculine. ‘Vandals’ were primarily soldiers, administrators or landlords who held their land by right of male inheritance, who governed and fought on behalf of their Hasding kings and who assumed the engendered trappings of the late Roman aristocracy.
This is not say that there were no Vandal women..... only that they could easily fade away or like Procopius tells us take on another identity quite quickly.
This view, however, appears to be Vandal-specific as we do have plenty of indications of Gothic women.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Very professional work of archeology and history.
By Roberto Fideli
This is very professional work of archeology and history. It belongs to the series Peoples of Europe. Really the Vandals were an ethnicity. A people needs a literature. A genetic research published in 2006 by Sykes, professor of Oxford university, shows that the British are mainly paleo-European, related with other Europeans, but less strictly than Celts, Germans, Latin peoples, Slaves between them (at least in the past). The origin of the British people is Paleo-European, but its culture is also Celtic and its language is mainly Germanic. Celtic and Germanic affluxes are still present in the British isles. Starting from the flag, we know that Great Britain is the union of two ethnicities and historical nations: English and Scottish of Britannia and Ulster. To them we may add Welsh and the Irish minority of Ulster. These ethnicities are united by a common culture, so that it is still today legitimate to speak of a British people occupying the whole archipelago.
Until now no systematic research was carried out on the Vandalic presence in Corsica and Gallura (455-534 AC), where I live as an Italian and European. Paleo-Europeans lived here before the arrival of the Sardinians from the Middle-East.
I have two remarks only on this book (see my review of the Danish historian Cumberland Jacobsen, A history of the Vandals too).
Page 18
The authors speak of "scientific support" instead of "empirical support". Merrills is a professor of archeology at Leicester and a fellow of the Institute of research into the humanities of the university di Wisconsis. Of course, archeologists avail themselves of some scientific tools.
Page 71
"Geiseric proclaimed himself basileos" -- the authors wrote. I would write βασιλεύς.
Roberto Fideli
Translator and writer (www.robertofideli.com)
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