The barbarian conquest of ad 429 thrust a powerful new group into the society of Roman North Africa. Relatively rapidly, these barbarians became the de facto military aristocracy of the emerging kingdom, and it was this institutional position which provided the framework in which a distinct ‘Vandal’ identity could develop.25 These newly minted Vandals were distinct from both the ruling household (the royal Hasdings, who were careful to cultivate their own separate identity in the aftermath of the conquest), and from the ‘Roman’ secular aristocracy which already existed within North Africa, and which continued to cultivate its Romanitas throughout this period.26 The means by which the Vandals could be recognized were varied, and our textual and archaeological sources can only provide an imperfect impression of the complex social semiotics of the period. Some of these markers of identity - like language - stand out clearly within the post-classical society of North Africa, while others were certainly assumed after years or even decades of interaction with indigenous elites. The result was an unambiguously ‘North African’ creation: the ‘Vandals’ of 535 would have looked very different from the group of barbarians who invaded in 429, and much of this change would have been inspired by the African setting in which they lived.
Vandal identity was a gradual creation, and was shaped by a variety of different impulses, but was no less real for that. Individuals regarded themselves as Vandals, and were recognized as such by others. When Procopius described the Byzantine reconquest of North Africa, he was confident that a visible distinction existed between ‘Vandals’ and ‘Romans’ within the kingdom.27 It might occasionally be difficult to distinguish between the two groups, as Belisarius learned to his peril, but the ethnic categories were meaningful at the time of the conquest. It was for this reason that Justinian could order the unilateral removal of all ‘Vandals’ from the region, and expect this to be accomplished with few problems. This is not to suggest that these ethnic boundaries were absolute, or that notions of ‘Vandal’ or ‘Roman’ identities should be regarded as absolutely inseparable. Although our sources are not explicit on the subject, it seems likely that individuals could adopt different identities over their lifetime, and members of the same family might certainly change their principal affiliations over generations.28 No less significantly, we know of individuals who temporarily assumed certain symbols of ethnic identification that were not their own, by dressing in ‘barbarian’ clothing, for example.29 But this should not obscure the existence of the distinct and meaningful identities. A Roman could not become a Vandal simply by dressing up as one, nor could a Vandal shed his own identity by impulse of will alone. Crucially, ‘Vandal’ ethnicity meant something important to the inhabitants of Hasding Carthage, and continued to mean something down to the Byzantine conquest, even if it can seem like an artificial construct to modern observers.
The examination of these ethnicities is complicated by a number of factors. Chief among these is the problem of setting ‘Vandal’ identity within its wider social context. As we have seen, a crucial function of ethnic identity - indeed of identity of any kind - was to distinguish members of a group from non-members. In many studies it has simply been assumed that the principal cultural distinction within the successor kingdoms of the fifth and sixth centuries - the opposition which emergent ethnic identities were intended to underscore - was between ‘Romans’ and ‘barbarians’. That is, when Vandals (or Goths or Franks) articulated their own sense of community, a chief concern was to separate themselves from the Roman inhabitants of the regions in which they lived.30 This perspective is partly a function of our source material, of course, the vast majority of which was written by ‘Roman’ authors, and frequently presents a chauvinistic account of non-Roman groups. When writers like Victor of Vita insist vociferously on the difference between Romans and Barbarians, we tend to take notice. It is easy to assume that such distinctions were of equal importance to all members of society, and that this binary ethnic opposition between ‘us’ and ‘them’ was the primary conceptual distinction in the period.
For the Vandals themselves, however (and indeed for Victor and his ‘Romans’), there were other distinctions which were equally important, and this is crucial to the understanding of identity within their kingdom. A ‘Vandal’ was not only defined by being a non-Roman (although this was important), he was also a non-Jew, a non-Greek and a non-Moor; he was free (not a slave), an adult and, crucially, a man. The Vandals were not set apart from the complex hierarchies and gender distinctions of post-Roman African society, they were embedded deep within them. Vandal identity was not articulated in straightforward opposition to ‘Roman’ identity, then, but developed alongside and within a whole series of different forms of identity which were already in operation within the Roman and post-Roman world. Crucially, this meant that the symbols by which the Vandals defined themselves were often similar or even identical to Roman aristocratic norms. The Vandals adopted the trappings of African elite lifestyles, not because they wanted to be Romans, but because they wanted to be elites; this offered them a means of establishing their own identity in a meaningful form in the postRoman world. Through careful scrutiny we can identify some of the ways in which the members of this group distinguished themselves from other ‘Roman’ aristocrats, but we should not lose track of the other forms of social distinction at work within this politics of identity.
In order to explore the complex politics of identity within the Vandal kingdom we will discuss first the political foundations of Vandal identity, as they were established under Geiseric and developed under his successors. This will also consider the most obvious symbols by which the Vandals distinguished themselves from their Roman neighbours, including legal privileges, language and some sense of their own shared heritage. But this only tells one side of the story. The next section will consider the complex interdependence of the relationship between ‘Vandal’ and ‘Roman’ identity within this period, and will argue that the new military aristocracy readily assumed many of the elements of Romanitas as a means of purely social distinction. The chapter will then consider the importance of gender to the formulation of ethnic identity in North Africa in this period, and will argue that ‘Vandalness’ was an essentially masculine form of identity. This is not to say that women should be excluded from the study of the Vandals, or that only a ‘masculine’ reading is appropriate to the study of this period - indeed gender issues are central to understanding the operation of the states - simply that ethnicity can only be understood as the product of specifically male forms of behaviour.
World History
